November 25th, 2018: St Francis NY at Seton Hall

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Shadeen Samuels had 29 points and 11 rebounds to power another triple-digit effort for Seton Hall in their 100-77 win over St. Francis Brooklyn. Ally Lassen and Maria Palarino each had 17 points to lead the Terriers.

For a crossover crossover, banging the bleachers, baying for the blood of one's enemies, spirit fingers on the bench, and Selena Philoxy's dance moves, join your intrepid and extremely distracted blogger after the jump. In my defense, my distractions include homemade apple pie and apple strudel.

Good morning! Well, let's be honest, "morning" will be a relative term by the time I get these finished, and "good" is rapidly becoming a relative term as well. Stupid MTA. Stupid reroutes I should have somehow known about even though the conductor couldn't be bothered to announce anything about them. Stupid Sunday schedules. Stupid early tip.

Yes, it's a Seton Hall day. Which means it's a navigate-three-transit-systems-that-don't-coordinate-with-each-other-day. And we just missed the PATH train, which means half an hour of waiting at World Trade Center, interspersed with several ardent prayers to an uncaring cosmos that the 31 will be a few minutes late so we can catch the 11:30 instead of the 12:00.

I'm already too tired for this.

Fortunately, the PATH schedule was inaccurate, so we did in fact catch the 11:30, so here we are at historic Walsh Gymnasium on the campus of Seton Hall University, where the Pirates will take on the Terriers of St. Francis College.

Inja Butina just crossed a guy over with her dribble. Soccer-style. We gave her defender a yellow card on the ensuing flop.

Half-court shot time! Squad's pretty loose. Probably a good sign. Either that or we're going to get a first-quarter team-wide Teaching Moment that I'll probably be able to transcribe because the entire arena will hear it.

Don't feel bad, Shadeen, I too let out primal screams when I realize I'm late for a meeting.

I love Selena Philoxy's dance moves. Maybe someone should introduce her to Sky Lindsay.

It's 50-36 Seton Hall at halftime, and it should be more, and I would very much like it to be more. I get bloodthirsty when one of my players gets hurt, and Inja Butina took hands to the face that left her lying on the floor holding her eye. Refs reviewed, but magically found no foul. Inja still hasn't come out of the locker room. So I'm on my "sweep the leg" ish right now, and Amy O'Neill's elbows can go to hell and take the rest of her with them. (I don't even know if it was her, but she's been swinging the elbows, and it was either her or Mia Ehling.)

(So, uh, the addition of St. Francis to my pile o' teams is going to have to wait a couple of years.)

Kimi Evans has been good but inconsistent inside, and the freshman posts are having their defensive vulnerabilities exposed. Also, the next time one of our itty-bitty guards is on the other team's tallest player, I may scream. A lot.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I recognized John Fanta not by appearance but by the fact that he had the Browns-Bengals game on his second screen.

Learn from my fail. Do not attempt to take NJ Transit back from Seton Hall on Sundays during the non-conference season. You will get caught up in football traffic. It is not of the good, especially since football in MetLife Stadium is currently a trainwreck that is also on fire, and yet people keep going. (Also, you do you, dude in Baker Mayfield jersey. You do you.)

That could actually have gone better, but I'll take a 23-point win and nobody else getting hurt. After that one day of treating St. Francis like a face, I'm reminded of why it was so easy to think of them as the heel for so many years. Coach Cimino has a lot of work ahead of her in that regard. I like her, and I like how she coaches, but there's a long way to go for her younger players, and too many things to unlearn for her older players.

I'm a little surprised Dana DiRenzo got so little run- she had a cameo in the first half and a little bit more time in the second half. She did some work on the defensive glass at the end of the game. Alex Tudor committed a foul as sooon as she came into the game, which I don't think was what Coach Cimino had in mind for an immediate impact. Samantha Keltos started the second half in place of Ebony Horton, and hit a three as soon as she came into the game. She's another holdover from last year I was surprised we didn't see more of.

Kate Bauhof has potential, but the freshman is still most definitely a freshman. Her shot needs tweaking, and she still looks a little lost on the floor. Mia Ehling played heavy minutes in the second half in place of Dominique Ward, and needs to watch her hands a bit.Abby Anderson set up from deep, and looks ot be coming along nicely. But the reserve who impressed me most, by a mile, was Ally Lassen. She's really developed into a face-up post player, one who can get inside and hit consistently. She looked far more experienced than our freshman posts, and seems to have gotten comfortable with her role.

I would dearly love to know what happened with both Ebony Horton and Dominique Ward. They both started the game, but Horton came out almost immediately, never came back into the game, and went to the locker room in the second half ahead of her teammates. I hope she's okay. I didn't see anything during the game that would have caused her to have to leave. Dominique Ward couldn't get her shot to go down, and that led to her being benched almost immediately (like, first possession of the half immediately) in the second half.

Amy O'Neill has got to get her elbows under control. It's possible to run without having them pointing out like the spikes on the chariot wheels from Ben-Hur. They were always out, and they were always at the most acute angle possible. She's a little too reliant on the dipsy-do shot where she drives almost too far and throws it up with more spin than a political campaign. But, hey, it works. She's tiny but fierce, and I think I could respect that more if she would just put the damn elbows away. Maria Palarino kicked into gear in the second half on the inside. She's pretty tough. I think she had a tendency to be around when the bodies hit the deck in the paint (with nary a foul to be found, most of the time, but I'll get to that in good time). Jade Johnson was launching from deep.

I really want to like St. Francis, but every time I think it might happen, elbows happen.

Whitney Howell played just long enough to get burned on defense and pull down a couple of boards, and we didn't see her in the second half. She started off the season looking good, but she hit the freshman wall early. Hey, maybe that means she'll get over it earlier too! We got better results from Femi Funeus in the paint, though her defense was lacking a certain something as well. Her timing was off on the glass- she was consistently going too early on the jump. Selena Philoxy gave us more of a physical presence, and at least one death glare to St. Francis while sh ewas waiting to come into the game. Lena has no truck with fake New Yorkers.

Danielle Robinson came off the bench about a minute before we were about to start calling for her to come in. She didn't have much of an impact, but she didn't need to. A lot of the other guards had to step up off the bench in Inja's absence. We got extended run from Kaity Healy, in which she demonstrated her top-notch on-floor communication skills by calling out screens and signals more consistently than anyone else. Kaela Hilaire picked up the bulk of the minutes in Inja's spot, and she was pretty solid, except for that terrible moment when O'Neill inbounded the ball off her butt and St. Francis scored on the ensuign possession. That was a little bit awkward. But her drives did an excellent job of setting up our inside game. We spent a lot of time going with a smaller lineup, because Shadeen Samuels is just that awesome, which meant that we saw a lot of Desiree Elmore, who did some kind of work on the offensive glass- I think all her o-boards were also putbacks off Deen or Kimi's misses. I love the element she brings to the game when she's on the floor- there always seems to be a little extra oomph out there, for lack of a better word, a little more energy or something.

As far as we know, Inja only has a concussion and there was no eye damage. That is honestly a lot better than I was expecting when she spent so long on the floor holding the side of her face. Get well soon, Inja!

Victoria Cardaci did not have one of her better shooting days. For whatever reason, she was hesitating way too much even when St. Francis was giving her what seemed to be enough space to shoot, so when she did finally hoist it, it often wasn't as good a look as it was initially. I'm also going to need her to stop with the stupid reach-in fouls. If she's not contributing with offense, she needs to contribute with smarter defense. Nicole Jimenez continues to astonish me with her frankly ridiculously vertical. When she goes up to contest a three, you would not guess she's only 5-2. She and KK were exceptionally effective on the double-team. I can imagine that being just a tiny little bit of a nightmare for an offensive player, the two of them pestering the daylights out of the ballhandler.

Kimi Evans still isn't all the way back from her injury, and the mask is not helping her in that regard. Her field of vision seems to be restricted, which is doing whatever the opposite of wonders would be for her shot. She was consistently leaving shots short right at the rim. She started the game off strong and just sort of gradually fell into more and more of a funk. I'm not too worried yet. I'll worry more if the problems persist after the mask comes off. Shadeen Samuels stole the show, as she so often does, with moves in the paint. She decided this was going to be the day where she showed off her corner three. While it's not my favorite part of her game, and I don't want her to fall into the trap of falling in love with it, it's a useful weapon to have when it's falling. She's so smooth,a nd so determined on the inside, and she had such beautiful hot passes on the inside. I just love watching her play. I'm sorry I can't be more coherent about it.

I think the team got fired up after Inja went down, but getting fired up can cut both ways. There were stretches when they were definitely trying too hard, trying to bury the enemy instead of just defeat them. Sometimes you have to tone down the fire a little bit instead of letting it go nuts.

Refs let the contact get way out of hand, and I'm very, very glad that no one else got hurt too badly (unless Horton got hurt, in which case, I retract my relief and send further imprecations in the direction of the officials). Both coaches were working the officials hard, and at one point both Coach Bozzella and Coach DeFalco were out on the floor in disbelief (it was going into a timeout, which is why no one got a technical).

I don't think this game proved anything, except that we have players who can step up if need be. I need to see Kimi fully healthy, and I need a better sense of who we are. Time to turn on live stats!