December 15th, 2018: Albany at St. Francis

Just the Facts, Ma'am: St. Francis staged a spirited comeback in the fourth quarter, but fell short against Albany, 67-60. Amanda Kantzy had 20 points to lead the Great Danes, with Chyanna Canada adding 16 off the bench. Amy O'Neill flirted with a triple-double for the Terriers in the loss, finishing with 15 points, eight assists, and eight rebounds.

For terrible shots, a size disadvantage, small cheerleaders, amazing self-care, and attempting to limit the canine puns, join your intrepid and dogged blogger after the jump.

Good afternoon, fellow travelers on the hardwood road! Your intrepid blogger comes to you life and in smell-o-vision from St. Francis College in Brooklyn. We're in for a dogfight today, as the Terriers play host to the Great Danes of Albany.

There's some sort of alumni or welcoming event going on in the main hall where the ticket tables usually are, so they decamped to the student cafeteria. Conveniently, that's where the secret entrance to the seats on the bench side is. Somewhat less conveniently, the tickets are technically for the section opposite the bench, which is counter to good policy and especially inconvenient today, since we would have to navigate back to the entrance to go to the opposite side. Maybe think through the logistics of your building before giving out tickets?

This network has been temporary for as long as I've been coming here. Guys, y'all just need to give up the pretense at some point.

Ah, so that's what it was! SFC is retiring a jersey, and the fol-de-rol up front was for registration for the luncheon related to it. Ceremony is at halftime, so you should see more about it then.

Since what passes for a student section here appears to be mostly student-athletes, I shouldn't be surprised that the trainer gets an enormous cheer.

It's 30-19 Albany at halftime, and Albany is killing us with height. Chyanna Canada has 10 points off the bench for the Great Danes. Jade Johnson has seven points to lead St. Francis, but Dominique Ward has been making more of an impact IMO, playing tough defense and rebounding.

Holy carp, the honoree looks amazing. She looks young enough to be the daughter of someone who graduated in '79.

I think Coach Cim is starting to get frustrated with players not listening to her. There seems to be a distressing amount of it going around. Ebony Horton was giving off the same kind of body language I do when my mom's lecturing me and I'd rather be reading.

The cliché about the size of the fight in the dog versus the size of the dog in the fight is so applicable to this game I'm hesitant to use it. Terriers are definitely smaller than Great Danes, but are known for their tenacity, and St. Francis is definitely smaller than Albany, but mounted a terrific comeback in the fourth quarter. I mean, come on. The cliché is the script.

Lucia Decortes played briefly in the first half, and thanks to no name on the jersey and the PA guy taking a couple of possessions off, I almost didn't see her come in. De'jah Williams hit a bucket in the lane at some point, but I think I credited to the wrong player on my scorecard. My bad.

Kumsal Aslan reminds me of Layshia Clarendon, both in her facial structure and in her defensive intensity. She stuck close to the ballhandler. Patricia Conroy provided a different dynamic off the bench, more of a widebody guard than the lighter starting guards for the Danes. Chyanna Canada displayed game both in the paint and with the elbow jumper. She overpowered us in the first half, with ten points and a big block on Abby Anderson.

Is there some kind of Swedish law that if your name is Amanda, you have to be super emotional on the floor? Because the way Amanda Kantzy was celebrating after fairly mundane plays like drawing a charge or making a block on a smaller player, you'd think they'd just won the conference title or something. She did most of her damage on the inside, then stepped out for a couple of relatively deep threes to force our defense out even further. Heather Forster got into foul trouble, and Albany was getting a lot of offense from Canada, so she didn't play as much. But her size was a factor, as was Alexi Schecter's. Schecter killed us on the glass and defended the inside well. She cottoned on to Amy O'Neill's favorite offensive move and shut her down on it.

"Adorable" should not be a word applied to college players, but there's a certain element of dandelion fluff-ness to Kyara Frames, Albany's quick little point guard. Her threes weren't going down, but she loaded up on free throws at the end of the game. Khepera Stokes wasn't much of a factor; Albany's coach saw the size advantage her team had and rolled with it, whether it was going with three bigs or putting in a larger guard.

Coach Cimino went deep to her bench at the very end of the game, looking for fresh fouls and offense-defense substitutions. Samantha Keltos still had one of her earrings on when she was called upon in the waning seconds. Kate Bauhof probably should have been called for a push on the play where she helped force an Albany turnover, but I guess I'll take it. I appreciate the hustle.

Ally Lassen didn't look comfortable playing against players her own height. I'm surprised, because she was so confident against a better team at Seton Hall, but she really seemed out of her depth against Albany's front line. By the end of the game, she looked ready to cry, whether it was from frustration or something else. Mia Ehling was usually the first one up when Coach Cimino wanted to yell at- er, I mean, gently but firmly explain to one of her players why the last thing they did was a dreadful mistake. Abby Anderson started off strong in the first half, but seemed to lose some of her energy in the second half.

On the one hand, I love Ebony Horton's energy on the bench. On the other hand, her shot is super frustrating, I don't know if she knows the defenses, and she doesn’t seem to be good at taking direction. On the other other hand, she's only a freshman, and with a detail-oriented coach like Coach Cimino, I would expect her to improve, so long as she's willing to do so. Amy O'Neill drove the lane and threw up shots that shouldn't have gone in, and yet somehow managed to do so. She's a bit of a one-trick pony in that regard, but as long as it works for her, I'm not going to tell her to stop. (Okay, I'm exaggerating. She dishes well too, so I guess that makes her a two-trick pony. Okay, I'll stop. I'm underselling her.) Jade Johnson loves her three-point shot. She loves it so much that she'll stand there and watch it, neither getting back on defense nor crashing the glass. I have so many problems with this. I like when she drives, but she doesn't do nearly enough of that.

Dominique Ward had herself a day on the inside- the official scorekeeper only granted her two blocks, but I will swear on my honor as a former Girl Scout that she had at least four. She just went up over and over again against taller players. She was the closest thing we had to an interior presence on defense. If her shot would fall, she'd be amazing, but so many of her shots seemed to be just thrown up there willy-nilly and went hard or long. Maria Palarino seemed to be driving Coach nuts all day- I think she got pulled at least twice for Teaching Moments based on either bad shots, bad fouls, or not being in the right place at the right time.

This team has a lot of mettle, but not a lot of fundamentals. Their shot mechanics are collectively a trainwreck. But when all hope seemed lost, they dug down deep and made hustle plays and big buckets. It's just the inconsistent offense that is going to kill them.

(Coach Cimino, if you're reading this: if you were upset at the Albany player running the baseline to inbound, and that's what got you so mad at the ref that you got the tech, I think the ref was unfortunately right; the player is allowed to run the baseline after a made basket regardless of an intervening timeout.)

This crew did not make any friends with either of the coaches. One of the St. Francis assistants was tasked with writing down their more egregious mistakes, and near the end of the game they lost track of the foul counts on individual players (but so did the coaching staff, so maybe that's on the scorekeeper). It got physical near the end of the game, which seems to be a thing that's happening more and more often, or perhaps my perception is just going that way more and more.

The regular cheer squad was absent, but there was a youth cheer group in attendance, and they were both adorable and enthusiastic. We need more enthusiastic fans.

Given time, I might be able to adopt this team, but they're going to have to grow on me first, and I don't know how long that's going to take.