December 29th, 2018: Maine at Fordham

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Bre Cavanaugh had 27 points to power Fordham to a 72-64 overtime win over Maine in the first day of the Fordham Holiday Classic. Blanca Millan had 16 points in regulation to lead the Black Bears.

For beating the same drum, pretzels, very loud drums, and scrappy bears, join your intrepid and chronologically displaced blogger after the jump.

Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen, and other folks for whom I may lack the proper vocabulary! We're coming to you live and in surround sound from historic Rose Hill Gymnasium on the campus of Fordham University, where the Rams are finishing out their season as hosts of a doubleheader. Home team will be going first, hosting the Black Bears of Maine (who seem to be awfully blue, but who am I to judge?)

Ralene's out of the boot, but still not dressed; at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if she ended up taking a redshirt. Halei Gillis is also not dressed, and her hair is ridiculously shiny. Yes, these are the petty things I notice. There's also a guard I don't recognize on crutches, wearing a knee brace.

In other hair-related news, Bre has abandoned the coronet and gone back to the crash padding. Probably for the best. There's a very good brain in there that needs as much protection as possible, and she certainly doesn't shy away from contact. pls no break Bre kthxbai

Anthem singer seems to be laboring under the impression that she is Mariah Carey. Reader, our anthem singer was not, in fact, Mariah Carey.

At halftime, it's 28-25 Fordham, the margin mostly coming from Kendell Heremaia going coast to coast for a lay-up with 0.9 seconds left. To say that it wasn't a good first quarter for us would be an understatement; there were stretches when we looked like we'd never seen a defense before. Not any particular defense, mind you, just the concept of defense seemed to be confuddling the squad.

One of the Chattanooga players is really digging the drum corps that's subbing for the Fordham band. I dig how much she is digging their groove.

Bre Cavanaugh is doing Bre things with seven points and four rebounds, while Kendell Heremaia has eight to lead the Rams. Blanca Millan got off to a hot start for Maine; her team-high eight points all came in the first quarter.

This is the least inspired halftime game I've ever seen. I think the kids are too distracted by the drums to actually play.

I don't know why Tanesha Sutton wants to test Lauren Holden. If you put an elbow in her neck, she's taking out your knees.

I don't know what's up with the family of fans in Notre Dame gear who wandered in near the end of the second quarter, but somehow nothing about it really surprises me.

Well, that was closer than it had to be, and if that extremely late review reversing the block/charge call had in fact decided the game, I would probably have broken my moratorium on swearing in the Game Notes. But boy howdy did Megan Jonassen come through in the overtime! And Maine's worst tendencies came back to bite them at the worst times, which cost them both Blanca Millan and Tanesha Sutton for the overtime.

I like Coach Gaitley's family very much, don't get me wrong. I am less enthused about their tendency to treat gameday like another family gathering. Y'all did notice the game going on in front of y'all, right? They did settle down, or get riled up, as appropriate as the game went on.

Maine is a very intense team. For much of the game, that played to their advantage, as they were able to rattle us with their swarming defense and draw blocks on us while they were on offense. But they weren't able to mediate it properly, and that got them into trouble at the end of the game, especially without their two top-notch upperclassmen.

Doga Alper was an emergency sub for when Sutton fouled out at the end of regulation, and if she played more than three literal seconds, I'll be very surprised. Alex Bolozova made up for her one regulation play being a bad out-of-bounds deflection with a bucket in overtime, but I could have maybe lived without the late hip check.

Kelly Fogerty and Maddy McVicar were both called upon for minutes than I think they were used to, due to the injury to Parise Rossignol (which originally looked like a tailbone bruise to my extremely amateur eye, but from the way she was still holding her back when she finally got up, there might have been a pulled muscle somewhere up in there). They are both very small and very blonde, and if you want me to remember you as more than that, you need to either wear names on your jerseys or do something worth remembering. Kira Barra brought size off the bench, but oddly passive size. I think that might be why she wasn't playing as much as I would have expected.

I do hope Rossignol is all right. She gave Maine a good driving game. Dor Saar is so tiny! It's not just that she's short- I'm used to short point guards. But she's also very slightly built. Her shot is so quick. She just flicks it up. I guess you have to when you're that small; it's the only way to keep from getting blocked. Blanca Millan drove really well and got some ridiculous shots to fall in that had no business falling in, but she played out of control at times, and she really needs to work on her free throw shooting (unless this game was an aberration, but I doubt it from the mechanics I saw). There were stretches when she was playing out of control, which cost Maine ultimately.

There's an odd hitch in Tanesha Sutton's shot. There are elements of her shot that remind me of Stacy Frese, which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, her free throws were very technically sound. I'm thinking she might need to apply some elements of that to her jumper. That all being said, her rebounding was fantastic- I kept being amazed at how she was getting boards close to the basket. Her arms just appeared in places it didn't seem they should be. Maeve Carroll was there, for lack of a better word. She made some plays late, when someone had to.

Well, at least the Fordham part of the notes will be easy, since Coach Gaitley did not dip deep into her bench. Zara Jillings started her game leaving a couple of shots short right at the rim, which really grinds my gears, let me tell you. But after being pulled out the first time, she got herself right, more or less. Coach Gaitley called her over to talk to her more than anyone else, so I think she might have been out of position on defense. Her tenacity on the glass seemed to get better and better as the game went on. Megan Jonassen had herself one heck of an overtime with the two putbacks. She fought so hard in the paint. I'm so proud of her.

I don't like the play where Kaitlyn Downey is the outside shooter with very little time left on the shot clock. That's putting all your eggs in one basket, and Kaitlyn is not yet a sturdy enough basket to put that many eggs into. If she misses, no one's in position for the offensive rebound, and it's off to the races for the other team. I like that the three is a weapon in her arsenal; I just don't think we should be reaching into that quiver as often as we have been. Mary Goulding will be the death of me, because as many hustle plays as she makes for good, she'll make for ill. She was solid inside defensively, but then she'd commit a stupid foul, or deflect a ball away from a teammate. She'd hit a difficult shot, then miss an easy one.

Lauren Holden had a big third quarter to pull Fordham back into the game. It's nice to see her driving the lane instead of just jacking threes from the vicinity of the Jersey Shore; though her floater is inconsistent. I'm going to need Kendell Heremaia to stop staring at her three-pointer and follow it instead, because wile her shot is okay, it's not stand-back-and-admire good. But she killed it on the glass. She picked up her boards on excellent positioning. I love how she's developing, and I think she's going to be special by senior year. Bre Cavanaugh got off to a tough start, and then you could almost see the moment when she decided to go put on her cape; she gets this look on her face where the corner of her mouth pulls up and her nose kind of wrinkles, and that's when Super Bre comes out. She was bombing threes in the second half and the overtime, to the point where I was starting to feel bad for Ralene (whose solemn responsibility on the bench is to run down the line and give everyone high-fives whenever Fordham hits a three, and who is also coming off a foot injury). She can take a game over, but I think I've beaten into the ground how much I don’t want it to happen as much as it has to. (Also, she should not have to be the player pulling down contested rebounds in the paint. I love that she can, and I love that she does, but this is a thing our forwards should be doing so Bre can get out and score, and maybe not be battered around as much.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Maine's coach was upset with the officiating. Commit stupid reaches, get stupid fouls. But Maine was almost gifted the game in regulation when a charge call on the Black Bears was reviewed very late- almost to the point where Fordham had inbounded the ball- and reversed to a block on Fordham. That swung two key points Maine's way, and the fact that we forced regulation after that was a miracle. I don't know how well things would have gone for the officials if Maine had won in regulation based on that call. (I thought it was a weak call initially, but not worth reviewing and not with enough evidence on the floor to overturn.)

We have got to get our collective act together. We can't keep relying on Bre, and to a lesser extent Lauren, to pull our fat out of the fire. Someone's got to be willing to shoot. Someone's got to be willing to step up and be the sidekick. I am not okay with the idea of Bre and Lauren averaging 38 minutes by the end of the season.