December 30th, 2018: St. John's at Seton Hall

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Seton Hall broke open a close game with a big third quarter on their way to a 77-67 win to open Big East play against St. John's. Inja Butina led four Pirates in double figures with 19 points. Qadashah Hoppie had 19 points to lead St. John's.

For the usual levels of awkward, pretzels, a truly hideous jacket, alumnae, terrible rotations, hot tempers, and giving up on the foul derby, join your intrepid and insomniac blogger after the jump.

It's bowl season, so you know what that means? It's the perfect time for the Awkward Bowl! Well, I lie; there's no perfect time for the Awkward Bowl, and I can definitely think of things I'd rather do on a Sunday morning after a doubleheader than hike out to New Jersey, but my team needs me, especially after that collapse by the men last night. (I don't want to talk about it, except to bring up the point that bad things happen if you overwork your best players, and Seton Hall was very lucky to get out of there with the victory, given most of their shot selection in the final two minutes.)

Look, dude. People are not on this train to try and build a community or get involved in people's lives. People are on this train to get from point A to point B. That is the purpose of transportation. It transports. For the love of all that is sweet and holy, wrap up your spiel in less than four stations and move on to the next one; there might be softer hearts in there, because I think everyone in this car had lost patience with him by about two stations in.

(Yes, I am that cynical jerk who practically grades panhandlers and street preachers. If you want my attention, you need to earn it, and either way, you're not getting my money.)

The awkward has begun. At least Kadaja Bailey's family has made it out, so I have people to sit with, and at some point I presume the Duncan/Hoppie kinfolk will arrive. (I, uh. Don't know if I want the Sinas to show up, actually. They have a bad history with the Hall.) But I still don't like cheering without him- worse, against him.

We made pretzels. The Fordham F turned out better than trying to do the conjoined initials for STJ and SHU. We're thinking about digits for various and sundry Senior Days, though I'd rather not think about Senior Days right now, because noooooooo.

Oh, right, that's who's Canadian! I forgot about Barbara Johnson, but in my defense, she is sitting out a transfer year.

I may have said this once or twice, but I miss the days when the rivalry was lit in a more positive way, when St. John's had Nadirah and Amber and Aliyyah, and Seton Hall had the Simmonses, and pretty much all of Newark showed up in one capacity or another, and it stayed friendly because NaNa and Didi were friends. I miss that. At least no one's quite as crazy as some of the crazies we've dealt with.

It's 34-33 St. John's at halftime, on the strength of a late Tiana England three and 13 first-half points from Qadashah Hoppie. Seton Hall's press is doing a number on us defensively, but it's significantly hampered by Kaela Hilaire picking up fouls three and four in rapid succession on a pushout and the associated tantrum. KK's heart lives on her sleeve, and we're going to see just how badly it comes back to haunt the Hall. Desiree Elmore has had herself quite the second quarter, and her nine points in that frame lead all SHU scorers.

That anthem singer can sing the anthem any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Operatic and epic.

Brittney Sykes has set up camp behind the visiting bench, which is just confusing unless she's friend of a friend to someone on our bench (the only connections I can think of are on the SHU side). But I think all the cool kids are sitting upstairs this year- I think Nadirah and Aliyyah are both in the balcony seating.

DSPN has met up with Timmy Ice and so far things seem to be going well. Yes, Derek's presence means I technically broke the covenant that the husband and I have during the Awkward Bowl, but if he's disconcerting shooters, the gloves are off.

Refs called it too tight in the first quarter and too loose in the second. Doesn't help that both teams are committing stupid reaches.

(General just for the record: I'm a public school kid. I ride for all my PSAL kids.)

My Twitter synopsis of this game was "welp, that sure was a thing that happened there", and I'm honestly tempted to leave it there, because I still have to work on the Fordham notes from yesterday, and also I may be very tired, and also I may be trying to keep myself from getting banned from the borough of Staten Island (not that I particularly want to go to Staten Island, but I'd like to keep the option open if the necessity should arise).

We have all the depth of a tawdry gossip magazine. This is a problem against teams that like to press, like to run, and like to play a lot of players. Oh. Look at our opponent. I think you see one of the problems here.

In all seriousness, though, while I love Shamachya Duncan's heart, and her shot is very nice when it's on, she should not be playing heavy rotation minutes for this team, and this team should not be in a position where she has to play heavy rotation minutes. Offensively, she's a one-trick pony, and defensively, well, she tries, but she's not at Big East level, and I don't know that she'll ever be. Jasmine Sina looks like she's lost all confidence in her shot- there were at least two possessions where she passed out of a look that her teammates clearly wanted her to take. I hope she's okay after the collision with Desiree Elmore and the stanchion; the trainer was administering the concussion tests to her on the bench afterwards.

I don't know what's wrong with Kadaja Bailey- if something or someone is in her head, or if she just hasn't adjusted to the real level of D-I competition after our first couple of easy opponents, but she looks like she's lost confidence in herself, and all the potential from the beginning of the season has turned into long limbs flailing aimlessly on defense and shots going over the basket on offense. There are things she has to finish that she's not finishing, and her development really seems to have stagnated. Kayla Charles had a solid defensive game in the first half, but she did not do as good a job as I would have liked on putbacks. Granted, a lot of them were dramatic aerial attempts with a high degree of difficulty.

The contrast between Tiana England cutting confidently to the basket and Tiana England pounding the air out of the ball is very sharp, and I hope people who should be paying attention to it are in fact doing so. I'd like to see a little more care in her shot selection- while she got most of her points in the paint, she threw up some really careless shots. These are not the lessons we need to be learning from the men's game. She laid a monster block on Inja Butina on the fast break. Qadashah Hoppie took advantage of Seton Hall's propensity to commit unnecessary reach-in fouls and got to the line early and often. Sometimes I think she settles for the first available shot, and while it's nice to have someone on this team who has some sense of urgency on offense, it's possible to swing too far the other way too. I continue to love Alisha Kebbe's hustle on the glass and on defense (getting up high enough to block Nicole Jimenez is a lot trickier than it seems on first look). I'm not sure about the long three-point attempt, though.

STOP COMMITTING STUPID FOULS AKINA. Okay, I'm done. I think. But seriously, know where you are on the court and know where you are in relation to the white jersey-clad player whose space you are in. Her shot's all messed up, and she's stuck in between positions, and it is not good. Curteeona Brelove looks hesitant. I know she's working her way back from the injury, but something seems more off about her than that would explain. Maybe she just needs more reps at game speed. Kayla had a better game, and one of the few decisions I agree with Joe on in this game was going more to Kayla.

(But seriously, the first two players off the bench in the second half were Moochy and Machi, and while I like them both as people, I don't understand that choice one iota.)

Speaking of post players coming off injuries and playing like they have no idea what they're doing, what in the world has happened to Kimi Evans? She played very briefly and looked very lost. Against this depleted St. John's team, and the distinct size advantage she has over everyone, she should have been able to tromp all over us, and yet she did not seem to have the wherewithal to tromp. (Then again, Seton Hall is fighting their own injury woes in the frontcourt; Femi Funeus came out on crutches, and Whitney Howell was nowhere to be found. Poor kids.) Fortunately for the Hall, Desiree Elmore was beasting on the offensive glass, and the looks that dared to not fall for her in the first quarter rattled home in every one thereafter. She positioned herself so well inside for rebounds. I have to give her her props.

Kaity Healy stepped up big in the second quarter and in the second half, filling in a lot of minutes for the Hall. She brought stability. The three-point shooting didn't hurt, either. She had to step up, because Kaela Hilaire was extremely limited by foul trouble. She got herself into it all too fast, because petulantly stomping away from her third foul drew a technical that became her fourth. (It was probably a cheap technical, to be honest, but if it teaches her to keep a hold of her temper in rivalry games, it was a fairly cheap lesson, since we split the free throws and turned the ball over on the ensuing possession.) Danielle Robinson made a couple of cameos and got to shoot a couple of free throws near the end of the first half.

Shadeen Samuels is just so much fun to watch. Even when she's not the star of the show- even when her teammates are the ones putting up the big numbers, or making the biggest plays- there's a grace to her that draws my eye. She doesn't so much go to the basket as she takes a step and she's at the basket. She makes it all look so easy. (And then I look at the box score and she has quite impressive numbers. Why are you so awesome, Shadeen?) Selena Philoxy threw it up too hard at the basket, but half the time it seemed like she was getting the offensive rebound anyway. She's some kind of tough. (That's how we roll in Queens.) She and Kayla Charles were going at it hammer and tongs whenever they were matched up against each other.

Inja Butina had a bad case of happy feet- I think she had three travels in the first half, if not the first quarter alone. She cut through our defense like a hot knife through butter and either got to the rim, got to the line, or committed a turnover. She was canning threes early, which gave our defense a whole different set of problems. Nicole Jimenez has taken to the off-guard position rather better than I expected (well, inasmuch as any of these three guards can be considered "off" in a set of three fairly small guards; I think by height Inja technically lines up at three, but Coley was the one lining up on the lane for free throws) though she did take an awful lot of shots. Take what the defense gives you, I guess. She snagged a couple of stray interceptions on careless Red Storm passes. Victoria Cardaci, playing in a face mask, was one of the few truly ineffective Pirates in this game. And Coach Bozzella realized that and adjusted his rotations accordingly, because that's something he can do way better than Coach Tartamella can.

Seton Hall is at their best when speeding the game up, but they've improved at slowing it down as well, and that's important; too often they've run themselves into trouble in the past. Dez gives them a dangerous midrange game, and flexibility in setting their lineups. If they can get Kimi going again, they're going to be extremely lethal in conference play.

Officials were a marvel of inconsistency, but I'm adult enough to admit that St. John's got the benefit of some terrible no-calls. And you can't even make the joke that the refs must have gone to Seton Hall for home cooking, because SHU's band proves that Pirates can count at least to four. ("1, 2, 3, 4! That's four! One more!")

The crowd really got into it. I'd like to think we ginned them up a little, but the thing about Seton Hall fans is that it only takes a little to get them going, and I know someone who can provide more than a little. Walsh is an amazing noise box when its fans get loud, and I want to hear so much more of that.

There was apparently some kind of halftime thing involving some of the older alumnae, but I spent about five minutes arguing with the ridiculously long concession line and missed it all. Since they apparently missed at least three more recent alumnae (hi, Bird, hi, Chiz, hi, Daisha) I don't feel like there's a gaping void in my life because of this.

And, of course, who should we run into as we're leaving Walsh but Jade Walker, who apparently missed the game? And was surprised by the result? I mean, I love Jade, but I would not put it past her to have forgotten what time the game started and completely miss it.

Bless my team, trainwreck that they surely are. Still mine. Not changing. Just frustrating.