December 6th, 2018: Yale at St. John's

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Alisha Kebbe's three-pointer with 22 seconds left turned out to be the game-winner in the Red Storm's hard-fought 56-52 win over Yale. Three Red Storm players had 12 points each to pace St. John's. Camilla Emsbo had 14 points and 12 rebounds to lead Yale, with Roxy Barahman adding 13 points and 11 rebounds.

For elbows, overwhelming frustration, deep concern, and the worst case scenario, join your intrepid and panicky blogger after the jump.

Good grief, it's cold today. I know it's going to get worse, but I don't approve. Maybe I'm getting old. But still, it's game day, and that's all that matters. St. John's plays their second home game of the season, as the Bulldogs of Yale come on down I-95.

Schedule magnet giveaway to fill that hole on the door! It looks really nice- the total team picture is a nice touch. Usually there's a heavy emphasis on the seniors, but since two are one-year wonders, I can understand the design choice.

Shenneika Smith still has the moves defensively. Tiana couldn't get past her.

Choral anthem has been the best part of the night. Game is tied at 26 at half, and I'm pretty sure Curteeona Brelove has a broken ankle. So, yeah, things are going about as well as you'd expect, now that we're down to eight players and all our tall people are picking up fouls at a horrendous rate. If it weren't for a big push in the last minute, we'd be down- we put up five points in the last minute of the second quarter. We started off with a lot of energy, but we couldn't maintain it. Losing Kayla Charles to foul trouble in the first quarter exacerbated the problem. Kadaja Bailey is not ready to play the five, which leaves either Kayla or, um. Well. Then it's adventure time.

Yale has height, especially in the person of freshman Camilla Emsbo, and they're using it whenever they can. Their coach is a very snappy dresser. She's sort of got this Ellen vibe going.

It is now officially "I have not had enough vodka for this season" o'clock. I think that's a land speed record in that regard, though only having three non-conference home games helps. Or doesn't help. Whatever is even going on here.

Yale leaned heavily on their bench in the first half, and not so much in the second half, and I'd be lying if I thought that didn't play a role in the Bulldogs' fortunes. Also, can we please at some point play a team that has names on their jerseys? It would be really helpful.

Erin Hill and Bronwyn Davies both got a little run in the second quarter. Neither of them had a huge impact on the game. Mackenzie Hewitt sort of sneaked into the game at some point during the second quarter (our new PA guy is extremely enthusiastic and I like his style, but he's a little slow on announcing subs) and ran a little point.

Ale Aguirre canned a couple of big threes for Yale in the second quarter to help them take the lead. She did commit a couple of moderately dumb turnovers, though. She's still fairly young. Alex Cade soaked up the bulk of the bench minutes for the Bulldogs, especially in the second half. She was exchanging pleasantries, or so the euphemism goes, with Kayla Charles for much of that time, and I'm surprised the refs didn't notice the little elbow jabs both players were throwing at each other during play and even after the whistle. Actually, I don't know why I'm surprised, because there are a lot of things the refs didn't notice in this game. We'll get into that later, though.

Camilla Emsbo is still a little raw, but she's going to be very good for Yale once she really finds her confidence. When she goes to the rack, she can't be stopped, and her height presented us with a lot of problems on the glass. 5-10 on 6-4 does not usually end well for the 5-10 people. Alexandra Maund really threw her weight around down low, and then seemed gravely offended that she would ever be called for a foul. She got into early foul trouble, and Yale seemed to be playing better with Cade; Maund's too similar to our own post players, so she didn't provide the kind of advantage her build usually does. And her footwork was off too; at one point, the phrase "prima ballerina" may have been bandied about for her spinning around so much. She got called for a lot of travels and could probably have been dinged for more.

Tori Andrew came in to shoot, and she took a lot of shots. We contested her well on the outside- well, I mean, we have good defensive guards, this is a thing we can do to people. She has an exceptionally quick release on her free throws. I like Roxy Barahman- she controls the game well at the point, and crashed the boards like crazy. I don't know if I would have called my own number as often as she did, or made it so obvious that I was going to (we can all see you pulling the jersey, Roxy). Megan Gorman didn't leave much of an impression, except for a couple of good defensive stops on attempted Red Storm fast breaks.

Yale looked better than I expected. They countered us well, and they've got some depth, and they've got some height; to us, that's a deadly combination.

Shamachya Duncan is aware she's allowed to pass the ball, right? It seemed like every time she touched it, it was going up. I realize she hit the first one, and that shooters gotta shoot, but at some point passing the ball to a teammate is an acceptable option. I did like the defensive hustle she showed on the sidelines, though. Jasmine Sina is scrappy, and maybe a little too scrappy; she had to have her hand retaped at some point in the second half.

Kadaja Bailey looked shell-shocked for much of this game, like she had no idea where she was or what she was supposed to be doing. She's going to spend a lot of this season playing out of position, and if Joe made her any promises about what she'd be allowed to do on the floor, they're probably going to get trampled. She's not a post, and we're going to have to ask her to play post, and she's going to have to be ready for whatever comes at her. Ditto for Kayla Charles- we only have one true post player if Curteeona Brelove is out for any length of time, and that would be Kayla. She got really frustrated in this game, to the point where I think she mentally ascended to another plane of existence sometime in the fourth quarter. When she's on, she's unstoppable and she's going to make someone else's life miserable. But she can't get into her feelings about the officials. They're all terrible, K, just roll with it.

On one hand, Tiana England did a lot to keep us in the game with her drives and her determination. On the other hand, she had a terrible case of the fumbles, with at least three of her turnovers being unforced. And her ability to slow the game down, whether by her design or Joe's, is something that has driven me nuts for a long time and will continue to drive me nuts. Apologies to long-time readers for harping on a theme. Qadashah Hoppie brought speed and distance shooting to the floor, but that extra something I can't put my finger on seemed to be missing. She wasn't as electric as usual, and I can't tell why.

Akina Wellere is definitely tuning her game to be more of an interior game, and it shows- there was one sequence where she passed on a corner three she would have taken all three other years of her St, John's career. She's doing what she has to for the team, but that doesn't mean I have to like the necessity. Alisha Kebbe was a monster defensively and on the inside. I can't bring myself to squee too much about the big two-handed block she brought down early in the game, because that's the play where Meemo got hurt, and given all the contact on the sequence, I'm not entirely certain that wasn't a cause of the injury. Poor Curteeona. Ankles are not supposed to curve outward. She spent most of the first half on the trainer's table and most of the second half on the bench in a walking boot, with an expression so desolate the bench priest was trying to cheer her up. It didn't work.

So now we're going to have an in-depth discussion of why you carry more than nine players on your active roster (remember, Alissa Alston is an ineligible transfer sitting out a year). And the discussion is going to be: THIS. This is why you carry at least ten active players and preferably twelve. You need to have a full second unit. You need to be prepared for the worst that can happen, because if you don't, that's when it will. Now we have eight players, only one of whom is over six feet tall. Now we have to rely on 5-10 forwards to do our defending inside, and while I love Alisha and Akina to death, I do not see this working out well against Kiah Gillespie. Or Kimi Evans. Or Tori Schickel. Maybe against Erika Davenport, but even then, Davenport has more experience down low at that size than they do. With a lack of size, you'd want to play fast; with a lack of players, you'd want to play slow. So what do we do now? I harp on "what is Seton Hall going to do to us?" because I know their personnel, but I am imagining all those guards and a roster that goes 11 deep on the regular, and then their bigs inside. And I'm trying to imagine us having the energy to keep up with Marquette's seniors for forty minutes. DePaul's constant ball movement. Georgetown's defensive pressure. Creighton's shooting. I don't see any of this working out well for us with the roster that we have.

I'm not going to blame Joe for injuries. I'm going to blame him for not being properly prepared for disaster, and for not having either depth or balance to compensate for things going dramatically wrong. Recruiting is on the head coach. And if he's being told he can't carry enough players by the administration, Val Ackerman needs to get over there and tell the administration to knock it off. I'm not saying we need to go to the full fifteen, because that's too far the other way, but this is ridiculous.

Also, the officials in this game were terrible and let way too much contact go. We're lucky there weren't more injuries.

This is my team, and I love them, and I love these kids, but the decisions that are made over their heads are making it harder and harder to take pride in the name on the front. It's going to be a long season, and I'll still be here for it, so if you think I'm going to let up on the terrible decision-making, nope, that is not a thing that is going to happen.