January 27th, 2019: Villanova at St. John's

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Villanova rolled most of the way in a 73-57 win over St. John's. Mary Gedaka had 23 points to lead the Wildcats. Tiana England had a team-high 18 points for St. John's.

For shaming the PSAL, bad body language, bad language in general, shooters shooting, and being Very Tired Of All This, join your intrepid and PG-rated blogger after the jump, where she uses bad words a couple of times.

Basketball never stops, or at least the Big East never stops, or at least it doesn't stop on weekends. It's time for the back end of the Eastern Seaboard pod as St. John's takes on Villanova. Since the men are playing at the Garden, we're going to have a skeleton crew and no attendance. And Villanova fans are the worst. Ugh.

It's fun to watch players animate at their favorite jams, to see Akina Wellere bouncing up and down at one track like a boxer, then Kayla Charles putting on her swagger with the next track.

Nice touch by Alisha Kebbe bringing in the midseason transfer to the huddle. I don't think we're supposed to officially know about Raven Farley yet, but when you know a 6-4 forward has left LSU, someone says she's transferred to St. John's, and suddenly there's a very tall person in sweats on the bench, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, or even an English major, to figure things out.

And already we've got two Nova fans who tried to park themselves in our student section and seem to think sitting next to the band on the home bench side is appropriate. FFS. Kick rocks with no shoes.

And now I think we've got Nova family parking in our section. Game hasn't even started yet and I am THISCLOSE to breaking the no-cussing rule.

The no-cussing rule got fully officially broken near the end of the second quarter when a group of Villanova fans started a defense chant while we were on a run. I am done with this nonsense and I will not, in fact, be letting these assholes get away with that.

Halftime features a mediocre biddy game and either a terribly sped-up/remixed version of "Empire State of Mind" or the world's worst cover thereof. Never again. It's 34-23 Nova at the half. Our defense has been soft, porous, and spongy. At least Villanova's shooting is down to 52%.

On the plus side, abandoning my usual section for the student section has led to two missed Villanova free throws. On the down side, I think I cut my palm when my clipboard came open as I used it for percussion. I may be attempting to express my seething frustration at these assholes in a more positive fashion than starting a fight with people I'm fairly certain are player family.

Seriously, there are a couple of Villanova players I might be able to like, except that I'm fairly certain the assholes I was trying to get away from are related to them. And, yes, if your progenitors prove themselves to be trash, I will assume that you are, at best, a recyclable plastic.

Honestly, if I had stayed in my regular section, this would probably have been the first non-GNoD game in a very long time. I've been itching for a fight, and this dude trying to hustle on the F train is not helping at all. No one cares whether or not you're looking for a job or what your sob story is. All of this is to say that I have spent most of the last couple of hours in a state of inchoate rage and it's very hard to pick out specific things from the actual game that don't descend into swearing or yet more kvetching about Villanova's fans. You, the few, the proud, the certifiable, the loyal or disloyal readers of this here blog, deserve better.

Brianna Herlihy got her minutes in the first half and did not impress- she made a couple of bad decisions on defense and with ballhandling that sent her back to the bench for the rest of the game. That left time and space for Emily Esposito to provide instant offense off the bench. It seemed like Villanova wasn't always happy with how quickly she was shooting, even when shots didn't go in, which actually makes sense; if you run a very specific and very regimented system that may or may not be older than the players executing it, you want to make sure a freshman, even a redshirt like Esposito, knows how to execute it, not just freelance. Harry doesn't necessarily mind a freelancer clogging the lane for the outside passes (remember Taylor Holeman? Pepperidge Farm 'members) but I don't know if that's the role he has in mind for Esposito. Raven James is small, and quick, and I think all of her fouls were a result of being in the wrong place in the wrong time. She's got no business guarding Kayla Charles. She anticipated really well on a terrible pass from Jasmine Sina to get the steal.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, or if I'm about to blow up Villanova's Sekrit Wepn or something, but Kelly Jakot shoots threes real good. She's got just enough range that she can take a step back from the arc, get separation from her defender, and still hit the deep ball. And for whatever reason, be it height blindness or Kayla Charles leaving her brain in her dorm room or the entire damn squad forgetting that Villanova likes to take threes, she kept getting really good looks. I keep forgetting about Jannah Tucker as a three-point shooter, and apparently so did we. (Apropos of Jannah Tucker and her collegiate career, shoutout to the lady in the full-on "We Back Pat" shirt behind the Nova bench.) I also do not appreciate her hitting people in the face. Adrianna Hahn seems to have regressed from her first couple of years at Villanova. You'd think a senior point guard would have a better grasp of the system, but she seemed to be going it alone early in the clock a lot more than it looked like she should have been. Her ferocity is impressive, and if she can hit, her shot is nice. But she did not take good shots.

I really like, or at least objectively admire and respect, Mary Gedaka's touch around the basket, both as a shooter and as a rebounder. She has no offensive rebounds in the box score, but her tip to (I think) Esposito is responsible for one, and she likely had other, similar plays. She's very good at that. She sliced us up inside, getting that extra step on the defense. Bridget Herlihy had a big block on Alisha Kebbe, and I think she was one of the players I successfully disconcerted at the free throw line, but other than that I don't remember the impact she had on the game.

Villanova's slowdown game becomes much more apparent when they have the lead. If they get enough of it, they'd rather take a violation if it means strangling thirty seconds off the clock, and I don't think we understood that about them. We seemed happy to let them do it.

(Different train. Different panhandler. Sir, I think part of the reason you're unsteady is the waft of alcohol following in your wake.)

I take back every complaint I had about Joe cutting Kayla Charles's minutes and I take back almost all of the nice things I've said about her. Kayla, I would like for you to be my favorite because I like post players and I rep the PSAL, but if you're going to hang your head at the end of the game, and if you're going to not rebound, and if you're going to act like defense is one of the seven dirty words, you are not going to be anyone's favorite. Get it together, Kayla. Get your head out of your ass and into the game. I know you can do it. I believe in you. I'm disappointed in Jasmine Sina's shot selection- she threw up stuff she had no reason to throw up. She's not ready for the position she's been thrust into, but we have literally no one else unless someone can scrounge up an extra year of eligibility for Tamesha Alexander. Kadaja Bailey seems to be getting the hang of the press that we don't use nearly often enough, but she was tentative enough on offense that I saw Shenneika Smith attempt to headdesk without a desk on one possession. Shoot your shot, Kadaja! You have talent! You have potential! You can do it!

Tiana England took a lot of the offense on her shoulders. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I do appreciate her being more assertive offensively and more aggressive. On the other hand, it felt like there was a lot of one-of-one play going on and not enough team play. That's not just on her, but it was more noticeable when she was doing it because she was the most successful at it. Qadashah Hoppie did not, at least, try to go one-on-four again, but it still felt like she was forcing too much on her own offensively and making terrible decisions that led to fouls defensively. Bad things are gonna happen if you have your back to the offensive player and you still body into them.

The good news is that Alisha Kebbe seems to have taken to heart my concerns about her shot being too strong and thus going long against Georgetown. The bad news is that she overcompensated in the other direction and left an awful lot of her shots short. She seemed to be taking a lot more threes than normal, which makes sense with Villanova's defense. But her outside shot is streaky, and on this day it did not streak well. I will still and forever love her hustle, and the leadership both supportive and disciplinary she's been providing on the court. (Hoo boy, when Kayla crashed into her going for a loose ball and the resulting possession went to Villanova, Alisha was extremely Not Happy.) I continue to be unsure of what we're doing with Akina Wellere on offense, and Akina herself seems to be unsure of what she's doing with herself on defense. She's not even a true tweener and she's stuck playing the tweener role, and it has ruined her game. She did a good job of getting to the line, but I think a lot of those were when Villanova was already in the penalty, and might have been fouls on the floor otherwise. Curteeona Brelove found too much inspiration in her outside jumper and not enough in her power game. She seemed to be getting a little frustrated at times, but she didn't let it take her too much out of the game.

I'm just saying that if we ran the press before the last five minutes of a game where we were down twenty, the team might have a better concept of how the whole thing works and who's supposed to be where in the trap. Kadaja and Kayla were both coming in for their share of flak in that regard.

You know you have done your job as a fan disconcerting the free throw shooter when the other team goes 2-4 from the line, someone over by your bench exclaims "JESUS!" at the ruckus, and someone on the bench gives you a sign of approval. Perching over the basket provides a better vantage to analyze the shooter's wind-up and perfectly time that moment of pure raw distraction. But it's harder to watch the whole game that way, and my left eardrum is still a little numb from being directly next to the band.

I don't like our body language at the end of that game. We got outplayed, and our response was to let the whole world know we got outplayed.

All the fouls were on Villanova in one quarter, all the fouls were on St. John's the next, and then the refs seemed to remember that they could call fouls on everyone. That was weird.

We really need the full spirit squad, our one-to-three-man student section, and basically our full attention from the school on days against Villanova, or we need the Villanova game to be assigned seating. If that means making it camp day, so be it then.

On to the next one, and the road doesn't get easier with Butler coming to town. Hey, at least we get Xavier. We should be able to beat Xavier, right?