Thursday, February 28, 2019

February 16th, 2019: LIU at St. Francis NY

Just the Facts, Ma'am: A competitive first half turned into a rout in the second half, as St. Francis of Brooklyn took down their local rivals from LIU 87-64. Jade Johnson exploded for 31 points, while Amy O'Neill added a triple-double with 16 points, 11 assists, and 10 rebounds. Brandy Thomas had 14 points and eight rebounds to lead the Blackbirds in the loss.

For milestones, scoring oddities, the walking and limping wounded, taking the elevator, going the long way home, and just general head-shaking, join your intrepid and very tired blogger after the jump.


Even if the Game Notes of Doom stop sometimes, basketball doesn't, and your intrepid blogger is juggling three different windows of notes on a C train to Metrotech, on my way to the Battle of Brooklyn at St. Francis. I think the trophy game was technically the first game of the series, the one in January I couldn't get to, but they're all battles to me.

Our LIU crew came through with swag. The husband is currently wearing the troll hair.

Either Coach Cimino is jealous of Tia Montagne's eyelashes, or the coaches both have opinions on whether she should be wearing them. There's a lot of respect between Coach Cimino and Coach Del Preore, which makes this rivalry a lot easier to live with than Awkward Bowl.

We're down 44-36 at halftime, and honestly, this is better than I was expecting.

For some reason, I find it incredibly funny that St. Francis piled into an elevator to get to their locker room. Meanwhile, poor Destoni Willock has to wait for them to go and the elevator to come back, because she's on crutches and definitely can't take the stairs.

Jade Johnson is absolutely killing us. She's already got 20 points, including her 1000th. Brandy Thomas, once she stopped shooting three-pointers and started powering inside, got going and has 12 to lead the Blackbirds.

I guess the dance performance at halftime is pretty good, but I have to write all the doom and Community Day starts in 12 minutes, so I haven't been paying that much attention.

Well, this was honestly what I was expecting, in the end. We're not that good and we're extremely short-handed. We gave it as much as we could, but we didn't have that much to give.

Daisha Davis has one move in the paint, and if she's able to power the ball in, she's set. Otherwise, she's lost. I'd like to see her develop more than one move, and learn to stop bringing the ball down where all the short people can get to it. The power dribble only works if there aren't three defenders around you all hounding the ball. Autumn Ashe brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm on defense, and she had a nice hustle play on the baseline, but her offense needs a lot of work. Ryan Weise was called upon for a lot of minutes, both because her three-point shot was going down and because of the injury scare with Tiya Misir in the first half. I'd like to see her be a little less scared to take the midrange shot- she looked like she was passing off midrange and free-throw line shots that she could have gotten off without getting stuffed. She's young. Maybe she'll get over it.

Ella Vaatanen looked like she was devoutly wishing she weren't 6-1, because there were expectations being put on her that I don't think she can handle. She's the only height we have that Coach Del Preore feels like she can rely on, and she seems like she has no idea what to do with this responsibility and this size. I'd be sympathetic, but I also would like her to do the things Coach is asking her to do. I would greatly appreciate if Brandy Thomas never took a perimeter shot again, because her strength is so clearly at the basket that it's a waste of her time for her to be launching threes or long twos. Not only is it a shot she's more likely to miss, but then there's also no one to rebound the missed shot. So it's a two-for-one disaster scene. I love the work she does in the lane, and I'd love to see her do more of it.

Tiya Misir gave us all a scare when she went down hard with the ankle injury in the first half. It looked really bad, but then she got up and was able to put a little weight on it, and then she came back into the game. I'm glad she was okay, because I think her family was sitting next to us, and that's just not something you want people to have to see, you know? She seems like a really nice kid, if a bit tentative on the floor. But being tentative is pretty much the story of LIU's life. Tia Montagne seems to have found a little more confidence running the offense, but there are still times when she's backing off shots she needs to take and slowing down the offense too much. I think she's one of the few players who seems able to respond to Coach Del Preore's style. Jeydah Johnson started the game red hot, but slowed down as St. Francis adjusted their defense and she started taking worse shots.

It just seems like there's so much more we could be doing and should be doing, and we're too scared to- as if we freak out as soon as we see a defense of any sort. That's not a good sign, and I don't know if these are the right players to deal with that, or if this is the right coach to help these players deal with that fear.

Coach Cimino used her deep bench at the ends of quarters a lot, to pick up cheap fouls and give her main rotation players some extra rest. It got ridiculous at one point when she had four players enter in three successive waves. I mean, really, that was some delay of game worthy stuff there. Kate Bauhof committed a lot of stupid fouls, but I'm not sure how much of that was actually in her job description, in terms of using up team fouls at the end of the first quarter. She's enthusiastic, but I can see why her minutes have gone down as the season's gone on. I'm more surprised that some of the upperclassmen have been relegated to mop-up duty, which is pretty much my collective comment on Dana DiRenzo, Mia Ehling, and Lorraine Hickman. I know these aren't Coach Cim's players, but you work with what you have, right?

I'm glad she's using Samantha Keltos a little more- I think she's got good potential around the rim. She's decently tough. Abby Anderson doesn't show quite the same potential, to me, but she's also younger and maybe has to develop more. Ebony Horton was a hot mess on offense, but her defense was really solid- she made life miserable for our ballhandlers. But her night was done after she committed a boneheaded mistake that you usually only hear about in blooper reels, and I'm so sorry that this had to happen.

You see, a keen-eyed reader of the box score will notice that LIU has 64 points, yet LIU players only scored 62 points. And that would be because Tia Montagne missed a free throw, every Blackbird was on the other side of the court, and Ebony Horton proceeded to secure the rebound and put it back up, as you do. Except, I must remind you, Ebony Horton plays for St. Francis of Brooklyn, not LIU-Brooklyn. Thus, this is an own goal. And since there were no nearby LIU players to credit for it, it goes down as a "team" basket in the play-by-play. Horton was officially 0-3 from the field. No LIU player got an extra field goal. No one gets to add it to their tally. I don't think I've ever seen a player get subbed out so fast.

Dominique Ward killed us inside. She's got guard skills, but her length against our distinct lack of it made her a match-up nightmare. She had a few monster blocks, especially one on Brandy Thomas in the third quarter that I think killed our momentum. She plays with something less than a chip on her shoulder and something that isn't quite swagger, but lies somewhere on that spectrum- a confidence that in turn saps the confidence of her opponents. Ally Lassen really appears to be blossoming under Coach Cimino, or maybe it's just how she plays against us. She goes to the paint and she looks confident doing it. She killed us on the offensive glass, and that's where I'm going to get annoyed at our tall people for not stepping up and doing their jobs.

I don't usually have reason to pull out the "I'm starting to take a profound dislike to that woman" line in the first half, but Jade Johnson was pretty much single-handedly kicking our arses. Her pull-up game was a thing of beauty, her threes were falling, and we either couldn't or wouldn't stop her. If this was the game plan, it was a terrible game plan. The game plan where you allow one player to score and stop everyone else only works when you actually stop everyone else. Amy O'Neill has pretty much one move- drive the lane, penetrate so deep she's practically out of bounds, and throw up a wild one-handed shot. But she knows how to hit it with style, and she knows how to draw contact really well on those drives. Okay, she has two moves- option two is to pass once she drives deep. And she hounded our ballhandlers on the sideline and forced us into a lot of turnovers. Don't ask me how she got all those rebounds, though. The only thing I can think of is we were just letting a lot of balls go. Maria Palarino had a solid game, but for whatever reason, the way the PA guy does her name makes me think of '90s advertising. I don't get it, it doesn't make sense, but you didn't come to the Game Notes of Doom for dry analysis and posts that made sense, did you?

Pregame ceremony for Maria Palarino's 1000th point, and then Jade Johnson hit hers in the first half. I'd like to be happy for them, but this just feels like overkill somehow.

Not to say that the refs were bad or anything, but as we headed back towards the train station, I heard someone on the phone behind us talking about how the refs weren't making calls on penetration... and then I recognized the braids and the #5 backpack of Tia Montagne. Yes, as it turns out, the team does walk to and from St. Francis when the Battle is on.

I thought St. Francis had more than five people on their dance team, but it's been a long time.

We may not have won the game, but we took their money! One of the LIU fans won the 50/50 raffle and claimed the money off the dance group that had performed at halftime. I believe this might be a definite moral victory, or possibly an immoral victory, depending on what you believe about money being the root of all evil.

I don't know how much I can even say about LIU at this point. The team's short-handed and missing a lot of experience, and has a coach that doesn't do well with young players who need instruction in the fundamentals. I didn't exactly have high expectations for them in the first place, but this season has gone from bad to worse to lost in a hurry. With St. Francis, I can at least look forward to the old coach's players being gone so I can cheer for Coach Cimino with a clear conscience.

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