February 1st, 2019: Butler at St. John's

Just the Facts, Ma'am: St. John's took another close loss in conference, 73-68 in overtime against Butler. Whitney Jennings had 29 points, including five threes, to power the Bulldog offense, with Tori Schickel adding 23 points, nine boards, and five blocks. Qadashah Hoppie led St. John's with 24 points in the loss.

For wild shots, bad calls, and déjà vu all over again, join your intrepid and emotionally exhausted blogger after the jump.

Good evening! We come to you live from the frozen tundra of Queens, where St. John's hosts Butler. Okay, we're not frozen compared to the Midwest, so I guess the teams from Indiana and Ohio would rather be here than home right now. But I would still like to register a protest with the Weather Bureau.

We're partying like it's 2010 up in here. Sky Lindsay is doing the broadcast, and none other than Sky's mom is sitting right at center court. Sky's mom was always a hoot and a half, so I'm happy to see her.

Fantastic anthem to get things going.

For whatever reason, Section 6, the endcourt section near the visiting bench, is locked down tonight. Guys, if this is in response to the Villanova thing, then I had the student section wrong.

We've got some good noise going tonight. I approve.

It's 32-all at halftime, which is honestly better than I was expecting. Alisha Kebbe is on fire, making defensive hustle plays and leading the way with 10 points. Tori Schickel has 13 to power Butler, with Whitney Jennings adding eight on a couple of quick-trigger threes.

New hairdo appraisals: Tiana looks fantastic, but the new looks are not going as well for Kayla and Jasmine.

Today I learned St. John's has a kick line in addition to a dance team and a cheer team. They're pretty good!

So it happened again, and I'm getting a little tired of losing these games in the final minute, in overtime, right at the end of the game. I don't know who lacks the closing ability here, if it's the players not having the finishing kick or Joe not being able to draw up proper plays or we just run out of gas because we don't have enough players. I don't know what it is, but I don't like it, and I'm getting tired of these reruns.

Butler did a good job of creating mismatches, and any defense is going to struggle when a shooter is launching from outside and hitting with the regularity that Whitney Jennings was. Tori Schickel is a dangerous weapon for any team to have, and she finishes well. It's always good to have a backup plan.

Butler went with an interesting approach with their reserve forwards- I think Sarah Humphrey got all her minutes in the first half, while Ellen Ross only seemed to come into the game after halftime. Humphrey gave them an interesting element of length on the floor, though she needs to finish better at the rim. Ross was stockier and seemed more defensive-minded, making hustle plays at the edge of the floor. Naira Caceres gave the Bulldogs a shot of offense early on, but in a game where travels are being called, I can see her being more of a liability because she's in love with the Euro-step. There was one possession where it felt like we dodged a bullet because Butler missed her in the corner.

Good gracious, Whitney Jennings has a quick release. She was feeling it tonight, and that did as much to end our night as anything. As soon as she had a moment of daylight, the shot was up and good. She's small, and she's quick, as so many successful small players are, and she killed us. I'd appreciate if she weren't throwing elbows, though. (One sequence, she threw the elbow, I yelled, "HEY JENNINGS WATCH THEM 'BOWS!" and she got called for an offensive foul in rapid succession. I was amused, but that’s also because I'm easily amused. Michelle Weaver got called for a hilariously disproportionate number of fouls in the fourth quarter; for most of it, she was the only Butler player with fourth quarter fouls. She stepped up her defensive intensity late in the game, doing as much to secure the win for Butler as her teammates' offense did.

I'm not even sure what spot in the starting five Kristen Spolyar fills. It felt like the three she it was a back-breaking kind of shot. She seems to have bulked up, and not necessarily in a good way. I honestly expected more development from her. Shae Brey hit the boards hard- she was in on a key multi-o-board sequence that led to a big bucket for Butler, and got a steal that led to a fast break lay-up. She's really tough. Tori Schickel was solid in the rim and huge on the glass. She's not the quickest player, and that's going to hold her back at the next level. And she's got to convert her free throws. But she's got good touch, and she knows how to play to her strengths. I wish her all kinds of success. The Big East is better as a conference when everyone's successful.

Butler responded really well to everything we threw at them. We pressed them for a while, and it worked for a while, and then they adjusted. They figured out where the weak points were in our defense and attacked them. They're not spectacular, but they're solid.

Jasmine Sina's minutes mostly came when Alisha Kebbe came off the floor limping after a hard crash. She put up a three that went in and out and broke the hearts of everyone on the bench. I keep having to resist the urge to lapse into 'net-speak and call her a smol. I feel like we could have gotten more out of Kadaja Bailey if she'd played more. But I think she's having another crisis of confidence, and someone's got to help her through it, whether it's one of her teammates, one of her coaches, or someone not on the team. We believe in you, Kadaja! Kayla Charles started the second half, for reasons known only to Joe Tartamella. She did okay around the rim, but the second Schickel got a step on her, it was over. She finished well at the rim (I want to say it was Kadaja who set her up on one particular beauty) and blocked shots, but any time something didn't go her way, whether it was a call or a non-call or a missed defensive assignment, she was out of the game and into her feelings. She's got to understand that inconsistent officiating is a universal constant in women's basketball and learn to let it roll off her back. Otherwise she's going to lose minutes, she's going to lose opportunities, and she's going to get herself in trouble with her mouth. I believe she's got so much potential, but she doesn't know how to get out of her own way.

Curteeona Brelove kept getting called for fouls, and there was one that I definitely agreed with her disagreement on. I think that was why Joe opted to start the second half with Kayla, because I didn't see any injuries for Meemo. But I could be wrong. It's been known to happen. I really don't like the number of plays that are ending with her taking a long perimeter jumper late in the shot clock. I understand the necessity, but we shouldn't be in that position in the first place, and she's not the right player to have in that position. She's the closest thing we have to power on the inside until Kayla gets her act together. We need to use her that way. Akina Wellere came up with loose balls in scrums that were somewhere between steals and rebounds. She did the best she could, but she got stuck in too many bad match-ups. Maybe her three-point stroke is coming back. It would certainly be welcome. Alisha Kebbe started the game like her hair was on fire, but she couldn't sustain that much intensity on both ends of the floor. Her shots started getting wild, even as she kpt cranking up the D and the hustle. Her line doesn't look good, but I blame her for nothing.

Qadashah Hoppie was dealing from outside. She was the biggest reason we were in the game most of the night, hitting threes at key moments. These are the games we need to have from her pretty much every night to have a chance, and I know exactly how unrealistic that is. She's streaky, and when she's on, she's amazing. When she's off, she still thinks she's on, and that's when everything falls apart. Tiana England was on a roll, finding her teammates on the fast break and making the extra pass. She didn't do it with flash, and she didn't make a big production of it, but she racked up the assists. Sometimes it looks like she's getting the hang of this whole point guard thing, and then she dribbles the air out of the ball and she's out there killing time like some kind of serial temporal murderer. Her confidence seems streaky, and that's not a good thing for a point guard.

I do love to see pushing the ballhandler out of bounds not called a foul when the other team does it, and then having it be called a foul on the next possession when we do it. All I ask for is consistency, and I'm fully aware I'm never going to get it. I can still be salty about it.

Shoutout to the youth coach who had his team gathered around him immediately after the game and was lecturing them on the things they could learn from that game- and letting the people who hadn't been paying attention to the game know that he a) had seen them not watching, and b) most extremely Did Not Approve, in the most level, intense tone possible. It sounded like a fantastic teaching moment, and I love how he handled it.

These notes have taken a long time to write, ironically because they're so much of the same thing over and over again. Players have tendencies, teams have tendencies, and when times are bad, they fall into them. I've written this story before, and it's tiresome. We don't have enough depth. We have all the clock management skills of an inept watchmaker. We spend too much time in our feelings and not enough in the game. We have players being forced to play out of position and not succeeding at it. You've read this before. I've written it before. Why should I do it again?

Maybe the story will be different against Xavier. Spoiler alert: it was. But even if we do get this thing turned around against the only team in the Big East worse than we are, who's to say we can do it on the road against Georgetown's defense or Villanova's system? I hope we can. I want this team to do well. I just don't know that we can.