half-assed leftover notes (CConn-LIU/Awkward Bowl)

So yeah. There were games. I went to them. I started writing notes, even. And then I got distracted, and I found I didn't care enough to finish them. The teams deserve better, but *shrug* it was a long season and somewhere along the line I was wishing it would end.

The time of getting punched right in the heart continues at LIU, as the Blackbirds see off their lone senior player, Destoni Willock, against the Blue Devils of Central Connecticut State.

I try really hard not to judge people's names. I understand different cultures have different naming traditions. I understand that you don't necessarily pick your own name, except when you do. I understand that people don't always think through the sound of a name, and that people have different opinions on what sounds euphonious. But if your daughter's name sounds like the stage name of a ghetto-themed dominatrix, I'm going to judge you. I'm going to pity your kid and assume she learned to fight dirty at a very young age, and I'm going to judge you as hard as I can. (And I thought the kid with the surname Forker was going to have it the hardest... and then I kept reading.)

I take pride in LIU-Brooklyn's colors, and I'm bummed about the prospect of losing them in the merger, but it's very hard to look festive with black balloons. The white stars work better, and I love the hand-drawn Canadian flag in the endcourt.

So many people in street clothes, but I don't see Destoni anywhere, either among the active or the inactive. A mystery!

Aaaaaand Destoni's wearing a sweatsuit, so much for her pulling the Superwoman act.

Sir, this is an NEC game, why are you wearing Delaware gear? It's time for another round of "they don't even go here!"

Coach Del Preore maintains the Bozzella-tree tradition of honoring the opposing seniors... which seemed to take Central Connecticut's quartet of seniors by surprise, as they didn't expect a delivery of roses. I'm pretty sure Kiana Patterson attempted to reenact the Bachelorette with one of her teammates with the rose. Dance team seniors also got flowers, a slightly more elaborate bouquet. I... sort of see where Des gets some of her spaciness from, since her mom was desperately trying to get on her snazzy duds before the presentation and the photo.

(a little part of me wanted the band to play "O Canada", but I realize it might not be part of their repertoire)

At halftime, it's 40-29 Central Connecticut, which belies the fact that we had a lead in the second quarter. Kiana Patterson has nine to lead the Blue Devils' attack. Jeydah Johnson and Tia Montagne each have seven to lead the Blackbirds.

"got me lifted, feeling so gifted, sugar, how you get so fly?" oh man I have not heard this song in forever and I am in my ten-years-ago feelings now.

Is it law that every Connecticut mid-major have a player who can be referred to as "soulless ginger"? At least Jen Fay has the talent to back up her goonery.

Postgame now, at LIU's reception for their senior. Not sure about the layout, but hey, I get to see parts of the building I've never seen before and got shots of my perfect Honchrow in the rafters. (Yes, I have a side project that is now going to require me to go up to Marist at some point. Well, either that or Leicester, but Poughkeepsie is just a little bit closer.)

Hugging. Again with the hugging. I'm starting to think this is just an NEC thing. Destoni seems to have a really good attitude towards her truncated senior year.

We found the tables, which means doom will proceed as scheduled. Ryan Weise and her family are over at the next table and are trying to watch the men's game. (Which, yeah, that's a tough choice: roll with the WBB crew or watch MOAR HOOPZ.) There aren't really that many tables, so I'm not sure how this is going to work if many more people arrive. It's still classier than St. John's. The answer, by the way, was that it was a fairly ad hoc event and while I appreciate the free food I would have loved to hear from Coach Del Preore about her senior.

Good Lord, Seneca Richards looks different without the bags under her eyes. I think she might have finally paid off her sleep debt from the last two years.

Central Connecticut looks like they've shoved all in this year with their seniors. They have a tough, talented backcourt, albeit a small one. I mean, that's the story of life in the NEC. You win in the years you have seniors, unless your underclassmen are particularly exceptional.

Bruna Vila Artigues played a few minutes in the first half, attempted a throwdown, and generally acted like an idiot on defense. After the second foul, she was pulled from the game, and we never saw her again. Danielle Delano came in just briefly enough for me to somehow mistake a 3 for a 1. Carly Reynolds saw heavy run in the last few minutes of the game. I don't know if Berube was out of gas, or if CCSU's coach decided to gamble a little bit with a good but not great lead, but it worked out okay for them. Reynolds didn't do much, but she's a big body, and that helped frustrate and shut down Brandy Thomas for just long enough for Berube to get her breath back and finish the game.

There are a couple of reasons I will vocally express my distaste for a player. In some cases, I do not care for that woman out of profound respect because she is scoring a great many points on us. In other cases, I do not care for that woman because she's playing like a goon. Given my references to soulless gingers above, you can guess which of these applies to Tiffany Slicklein. I've never seen a player so eager and willing to throw elbows as soon as she entered the game.

***

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and of course our non-binary readers of all ages! (The GNoD, of course, welcome all readers. I know there aren't that many of you, so why would I discriminate against any of you?) We come to you on indeterminate tape delay from Carnesecca Arena, where the GNoD will conclude the regular season with Round 2 of the Awkward Bowl as St. John's hosts Seton Hall.

I guess Seton Hall is a lot looser when they don't have as much left to play for, because it looked like Desiree Elmore, Selena Philoxy, and Shadeen Samuels were having an impromptu dance-off.

We're definitely getting color guard for this game. (ROTC had their seats behind us.)

Ooooh, somebody's getting Tiffany's for Senior Day. I don't know who, because there are only two bags and we have three seniors, but I was raised to recognize that color from a mile away.

Someone's family is here with shirts on. I can't make out who the picture is of, but I suspect the generic answer is "someone who will be a little bit embarrassed and a little bit sheepish but also a little bit emotionally affected".

It will never not be weird recognizing the team on the other bench as a team that I love and adore as well.

Oooh. There is an intense conversation going on with Joe and Tony. I mean, okay, any conversation Tony is in is going to be intense, but someone has some serious feelings about something and Tony looks disappointed in someone. I'm disappointed in them too, whoever they are, Tony!

Don't blink, it's ceremony time! Okay, we're giving framed jerseys to the managers, that's a nice touch and not one I remember from before. Of course, they're mismatched enough that might be a way of getting rid of leftover promos...

Shadeen Samuels is a goddamn walking cheat code. It's 41-38 Seton Hall at halftime, and she has 21 of the 41. Desiree Elmore has 13 in support off the bench, and I think you're starting to see our problem here. Qadashah Hoppie, technically off the bench because it's Senior Day and Joe occasionally demonstrates signs of getting it, has 11 to lead St. John's. Seton Hall has nothing to lose and they're playing like it.

Lost Marquette fan is lost.

There is a crew from Floral Park in the next section over, and I am one more play from yelling "GO BACK TO NASSAU", which finally happened in the fourth quarter sometime after I lost my temper at St. John's crumpling under pressure and choking away yet another late-game lead, because LOLIDK.

I'm so tired of losing games late. I'm so tired of it. Except for the Marquette game, we have had the endgame poise of a flock of headless chickens, and I don't know how to fix it, and I don't know how to survive it without some kind of cardiac episode. I love this team, but they're trying to kill me.

I mean, I love Seton Hall, too, just not on days when they play St. John's. We've covered this already. Against anyone else I would have been thrilled about the heart they showed, but at Carnesecca, I'm more concerned about the collapse of the home team.

Whitney Howell played a few scattered minutes, mostly to allow Seton Hall to reset the Konami code on Shadeen Samuels. (There was a sequence in the fourth quarter when it was a two-possession game and she was set to come in, and the ref almost overlooked the sub; I was pretty sure they were trying to save Tony from himself at that point.) She looks like she's regressed from the small progress she made in the non-conference season, and she definitely looked like she was in over her head. Kaela Hilaire stepped her game up in the fourth quarter. Seton Hall turned up the defense and threw the press, and that's when KK is in her glory. With most players, their offense fuels their defense- they're feeling good after a couple of makes, they start playing with more energy. With KK, it seems like her defense fuels her offense- when she makes a stop, her confidence spikes and she drives better. She was a huge part of Seton Hall's fourth-quarter run, which, given what the Pirates weren't getting from their starting guards, was important. I've been hard on KK most of the year, because I feel like she could be so much better than she's been for most of the season, and she showed out here. Okay, maybe she really is from Queens. ;) Desiree Elmore turned on the offense basically whenever Tony had to fix the GameShark on Shadeen. It's funny- physically they're not that similar, but they play such similar games on the floor offensively. She had some beautiful shots and the two-man game with her and Shadeen is flat-out terrifying when they're clicking.

Victoria Cardaci remembered that three-point shooting is a thing she's nominally known for, but she played scared and she didn't play a lot. With Des being such an explosive scorer off the bench in this game, more than usual, she wasn't really needed, although I imagine Coach Bozzella would like her to be somewhat less scared of everything just on general principles. The lasting memory of Inja Butina is of her second half collapse. She just lost her head and her guts in the second half, and that allowed St. John's to take control of the third quarter. She played like she had run out of reasons to care about the season, and maybe in a season like this I might too if I were playing thousands of miles from home. But you can't let it show on the floor. Nicole Jimenez is ridiculous on the glass for her size, and she hit a huge three from deep to keep the Pirates in it. Coach Bozzella's fondness for small guards is going to bite him somewhere painful someday, but against a team as short-handed and not exactly size-reliant as St. John's, today was not that day.

Selena Philoxy had trouble hitting the chippies, which I think frustrated her (let us not mince words here; it is not exactly difficult to determine how 'Lena is feeling on the floor). She channeled that frustration into pulling down physical rebounds and defending the rim. She was extremely, extremely tough. Seton Hall might have been doing better with a smaller front line, but that had less to do with her and more to do with Shadeen Samuels's ascension to divinity. Y'all probably think I'm exaggerating, but it felt like an event when she actually missed a shot. She went into the paint and hit runners. She stepped outside and hit threes at the shot clock buzzer. She pulled up and the shots went in. And when she wasn't shooting, she was making the perfect pass to a teammate, or swooping into the passing lanes for steals, or pulling down rebounds. I don't think it's fair that Shadeen got to use god mode when everyone else was playing on normal difficulty.

(I really do love watching Shadeen play, and she is one of my most favorite Pirates. I just don't like when it's St. John's she ends up being awesome against.)

Seton Hall is glorious and frustrating at the same time. This team shouldn't be nearly as reliant on Shadeen as they are, and being as reliant on Shadeen as they were shouldn't work as well as it did. This is not sustainable. Someone in the starting lineup is going to have to step up other than her.

Kadaja Bailey was not ready for this game. I think she has the potential to be very similar to Shadeen, but she didn't look ready to deal with the Hall's pressure defense, and she wasn't able to step up her game. You've got to be able to do that in a rivalry game like this. It might not be quite as nasty as it once was, and I've always gotten the sense that St. John's doesn't take this rivalry as seriously as a rivalry as Seton Hall does, but it still matters. Kayla Charles brought size and toughness off the bench in the paint. She took advantage of Seton Hall's lack of height to go up for boards and to lay down blocks. She's come into her own here at the end of the season, and I hope she can carry this energy, this awareness of her size and strength, into her next two years at St. John's. That all being said, I would also like to be able to stop calling her You're-Not-Getting-The-Call-Kayla; at some point she's going to have to understand that this is just the way the officials are, that life is not fair, and that she does occasionally commit fouls. It happens. Qadashah Hoppie was a huge part of why we had the lead in the first place. She had one of the hot shooting games from the outside that I think we've been expecting her to provide rather more frequently than is realistic. When we were on our run, she was most of the reason why; whenever Seton Hall threatened in that stretch, she had the answer. Again, that's the kind of game I'd like to see Q build on for the next couple of years. I hope she understands that she's going to have to be the go-to player offensively next year, because while Alisha Kebbe can be that player for stretches, it's probably a bad idea for her to have to be, not if it takes away from her defense.

Speaking of our defensive ace, who drew the unenviable task of guarding the unguardable... no, Alisha Kebbe on Shadeen Samuels did not go well. Either she got beat or the rotations got crossed up and someone else got beat. In either case, if Shadeen got the ball, she was either scoring or she was making the perfect pass to someone who had gotten in the perfect position because the defense had rotated disadvantageously for St. John's. She did what she could on offense to make up for it, but this was not her day, to put it nicely. Akina Wellere got going on the break, which was nice to see. She was jumping the passing lanes to get steals and easy buckets. The petty part of me wants to ask where this has been all season, but that's petty and I recognize that that's petty. She had a heck of a game, and I shouldn't take away from that. Curteeona Brelove spent a lot of time in foul trouble, which wasn't exactly helpful, but on the other hand, Kayla was having herself a pretty good game and had earned her minutes.