Just the Facts, Ma'am: LIU gave up as much as a seven-point lead, but execution down the stretch in overtime gave the Blackbirds victory in the Battle of Brooklyn at St. Francis, 65-62. Shanovia Dove led all scorers with 24 points, while Shanice Vaughan contributed 22 off the bench. Cassidy Derda led St. Francis with 16 points on 7-7 shooting, adding seven rebounds.
For putting some step in your pep, a cauldron of noise, cultural mismatches, forgetting to write about intersectionality, offensive rebounds, free throws winning ball games, and confusing layouts, join your intrepid and cozy blogger after the jump.
A blogger's work is never done, not when the city pods are home both for the NEC and the BEast. We're at St. Francis today for the rematch of the Battle of Brooklyn. LIU's already got a fairly large contingent in the house, including at least some of the dance team.
LIU might have as many as eight players today! This is exciting news! Some teams get bitten by the injury bug; some teams get bitten by a swarm of them.
PinkZone at St. Francis today. The petty part of me notices that even SFC's t-shirts are lighter than everyone else's.
Apparently SFC's cafeteria is not fail. Good to know if I ever decide to give them money.
I think the dance team may actually perform in the stands, the way they do at home games, and the way I've seen dance teams do at some rivalry games (Lafayette-Lehigh, and the Seton Hall game at Villanova).
At halftime, LIU is up 32-25, but you'd never know it from listening to Coach Oliver. Sitting behind LIU's bench is quite revealing. I really should not be saying things like this about the person who gives me tickets, but the way she handles herself with her team, I would run away screaming. Imagine the relentless commentary of Harry Perretta combined with the control freak tendencies and habit of talking at people who have not done the anger-making thing on the bench of Joe Tartamella, with a dash of Brenda Frese's wandering around the court, and maybe Kim Mulkey's taste in footwear.
(Speaking of shoes, Coach Oliver was like a little kid with a new toy when she discovered the resonance of her shoes against SFC's court.)
Clock over the basket in front of SFC's bench went out in the first quarter. LIU was not amused. "We should have played this at our place. Our clocks work." (We did play this at our place. We lost.)
It's good to have Shanovia Dove back- she has 12 and is taking a lot of the pressure off everyone else. Cassidy Derda came on strong in the second quarter for all 11 of her team-high points.
Now that is a Battle of Brooklyn. Lots of hard work, lots of hustle, lots of big plays from senior players. I'll say that St. Francis choked a little down the stretch, missing three or four shots right at the rim. LIU came up with the shots when we needed them.
Shanice Vaughan is a trooper- this is the second game I've been to where she's gone down hard, come out of the game- and gone back in to kick some ass. She drove fearlessly, sometimes carelessly, and threw up a lot of shots. I don't know if all of them were the called play. Jolanna Ford came on stronger in the second half, decent on defense and hitting her free throws down the stretch when it counted. Gosh, it's nice to have a bench, even if it's only one player longer than the last two times out- but we're in a better position with the players we have back. (Uh, sorry, Lily.)
Ashley Brown ran point with some hiccups- there was one sequence where she came out after a spectacularly dumb play and pretty much blew off Coach Oliver. It's good to have experience available, though. Shanovia Dove was a crucial outside threat- not all of those shots might hve been in the game plan, but most of them seemed to be in the flow of the offense. She was fearless. It's really good to have a decent outside threat again. SO MUCH OFFENSE YAY. Stylz Sanders was free-styling a lot on offense, and not always hustling after shots, but she worked the baseline well on loose balls.
DeAngelique Waithe rebounded pretty much everything to start the game- I think she had three of the first four rebounds- but fell off the cliff so sharply that I wonder if she's under the weather and doesn't want to admit it. She got pushed around a lot by Levey and Derda, to the point of frustration both from her and the coaching staff. Brianna Farris brought the tough defense, but St. Francis remembered her shooting tendencies from the last game and guarded her pretty closely.
I love my teams, but either I have really high stndards that are unrealistic, or I cheer for some of the dumbest teams in Division I. In LIU's case, I understand part of Coach Oliver's frustration- no one ever seems to look back to the bench to run the play. I think they still have old habits to break out of and old dependencies to shake.
St. Francis ran more of their bench players out there than LIU did, almost as if Thurston were experimenting. We got really brief looks at Tori Wagner, Blair Arthur, and Dana DiRenzo, none of whom really made an impact. (I actually hadn't even realized that DiRenzo entered the game until she committed a foul.) Rachel Iozzia came in earlier and scored a little bit. I feel like she carried herself with more confidence than some of the younger players around her. Becky Pund came in to play point a little bit and steady things down. I really don't remember much about her, but that might be as much because it's hard to tell apart all these girls with ponytails as it is because of her play. Olivia Levey threw her weight around down low and picked up baskets in the paint.
Leah Fechko needs to switch sports already. Her future is clearly in football. Are the Sharks still around? She tackles well and she's very physical. She's not afraid to go to the rack. I should respect that, but I don't like people who tackle in basketball. Cassidy Derda was a flat-out match-up nightmare. She was physical enough to move around the more slender LIU posts, but she had nice stroke from outside as well. She used her height to pull down rebounds even when she was boxed out. If they'd gone to her more, they might have pulled it off. Maria Palarino had some nice moves inside, though she had one less basket than the St. Francis announcer thought she did (I figured it was going to be a long and perhaps uninformative day when they misattributed the first basket).
Alex Delaney rebounded decently and hit free throws late in the game to force the overtime. I don't remember much else about her. Derda was a bit distracting, forward-wise. Kat Phipps was strong in the third quarter to get St. Francis right back in it, but I don't remember much else about her. I know I just said that, but when it's an endless array of ponytails without names attached, and most of those ponytails aren't doing anything different from any of the other ponytails.
St. Francis had good ball movement, and they were able to get some wiiiiiiiide open looks in the paint. I cannot fathom how we kept losing Derda. She's enormous for the NEC.
Refs were counting things quick today- five seconds, three seconds, that sort of thing. Nothing really egregious.
The team seemed fascinated by the Battle of Brooklyn plaque. Then again, the last win in the series was four years ago- I don't know if any of them have held the plaque.
I'm really excited for this team, even if I want to love them with a 2 x 4 sometimes... I just can't shake the feeling that something's going to explode if one game goes wrong.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
February 13th, 2016: LIU at St. Francis NY
Thursday, February 16, 2012
February 15th, 2012: Long Island at St. Francis
Just the Facts, Ma'am: True to their name, the Terriers of St. Francis College never gave up, cutting a 12-point halftime lead to one late in the game, but ultimately the Blackbirds of Long Island took the Battle of Brooklyn in Brooklyn Heights, 60-53. Ashley Palmer of Long Island led all scorers with 20 points, adding seven rebounds; she was named the Most Valuable Player of the game. Jasmin Robinson led the Terriers with 17 points, 16 in the second half, while Sarah Benedetti had 11, nine of them in the second half.
For heart, telegraphed passes, wild passes, flying forwards, stupid fouls, and a distinct lack of discipline, join your intrepid and belated blogger after the jump.
And now for something completely different... coming to you on tape delay from Peter Aquilone Court on the grounds of St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, New York, it's the Battle of Brooklyn! For pride! For glory! For... one team hoping and praying to win a game and another hoping to build something in conference play.
St. Francis's facilities are not as bad as I remembered. Chairback seating is very much appreciated. It still does look like a glorified gym.
I think we're sitting behind Ashley Palmer's mom. Which would be awesome if true, because Palmer is having herself quite a game. Kiara Evans is also running a very nice offense. It's 32-20 Long Island at the half, and that's with St. Francis College scoring the first four points of the game. Unlike the PA announcer, I will not be calling them St. Francis College at every occasion. I understand why he does it- they share a conference with St. Francis University- but it's really annoying.
They played Whitney Houston's version of the anthem. Very nice.
So far the play of the game, for good or for ill, has been Mary Ann Abrams getting hit in the face with a rebound. Using your head, you're doing it wrong. Palmer and her amazing arcing shot have 17 points.
One of their guys is collecting pennies for a cause. I don't know what cause it is, but it's only pennies, what's the worst that could happen? The label on the jar is pink, so BHA is our guess.
I think we also found our St. Francis equivalents in the front row- there's a young woman who's been cheering the entire game. There's always one... not that that's a bad thing. The sport needs more passionate and committed fans of the sport.
It may be rude of me to call something a stupid, stupid foul, but if you commit a ticky-tack reach-in for no discernible reason 85 feet from the basket for your team's seventh foul, I will call it a stupid, stupid foul every single time and twice on Sundays. I don't play nice.
This wasn't St. Francis's BHA game (which is, in fact, not a PinkZone/Play4Kay game), so I'm not sure why Long Island had the pink t-shirts. Whatever floats your boat.
Gail Streigler, why in the nine classical circles of Dante's Inferno would you call a timeout with your shooter at the line? And why in the nine spheres of Paradiso would you do that with your last timeout? It's a good thing that it was a two-score game at the time- Pat Coyle got fired for a move that stupid! It was such a stupid move that the scoreboard operator initially thought it was St. Francis's timeout! Why? WHY would you do that? WHY?
I think I'm done with that. Moving right along.
Letava Whippy needs to figure out how to run backwards. Once she does that, her defense will improve by leaps and bounds- she's got good instincts for a freshman, and a pretty good idea of how to use her long limbs. Marika Sprow is still a defensive specialist, and that's okay. Ebony Davis did a nice job on the boards, but she was the one committing the fouls that put LIU in a bad way in the second half- the seventh deadly sin, the tenth team foul, and a foul in the last ten seconds. To say that she had lousy timing would be an understatement. Tiffany Patterson played briefly, and was mostly inconveniently tall and raw. Tamika Guz brought size, but I thought she played an awful lot around the perimeter, which is... not her strength. It's not like the Terriers have a lot of size; I'm surprised they didn't try to feed her more. MaryAnn Abrams (who apparently showed up way late, what gives?) was a hot mess, and didn't play in the second half. I still can't get past getting hit in the face with a rebound.
Krystal Wells got things going for the Blackbirds, but I got the sense that she was trying to force things too much, pressing too hard and going for the big play when she just needed the right play. I like her and always have, but she might be one of those players who's more suited to a bench role. Cleandra Roberts did a good job getting to the rack, but couldn't finish. At least she got her free throws to drop. A quiet game from She'Tiarra Pledger. Kiara Evans ran the offense, and as she went, so went LIU- for good and for ill. It looked like she was losing her composure near the end of the game, and as that happened, the team started to unravel. But when she was on point, so was LIU- she has such a beautiful lookaway pass, and a definite sense of command that a good point guard has. And Ashley Palmer did that thing where she threw up shots that almost scraped the ceiling that fell through the net with a splash, and somehow powered her way up and through for rebounds, and generally decided that her team was not losing this game. She was the finisher, both inside and out. I rue the day that she faces one of the really huge shot-blockers, though. She's going to get swatted, and it will be brutal.
In general, Long Island tried too hard to make the flashy play, the showy play, the highlight reel play. Don't do that. Make the play that will win the game.
Stefanie Bingham didn't impress me. Kim Snauwaert did fairly well in the middle, setting picks and generally being a space filler. Colette Hounshell was much the same. In general, the St. Francis posts were more involved in the offense as screeners and passers than as targets.
Jasmin Robinson plays like someone who's watched a lot of streetball and knows all the moves, but can't quite pull them off- okay, except for the beautiful steal on a sure fast break by LIU. She came up big in the second half, getting to the line and converting. Jaymee Vecey was the story of the first half for the Terriers- she got shut down in the second, though that might have had to do with the foot to the ribs she took- she hit a shot after that, but I'd be a little shy after that too. Sarah Benedetti's range impressed me for a woman of her build, and when she was hot in the second half, she was hot- she and Robinson spearheaded the comeback. There's something to be said for that kind of play from young players- there are no seniors on this St. Francis team, and only two juniors. Katie Fox did a good job drawing fouls, and generally looking like more of an offensive threat than she turned out to be- whether that was because she was a good player having a bad game, or because she was a good player being well-defended, or because LIU had a bad scouting report, I don't have enough of a sample size to judge.
Brenda Milano has never impressed me as a coach- my first impression of her was “crazy screaming person” and she has done nothing to persuade me otherwise. If she can work with these freshmen, really let them develop, by the time this big class hits their senior year, they can at least be mediocre instead of embarrassing. They put up a good fight in this game, but this kind of thing happens in rivalry games. I'd have to see them in a non-rivalry game, and trying to figure out my way around St. Francis is not worth it.
Dear referees, I am fairly certain that if a player is smushed among three opponents and hits the deck, the call is probably not a travel without some assistance. There were a few calls of that nature, and an elbow by Ebony Davis that we're all fortunate didn't connect, but otherwise it was a decently called game. I expect that from Kathy Lonergan, one of the few refs whose name I recognize without a flinch.
No, just no, to the St. Francis dance team.
We came hoping to see a good game, and we got a closely contested game. That's a plus- but it was closely contested due to unforced errors by the Blackbirds and sloppy passing by the Terriers. I'll give St. Francis- and Ashley Palmer on the other side- credit for heart and tenacity, but that game should not have been as close as it was.
Monday, December 29, 2008
December 28th, 2008: James Madison at St. Francis (NY)
James Madison Dukes 72, St.Francis College Terriers 53
The Game Notes are really and truly unimpressed with St. Francis in all aspects.
I've seen bad basketball games, and I've seen bad basketball players, and I've seen bad basketball teams, but I swear on my life and honor, the Terriers of St. Francis College manage to combine aspects of all of those into a cacophonous whole. Division I basketball: UR DOIN IT WRONG.
I'm pretty sure I've actually heard this guy do the anthem before, at one of the LIU doubleheaders. It's still "the" bombs, not "those" bombs.
If Dawn Evans is 5'7", I'm a power forward. She's 5'5" at most and slightly built. A nice little guard with nice little moves, but unless she bulks up somewhat in the next couple of years, she'll just be another collegiate scorer who can't take her game to the next level. Of course, it may have been that the Dukes didn't need her to step up, and maybe there's another gear to her game that I haven't gotten the opportunity to see, but she seems to be a volume scorer, not an efficient one. James Madison has a lot of good size, and unlike a lot of the teams I've seen this year, they actually know how to use it; most of their bigs were heavily involved in both offense and defense. They got great play off their bench, especially from Lauren Jimenez and Brittany Crowell. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that Jimenez was usually the starter and got benched for this game for some infraction of team rules or something- she's got good size, and I like posts who aren't afraid to get physical. The unfortunate thing that caught my eye about Kisha Stokes was her gods-awful jump shot, but looking at the box score suggests other reasons why she might be in the starting lineup, and given that Evans does average something like 24 ppg, I can see Brooks having the flexibility to put someone in the starting lineup who does the less tangible things. I really liked how JMU's coach used his bench- everyone got into the game, and almost everyone actually got into the game before it was actually garbage time. That might have been what allowed them to rebound as well as they did, too, because they completely owned the boards; forget second chances, they were getting fourth and fifth chances, and if they'd converted a couple of more of those, they would have won by 40.
I don't even know where to begin with St. Francis, I honestly don't. For a school that employs two All-Star posts, they have truly craptastic rebounding and boxing out. You can almost tell looking at Kendra Williams that she understands the moves with her head, but that she's thinking too much. She moves ponderously and telegraphs every move on offense to the point, not to mention that she does't shoot when she has a good opening. I do like her defensive instincts, though. Kara Ayers seems to be a good slashing guard, though she has too much of a tendency to throw up a shot and trust that the referee will actually call the foul- that might be a tenable strategy in men's basketball, but in women's, I'm not so sure. And then there are the shots that neither have a chance of going in nor had any illegal contact- she just got a little wild and a little crazy. Not my type of player, but I really don't want to think about what St. Francis would look like without her. They didn't get much from the rest of their starters, either. Or from much of anybody. There's something I like about Vianca Tejada, but I can't put my finger on it, and it certainly doesn't show up in the boxscore. She just always seemed to be involved in the play. Coach Milano did discover that lightning doesn't strike twice; Shannon Gantt was big against Albany, but she was a hot mess against James Madison- undisciplined and much lacking in clues.
Play of the game: early in the second half, James Madison misses a shot. Sarah Williams neatly tips the rebound to Jalissa Taylor, who puts it in for two. In the official play by play, Williams never touched the ball, but rest assured, she tapped it over like she was born to the touch pass.
Unremarkable referees. Some bad calls, some missed calls, one clock malfunction, but both teams did keep them busy. And if they'd called more than they had, I might actually have left early, and I don't do that. At all.
I do like watching Sue coach, though. (Kym's still on the roster in the program, but I saw neither hide nor hair of her at the actual game, unless she's shrunk about a foot and a half and really butched out.) She does her fair share of the yelling, and she seems to be the good cop to Milano's bad cop, the one who's friendlier with the players, even if she does impart the same lessons. Of course, Sue being Sue meant that while everyone else engaged in the traditional method of clapping to keep rhythm during intros (clap-clap clap, clap-clap clap), her "clap" might be putting her hand out like she was going to either high five someone or start a round of "Miss Mary Mack". Or it might be a foot clap. All of this with a very serious look on her face. Fortunately, unlike the ass-kicking we attended last year, no chairs were harmed in the making of this defeat.
The official attendance was 104. Of that, I think about 70 to 80 were friends and family of Stokes and Jimenez for the Dukes, or JMU fans in general- I was sitting behind someone I can only assume was part of Jimenez's posse, given his encouragement of her. Terrier guard Kristen Miah brought family (her mom had a homemade "Kristen's Mom" jersey with Miah's number on the back). A couple of people were there because they knew someone on the coaching staff. There were a few actual St. Francis fans. And then there was me, just a basketball junkie with a clipboard, delivering acid comments about both teams to anyone who would listen.
How do I know there were people who were just there because they knew someone on the coaching staff? No, I wasn't playing the social butterfly, but for the life of me, I can't think of any other reason Becky Hammon and a couple of friends would show up at St. Francis, can you? Yeah, I wasn't exactly expecting her either, but there I was, watching the warm-ups and despairing at the form of the Terriers' jumpshots, and this blonde with a bottle of water and a hint of brown roots came by, and I whipped my head around so hard I think I still have whiplash. "Wait a minute, that looks like… but what the hell… yeah, I guess it makes sense, but seriously, why would she… no, that's definitely her, I'd recognize those eyebrows anywhere." She was surprisingly undisturbed throughout the game, so either she's done this before or no one knew who the heck she was.
This one I'm not so certain about, but there was someone over on that side of the court who looked a lot like Epiphanny Prince, and RU didn't have a game today, and Stokes for James Madison is a Bergtraum alumna. Definitely makes it possible, but I didn't get a good look and I wasn't about to shove my way through to see.
The fact that I just spent two paragraphs describing stargazing in the crowd might suggest to you that the quality of the game was nothing to write home about.
I don't want to say that space and facilities are limited at St. Francis, but the Dukes spent the first half of halftime stretching out and drinking their water/Gatorade/whatthefrigever in the endcourt, just out of bounds, before wandering off to I know not where for their talk. Honestly, I go to a St. Francis game, and it's like stepping into a time machine, and not in a good way; I half expect that the next time I go, it'll be six-on-six and no one's allowed to cross halfcourt.
Monday, April 14, 2008
January 21st, 2008: Quinnipiac at St. Francis NY
The Terriers need to be hit with a cluestick, Connecticut fans are Connecticut fans no matter what school they follow, and there's just something disconcerting about a man of the cloth recognizing a New York Liberty t-shirt.
Our Grand Tour of New York basketball continued today in Brooklyn Heights, as we visited St. Francis for their game against Quinnipiac. Was quite a wander getting there from the train we were on; you'd be better off taking the M, R, 2, 3, 4, or 5, and not the A like we did. Even then, I'm still used to the concept of the gym being in a separate building, not in one of the main facilities, so we still almost missed it.
For lack of a more appropriate word, St. Francis really does play in a gym. Looks a little better than my high school gym, though take this with a grain of salt, because my school used an auxiliary gym that had a few inconveniently placed columns. Faded flag from a pole in the corner, sterile walls, cheap pads on said walls… clearly a facility for a school on the lower rungs of Division I. The seats were nice, though, being as they were actual seats. We didn't dare the concessions; if you have to go to the student cafeteria for your food, bring your own.
I will speak no ill of the anthem, because Brother Joe is a man of the full cloth and liked my 2000 Eastern Conference Champions shirt.
I really don't like Quinnipiac. Rough team, very rough, and the fans they brought along with them were downright obnoxious. Please not to be bitching about blatant calls on your team when you're up seventeen points with three minutes remaining, or thereabouts. If you want your team to stop being called for fouls, then tell your team to stop hacking, fair? For the Bobcats, senior forward Monique Lee played tough, and shooter Erin Kerner utterly went off in the second half. It got to the point where I was begging her not to score not just because I wanted St. Francis to have half a chance but also because I was running out of room to put points on my bootlegged scoresheet (bootleg in the sense that they didn't *have* scoresheets, and therefore I had to keep tallies on the program, although I stumbled upon a very nifty way of tracking first versus second half). The St. Francis coach just could not or would not adjust her defense, and Kerner burned the Terriers so badly that the ASPCA should have been put on the case. Quinnipiac just went on the attack in the second half, capitalized on every mistake St. Francis made, and made it clear that they were going to be the class of the league this year whether anyone liked it or not.
Frustration, ladies and gentlemen, is a six-eight Euro who can get after the ball like nobody's business but couldn't finish a shot if you gave her a guide to the basket. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if Katja Bavendam were on some German national team at some point in her career. Her countrywoman Karla Babica was a source of much frustration for anyone cheering on St. Francis; the Terriers committed nine fouls, and she had three of them. Her defense on Kerner was reminiscent of Yamasaki on Sales. I'm very surprised Tiffany Hill ended up at a school as low on the food chain as St. Francis- she's got real game, decent range, no fear, nice spin moves. I'm not saying she's a BEastie, but she should be in the MAAC or even the America East. But most of her points came late, after the Terriers had rolled over and played dead sufficiently- oh, the scoreboard only shows a fifteen-point swing, but St. Francis was down by more than twenty at some points; only the foul differential kept them respectable. If Deanna Petrucci had the courage to shoot, or perhaps a shot to shoot, she'd be pretty awesome- she's a scrapper, a rebounder, a playmaker, and a leader on the floor, but she's absolutely terrified to shoot, judging from what we saw today. She makes a good determined pair with Linda Warrington.
Honestly, I wore a Liberty shirt because it was the first clean and comfortable thing on the pile, and not because of the All-Star post tandem riding the bench for St. Francis. There were quite a few moments in that game where you could almost see Sue thinking, "I left Rutgers for THIS?!" Nothing seems to piss off an old-school Liberty player like giving up, and when St. Francis got lazy, Sue and Kym were both seething. At one point, Sue kicked a water bottle under her chair. (I'm sure the chair was thinking, "It could always be worse; look at my cousin in Indiana.") It looked like the two of them were doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the huddles, with Sue talking shop and Kym verbally going one on one with the players. I get the sneaking suspicion that the head coach will be around as long as they're mediocre, but as soon as they have a truly appalling season, she's out the door- assuming that Sue and Kym stick around there.
The thing that ticks me off, and the thing that I'm sure infuriated the folks at St. Francis, was that the Terriers pretty much controlled the first half. They were getting the shots they wanted, and they hadn't even gotten Hill going yet. But Quinnipiac started revving up at the end of the first half and just blew them out of the water in the second, and that's down to coaching, methinks. Time will tell if St. Francis can remedy that.