Monthly Archives: November 2019

saint john's, wagner

Wipeout

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(I apologize in advance for the shitiosity of this recap but I’m preparing for Snowpocalypse, plus I might be drunk)

St John’s defeated Wagner at Carnesecca Arena Saturday afternoon to the great surprise of no one, not even me, and I expect disaster at every turn. About the game there’s not much to say. St John’s took a commanding lead midway through the first half by virtue of a 13-0 run that put them up by 20 at half and they coasted the rest of the way .

Those of you looking for bad news in the box score – as I usually am – will note that Wagner actually outscored St John’s in the second half, albeit by one;  that SJU was outrebounded, by Wagner; that SJU turned the ball over 14 times; that SJ shot 9-26 from three; and most critically that SJU shot 11-19 from the free throw line, which puts them at 65 percent for the year, which if you take away the Mercer game where they were 25 of 31 puts them at 51 percent over seven games at 85 for 136, which I’d call a pattern. On the bright side they had a bunch of assists

PLAYERS: Josh Roberts was a rebound off a double double … Back in his comfort zone – aka playing against bad teams – Mustapha Heron had 18 points. Before fouling out. Against Wagner … LJ Figueroa – who scored his first basket with five minutes left in the game – once again looked like he was going through the motions. Fortunately for the good guys when he’s going through the motions he’s pretty good: 6/6/6 in points, rebounds and assists. Hail Satan … Champagnie had 12 points and four steals … Rasheem Dunn is looking more and more like a volume scorer: 14 points on 13 shots. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: D’Angelo Harrison was a volume scorer. Unfortunately I knew D’Lo and Dunn is no D’Lo … Nick Rutherford displayed a vague degree of competency … Earlington played only 10 minutes, I think maybe because he doesn’t understand his role, which is not to take the ball to the basket the first time he touches it and often thereafter. He’s still my favorite player though … David Cadaver falls down a lot … I’ll mention Greg Williams Jr and Damien Sears just for the sake of completeness … Despite the score the walk-ons played three minutes and once again I wonder whether they should play more for a snake bit program that’s e.g. lost players in a lay up line during midnight madness

NOTES: I went to the liquor store Thanksgiving morning and bought a bottle of Vieve Clicquot and a quart of Belvedere and the girl behind the counter said something like ‘Wow, you’re going to be a popular guest,’ assuming they were gifts for my holiday host. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was going home to plow through them laying on the coach watching the Lions lose in some ludicrous fashion. Which I did and as usual the Lions did not disappoint … A FS2 pop in showed a Coach Third Choice quote wherein he opined about his players that when they misbehave “I’ll pop them upside the head,” which John Fanta – a fat bastard presciently named after soda pop – said “that’s the kind of guy he is,” which kind of guy he is evidently is the kind of guy who’s willing to beat his players when they misbehave. Imagine if he said that about his wife: ‘if she burned my dinner I’d pop her upside the head.’ Mike Rice to the white courtesy phone … The last time Wagner played St John’s was the first time Chris Mullin won a game. That was a long time ago … Wagner grads include Jim Carroll, author of the The Basketball Diaries, who as a basketball player was portrayed by Leonardo DeCaprio in the least convincing portrayal of a basketball player since Robbie Benson in One on One; Robert Loggia, who on The Sopranos as Feech La Manna went back to prison when a truckload of stolen plasma screen televisions were found in in his garage … Curt Blefary, 1965 American League ROY nicked named “Clank” by Frank Robinson for his prodigious fielding skills; legendary drunkard and gasbag Bob Beckel; Hall of Fame coach Rich Kotite; and a former valued SJ basketball forum poster called WeAreSJU who passed away this past fall at the untimely age of 51. Rest in Peace … Wagner stinks but it has good taste in former coaches. Theirs include PJ Carlesimo, Mike Deane, and future St John’s coach Danny Hurley. Mistakes include Dereck Whittenburg – 69–112 at Fordham – whose most memorable basketball moment was the airball that  Lorenzo Charles flushed to win the 1983 national championship, which to this day Whittenburg maintains “was a pass,” because Dereck Whittenburg is a liar

arizona state, saint john's

Second Time’s a Charm

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St John’s avenged Chris Mullin’s 11-point loss in last year’s NCAA tournament by losing to Arizona State University by 13 in a preseason game at the curiously named Airforce Reserve Hall of Fame Tip Off at Mohegan Sun Casino Saturday afternoon, this after blowing a 16-5 first half lead and being outscored the rest of the way by 25 points. Despite having lost now two of their last three this one qualified as a moral victory of sorts, because at least this year they finally have a professional coaching staff that will teach them how to deal with such adversity unlike lazy and shiftless Mitch Richmond.

ASU came out flat – they shot airballs, bounced the ball off their bodies out of bounds and a couple of times just fell over – which I attributed to jet lag – which jet lag allowed SJ’s the early advantage: they led 8-0, 12-2 and finally 16-6 about half way through the first half when the roof caved in: Arizona went on a 14-1 run after the third TV time out: the game was tied four minutes later. St John’s took a small lead into halftime yay! but were punked in the second half and in fact most of the game after the first five minutes, after which first five minutes they were outscored 74-49, which 74 points included a 50 point second half. (Dee fence! Dee Fence!) This marks the third time in three games that the opposing coach’s halftime adjustments (I’m led to believe these are a critical part of coaching) has confounded whatever Coach Third Choice is telling his players, which last two opponents I’d remind you included two America East teams: imagine what’s going to happen when it’s Doug McDermott’s father doing the confounding. It’s also noteworthy that in those three games the opponent’s best player has run amok in the second half; first was Anthony Lamb, then Mike Smith and yesterday it was Remy Martin, who scored two first half points on oh for six shooting and finished with 19 … If Arizona’s slow start was attributable to jet lag, it’s hard to know what would excuse St John’s slow lingering death. They were playing in the their own back yard, in their own time zone and in front of what appeared to be if not a friendly at least a nonhostile crowd and yet they managed only 38 percent from the floor, 18 percent from three, 60 percent from the free throw line, turned the ball over 16 times and had a mere nine assists on 66 shots. My working theory is that they stink. Should you have a different explanation feel free to email me. Regarding the FT shooting I remind you that after the first game of the season against whatever little sister of the poor that was one of CTC’s ball washers on some dumb SJ fan forum said something like ‘Wow! Eighty percent! When was the last time we shot 80 percent from the free throw line, the staff’s really paying attention to every last detail!’ I wish I knew that dummy’s name because since then SJU is 67-109 from the FT line, which is 61 percent. Oh wait I do know his name, it’s Mush … One complaint from Arkansas fans about CTC’s system was that a long bench requires giving inferior players minutes best reserved for better ones. That that might be an issue was evident yesterday when in the first half with SJ up by 10 or so CTC curiously took out his starters and sent in Williams, Cadaver and the rest of the second team scrubs, which scrubs immediately allowed ASU back into the game. (Lest my shitting on CTC be misconstrued it should in no way be considered an endorsement of Danny Hurley’s brother, who stinks. Admittedly I’ve only seen him coach two games, but those were against Mullin and Anderson, and neither of those guys are rocket scientists. All told Hurley’s “forks up” slap in the face to Mike Cragg might be the most important bullet St John’s has dodged since they didn’t ever offer Tom Pecora a job doing anything) … As impressive as SJU front line has been – Champagnie, Earlington and Roberts have all surprised – they were exposed a bit against Arizona, which won the game inside. I wouldn’t want to play this front line in two years, but then god willing I’ll be dead in two years and meanwhile the big east season looms … Fans of irony will note that Hurley’s team was called for a variety of flops in the first half, which if flops were a thing when Hurley was playing college ball he and half of his teammates would have been hanged … The silver lining on this loss is that instead of facing a drubbing by Virginia SJU gets a vaguely winnable game against Umass, which makes sense as UMass is the A10, which is maybe where SJU should be. That UMass beat Central Connecticut State by a bigger margin (46 versus 30) than did St John’s isn’t a meaningful comparison, so I won’t mention it

PLAYERS: LJ Figueroa once again led SJU with 17 points despite once again looking disinterested and dispirited. One wonders whether he misses his mentors Chris Mullin and Mitch Richmond … Also once again the other Champagne brother was the second best player on the court, which is not a good look going forward … Josh Roberts had an eight rebounds and a couple of impressive put backs but a lot of that came early, before Danny Hurley’s brother reminded his team to put a body on him … Rasheed Dunn, who’s supposed to make us forget about Nick Rutherford, had as many turnovers as baskets. This I’m willing to ascribe to rust. It’d better be rust anyway … Speaking of Nick Rutherford … Mustapha Heron had the same game he had against ASU last March when he shot SJ’s out of the NCAA tournament. Hopefully he removes his head from his ass because otherwise the season’s going to be longer than the season’s already going to be … Earlington had four points and seven rebounds … Williams, Sears and Cadaver had no points, one rebound and no assists, which once again does not bode well moving forward if these guys are seven through ten in a ten man system. Maybe it’s time to see what the lacrosse player brings to the table

NOTES: A reader wrote to ask after the Columbia game recap: why so negative bro. (Evidently he’s new.) I’m moved to answer. Dear reader. Human beings are a meaningless carbon-based lifeform hurtling through an infinite godless universe on a pebble upon which pebble their only notability is that they’re the most pernicious species of odious little vermin that nature has suffered to crawl across the face of the earth and their history – an unending panorama of rape, murder, betrayal and barbarity – is a dung heap chronicling the tales of depraved and villainous madmen, scoundrels, sadists and degenerates. That’s the good news. The bad news is that as part of way you and I have decided to fill the three score and ten allotted to us between the void and eternal darkness is to root for the St John’s University basketball team, a perennial laughingstock that has suffered through in the past 50 years of futility rape, women beating, payola, point shaving and perhaps most horribly of all the head coaching tenure of Steve Lavin, a cuckolded mental patient. So excuse me if I’m a tad pessimistic. If you want sweetness and light there’s no shortage of rose colored glasses wearing pollyannas on various fan forums who’ll tell you that prosperity is just around the corner. All I have for you is the truth … Arizona State are the Wildcats, which marks the fourth in a row mountain lion mascot St John’s has faced and only the second to have mauled them to death. Unfortunately that streak will come to an end tomorrow, when St Johns faces the Minutemen [insert premature ejaculation joke here]. Re Umass unless I’m more faced than I plan to be and I usually am I’m pretty sure they’ll be no recap, as two of these in two days is one too many. Or maybe even two. So you won’t learn that Umass’s illustrious alumni include gerbil aficionado Richard Gere, serial sex offenders Bill Cosby and Rick Pitino, caterwauler Buffy Sainte-Marie, Julius Erving (he asked Lou for a scholarship but Lou didn’t think it was a good fit) and former Lion’s quarterback Greg Landry, another in the conga line of losers who’s plagued that cursed franchise in my lifetime.

columbia, saint john's

Lion By Omission

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I wasn’t going to write anything about St John’s glorious 82-63 victory over the Columbia Lions Wednesday night at Carnesecca Arena. Because despite the fact that we’re only five games into the season I already need a mental health day. But I’d gone to the trouble of writing the notes section yesterday and thereafter spent several hours looking for just the right Showgirls jpeg to display above and I’d hate to waste all that hard work so here we are. So yea, SJ beat Columbia to the great surprise of no one because Columbia stinks. No doubt some fans are this morning congratulating the team for valiantly bouncing back from their disappointing loss to UVM (infra) but those fans are dunces, because Columbia stinks, despite the presence of Mike Smith, the best player on the floor, who was a few bounces away from a triple double.

As you can see it wasn’t much of a game: St John’s was up by 20 at the half and didn’t look back although it’s vaguely worth noting that much like UVM Columbia outscored St John’s in the second half, which I’m led to believe is a direct result of half time strategizing … A few boring obvious points:

  • St John’s failed to break the magical 70 percent free throw for the fourth straight time and is now at 67 percent for the year

•            Speaking of free throws Columbia shot three to SJ’s 19, the last two coming with three minutes left in the game. Roberts, Earlington, Williams and Dunn committed zero defensive fouls in a combined 79 minutes.

•            13 assists SJU had on 31 made baskets, this despite Coach Third Choice complaining during an in the huddle time out that his team was passing the ball around aimlessly and waiting until the last second before hoisting up a lousy shot

•            Attendance was 3400 plus, which means in total they’re down about 6000 seats compared to last year. Which no doubt some of that has to do with them raising ticket prices and some of that has to do with the moribund schedule combined with the Wednesday evening starts but if it continues it’s going to be worri$ome.

•            Shout out to Jim Spanarkle who opined after a St John’s steal that led to a dunk that “that’s a great example of why you don’t want to turn it over,” which I’d much rather he pointed out an example of why you would want to turn it over.

PLAYERS: The other Champagnie brother (14 points, 7 rebounds) continues to impress, although I’m not sure that his leading the team in shots (14) is a winning formula moving forward … It’s too soon to tell whether Rasheed Dunn is a volume scorer or just rusty but his numbers this year (albeit a small sample size) are uncannily like his numbers at St Francis: .34/.25/.81 versus .39/.28/.77. On the bright side he doesn’t seem disinterested defensively. Unlike several of his teammates … Heron (15 points) rebounded nice from his two disappointing NCAA tournament performances against universities Vermont and New Hampshire … Eight and eight from Marcellus Earlington, until recently deemed by the intelligentsia as not a D 1 player … Roberts with 11 rebounds … LJ Figueroa (nine points three rebounds) looked completely disinterested in the game of basketball in 20 minutes … the inferior competition evidently reanimated David Cadaver (9 points, five rebounds)  much to the delight of the Red and White Club (because racism jokes never get old) … Sears, Williams and Rutherford had nine points and six rebounds between them. One the one hand they don’t really matter. On the other Williams look lost, which he didn’t look last year … Walk-ons J Cole and T O’Connell (I CBA to look up their Christian names) were rewarded with a combined two minutes for their hard work in practice. I’d predict the over under on how long it’ll be before CTC’s seeming penchant for leaving his starters in during garbage time results in a season ending injury for one of them but that might be a jinx

NOTES: Filed under ball-washing: Various astute St John’s fans spent Tuesday night providing live updates of the Vermont Virginia game, presumably on the theory that if Vermont could hang with Virgia and Saint John’s could hang with Vermont then St John’s can hang with Virginia. This of course is nonsense and those people are dolts. What happened at SJ over the weekend was that top 25 Vermont had an early season game against #7 Virginia circled on its calendar but before that they had to play a meaningless out of conference road game against cupcake St John’s, a perennial national laughingstock picked to finish last in its conference. Predictably Vermont put in a classic trap game performance, played down to its opponent, did  just enough to not lose and went on to do pretty well in the game it was looking forward to when it was looking past SJ. Only the most delusional fans would think that a game between two tournament teams is a barometer of what the upcoming season portends for SJU, which at this point at least it seems that going .500 would be the ceiling … Much like me a mere five games in, Fox Sports seems to have run out of ideas. They last night at halftime re-ran a hackneyed who’s-on-St John’s-Mount Rushmore bit they did only two games ago. (In between they did the Big East Mount Rushmore, so it’s not like they’re completely boring hacks.) Anyway the SJU answer is Buck Freeman, Joe Lapchick, Lou and Chris Mullin. The Big East Mt Rushmore is a bit more challenging. Do you pick players who contributed for a maximum of four years or coaches who were there forever? Obviously the latter and the answer is (leaving out Dave Gavitt): Jim Calhoun, Jim Boehiem, John Thompson and Norm Roberts. A player Rushmore would be Patrick, Mullin, Pearl and someone else. I’m tempted to go with Walter Berry, but that would make me a bit of a homer, so maybe Richard Hamilton instead … Columbia university – an actual Ivy League school, not a public Ivy or an ACC Ivy but an actual Ivy – is one of the oldest schools in the US blah blah blah, it’s too boring to go into and their mascot is the Lion, which is interesting only the extent that that they’re the third Lion is a row St John’s has played. What isn’t boring is a list of famous Columbia graduates, which is so long and prodigious that I almost feel guilty about appending it here, but it’s a long season and I’m already sick of this. So. Columbia grads include athletes Chet Forte, who at 5’8″ beat out Wilt Chamberlain for college basketball player of the year in 1957 – Forte averaged 28 and 4 while Wilt averaged 29 and 18, so you can see why they gave it to the white guy; first round draft pick Jim McMillian; Jack Molinas, a college basketball fixer (he was responsible for future Hall of Famers Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown being banned from the NBA) who was murdered by the mob in Vegas; baseball HOFer’s Lou Gehrig, Sandy Koufax and Eddie Collins, the latter of whom instituted the Red Sox policy of not signing black players – Pumpsie Green, the first one, died just this past July; NFL HOFer Sid Luckman; and former Detroit Lion great John Witkowski, who completed 13 passes in an illustrious four year career. Politicians include four US presidents (Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama); founding father Alexander Hamilton; and former Czech president Václav Havel. Musicians Béla Bartók, both Rogers and Hammerstein and Art Garfunkle, which makes this is the only sentence you will ever read that contains both “Bela Bartok” and “Art Garfunkle.” Writers Jerzy Kosinski, EL Doctorow, Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Joseph Heller, Langston Hughes, JD Salinger, Herman Wouk and Hunter Thompson; with a special shout out to the biologist Hans Zinsser, whose Rats Lice and History is the funniest book ever written about typhus and John Kennedy Toole, who wrote the great American novel before killing himself; Hollywood types William Goldman (Butch Cassidy), Herman Mankiewicz (coauthor of Citizen Caine), director Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon, Network), Jimmy Cagney, David O Selznick (Gone With the Wind), Pat Boone, Brians Dennehy and de Palma, Katie Holmes, Al Lewis, and Anthony “Psycho” Perkins. And variously the unctuous David Stern; the lovely Bella Abzug; the patriot Roy Cohn; the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg; noted chubster Meghan McCain; and fictional characters Meadow Soprano, Peter Parker and Jessie Spano.

saint john's, Vermont

Prunelight in Vermont

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At least we got that out the way, and by that I mean St John’s first loss of the season, 70-68 Saturday evening to the Vermont Catamites Catamounts at Carnesecca Arena. I know that the faithful consider these sorts of games – and by these sorts I mean games against the sort of no name teams that Lou used to feast on in antediluvian preseasons – are considered games St John’s “should win,” but really only by the faithful who haven’t been paying attention the last 20 years. It’s akin to thinking that Spain should defeat Israel in a war because they once had a very nice armada. Which is to say that might have been true in the deep recesses of history but nowadays not so much. My opinion is that there no games that St John’s should win and very many they’re lucky to have. But then I’m something of a pessimist. And yet as pessimistic as I am – and my glass is half empty and the full half is bile – I’m hoping that some good comes of it. In the grand scheme of things this one loss is nothing. This is not a post season team so even beating a projected NCAA tournament team like Vermont wouldn’t have done anything for their resume, because they won’t need a resume, because no one will be offering them a job. (If my crystal ball is accurate and it usually is they’ll be a couple of games over .500 when the BE season starts on New Year’s Eve, which means that Coach Third Choice is on his way to the first losing season of his career.) And neither is the some good my usual unfettered joy at seeing the air go pffft out of other people’s balloons, although there’s some of that. What good might come of it is that the team wakes up to the idea that they’re not very good, because they’re not, and that for the season to not be a complete fucking disaster they’re going to have to try a wee bit harder than they’ve been trying, which is not very. Because so far they’ve been chucking up threes and taking crazy floaters in the lane and reaching for the ball as their man blows by them and putting about as much effort into denying the entry pass as the bouncer at a Bangkok brothel. Which might pass muster against Central Connecticut State but won’t when SJU runs into the juggernaut that is DePaul …

All of which said, the game was an entertaining affair of the sort that often happens when two talented mid majors stink up the joint: Vermont shot 40 percent from the floor, 25 percent from three, 66 percent from the FT line; not to be underdone SJ shot 35 percent from the floor, 25 from three, 65 percent from the FT line – their third game in a row under 70 percent for you Eddie Mushes scoring at home – had a mere six assists on 20 plus made baskets and turned the ball over 16 times, In fact if they hadn’t shot 22 more free throws than Vermont the game would have been over by the second TV time out in the second half, because whatever halftime adjustments CTC made failed miserably: SJ was up six at the break and down seven five minutes later … Speaking of awful basketball Pat Driscoll and company didn’t help matters by calling a foul a minute, including a half dozen arbitrary and capricious charges that might have been blocks and several suspicious goaltendings. On the bright side SJ once again mainly got the benefit of the whistle, which is I think CTC being rewarded for not chirping at the refs all game ala Mullin … Anyway, as one genyioius said “we only lost by two” and as another, “On to Columbia.”

PLAYERS: LJ Figueroa had a double double, including an inefficient 14 points (4-13 from the floor, 3-7 from three and 3-6 from the FT line, where he’s at 60 percent for the year) and 10 rebounds … Josh Roberts had 13 rebounds and eight blocks: kudos to Matt Abudamessiah for spotting his talent and to Chris Mullin for nurturing it … the other Champagnie brother had nine points and six rebounds and was the only player to not miss at least one free throw … Earlington had eight points, seven rebounds and three steals in 20 minutes. He’s more and more reminding me of a former jack of all trades basketball renaissance costco batman. He doesn’t defend like that guy but that guy didn’t defend like that guy when he was a first semester sophomore either … Mustapha Heron had another NCAA tournament performance: he was 3-11 from the floor with four turnovers …Nate Rutherford and Greg Williams both had identical lines: no points, one block and two turnovers in 13 minutes – perhaps they’re twins? – and Damien Spears and David Cadaver played nine minutes between them. That’s carry the one two points, five rebounds, five TOs and one assist in 35 minutes from what projects to be the seven to ten slots on a team that relies on a system that goes ten deep. This does not bode well … the big news this week of course was that Rasheed Dunn received an eligibility waiver from the NCAA. On the one hand, good for the kid, because fuck the NCAA. On the other hand was the reaction of the most delusional fan base in the world – I read yesterday comparisons between Dunn and Pearl Washington and between Marcellus Earlington and Charles Barkley and Draymond Green – which proclaimed Dunn the missing piece in SJ’s resurgence under coach iron mike CTC based on careful viewing of two-minute highlight videos they watched on their phones. The fact is that Dunn had a 1-1 A2T ratio and shot 38 percent from the floor and 25 percent from three on a NEC team that was in his two years there 17-45 and he hasn’t played organized basketball in a year and a half. Unless there’s some sort of Cedric Jackson reverse osmosis miracle on the horizon I wouldn’t get your hopes up. In limited minutes yesterday he seemed to pay attention on defense and doesn’t seem bashful on the offensive end – he took more shots than Heron in fewer minutes (including a game tying three with 19 seconds left, which was an awful shot until it went in) and made more too although the way Heron’s been playing that’s not saying much.

NOTES: Just as dook is one of the finest Ivy league schools in the ACC, UVM is one of the finest of the so-called public ivies, which include William & Mary, Miami University, UCLA, and interestingly University of North Carolina, which evidently is so advanced academically that the students don’t even need to attend classes. Despite being a team St John’s should beat Vermont has made the NCAA tournament seven times this century, which includes as a #13 seed an upset of Syracuse (which SU squad included Gerry McNamara and Hakim Warrick) in the first round in 2005; they lost in the next round to Michigan State, who went on the final four … Vermont’s coach John Becker was 6–44 at Gauudet in Division II before he got to Vermont, where he won 100 conference wins in the fourth-fewest total games in NCAA men’s basketball, tying Bill Self … Famous attendees include former Cleveland State coach Rollie Massimino; the philosopher John Dewey, whose theories of pedegogy [sic] are directly responsible for the sorry state of education in the United States; Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge; Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman and Mike Gordon, three fourths of the appalling jam band phish; and perhaps most notably the mass murderer H. H. Holmes, who’s credited with 200 kills, which if true is close to a land speed record: besides his sheer numbers Holmes is notable for having built a specially designed “murder castle” in close proximity to the 1893 World’s Fair, from whence he lured his victims, whose bones and body parts he sold on the black market – after he fucked their corpses and stripped them of their flesh it goes without saying – which ingenuity his wikipedia article ascribes demurely to his having “an entrepreneurial spirit.” Which, nice work if you can get it … Vermont the state is the country’s safest per capita and also the leading producer of maple syrup, which I’m not sure I see a correlation unless the syrup makes Vermonters too fat and lethargic to get off their couches. If so that would be in direct contrast to their energetic forebears, who were in the 1930’s leading practioners of eugenics, which led the state to declare illegal marriage and procreation by what they called the feebleminded, which to Vermonters then meant French Canadians – which is understandable – minorities and especially the native Abenaki – most of whom were disappeared into the state’s copious mental hospitals, never to be heard from again –  and the differently abled. It should come as no surprise then that Vermont is the whitest state in the union at 96 percent because what nonwhite in their right mind would want to live there, which if I understand the current zeitgeist correctly makes Bernie Sanders a racists, which should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, him being a democrat.

new hampshire, saint john's

Miss New Hampshire?

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Saint John’s came back from a 12-point deficit to sneak by one of the worst programs (Hi Fordham!) in the history of college basketball at Carnesecca Arena Tuesday night 74-61 and if that isn’t enough to set off some alarm bells then I don’t know what is. Because there are only a few explanations and none of them are pleasant. Either Coach Third Choice is having a hard time motivating his players, which seems unlikely as he’s already in six short months created an entirely new culture wherein his team will run walk on hot coals to run through a brick wall for him, so it can’t be that; or they’re looking past their opponents  – one wag suggested that UNH was “a classic trap game,” presumably before their important homecoming showdown against crosstown rival Vermont; or they’re playing down to the cupcakes. But Occam’s razor suggests that they stink and that’s where my money is. I mean, okay, stink may be a little harsh. Mercer stinks. Whereas SJU’d be a contender for the national championship if they played in Division II and a contender for the conference championship if they played in the MAAC. Unfortunately they play in the Big East, which this year has lost one game so far as a conference and where perennial laughingstock DePaul just kicked the bejesus out of Iowa on the road. Despite a steady stream of ‘this is going to be a dangerous team that surprises some people’ chatter from the homers I suspect  that ‘this is going to be on of those pesky teams that no one wants to play but nobody minds beating.’ Still, that’s down the road and for the time being they remain undefeated. At least until Saturday …

The box score reflects SJ’s ineptness: they shot 40 percent from the floor, for the second game in a row 60 percent from the free throw line – Wow! When was the last time that happened Eddie Mush! – and turned the ball over 15 times. The only thing that saved them was that UNH was worse: they shot 38 percent from the floor and 50 percent from the FT line and turned the ball over 15 times and not a lot of that had to do with SJ’s defense, except the free throw shooting obviously. If there was a bright spot – and there wasn’t – it’d be the 17 offensive rebounds, which is I think without looking more than they had all of last season … For all the talk of 40 minutes of hell and Anderson’s (I refuse to call him Iron Mike and so should you) diabolical use of his bench only seven players played double figures and five of them played ~ 30 minutes. Whether this was a strategic decision based on match-ups and personnel or CTC abandoning his vaunted system at the first sign of adversity is a question for wiser minds than my own.

PLAYERS: Absent LJ Figueroa – he had a career-high 25 points (including 5-9 from three), eight rebounds, five steals – CTC’s cadre of ball washers would this morning have some splainin’ to do … Champagnie had another near double double – 11 points and nine rebounds – and Josh Roberts had in 33 minutes (!) 12 points and seven rebounds along with four blocks, which puts him about second in the country total and tied for fourth percentage-wise. Regarding that Marquette’s Theo John is currently averaging eight blocks a game, which prediction: that number comes down … Unfortunately that’s the end of the good news. Mustapha Heron must have thought this was an NCAA tournament game: he scored five points on 2-12 from the floor … Nick Rutherford had six rebounds and five assists which is nice but is averaging close to three turnovers a game and shooting 20 percent from three for the year and 66 percent from the FT line, which if that continues, that’s going to be a problem … Earlington had eight points and four rebounds in 12 minutes and was involved in something of an ironic sequence where he was called for flopping at one end of the floor – which if flopping was a point of emphasis a couple of years ago several former dook players would have been hanged – and a charge on the very next possession … Great White Hope David Cadaver contributed little in nine minutes and Damien Sears less in fewer than that

NOTES: I sojourned in New Hampshire briefly in my youth, drawn by the lure of cheap booze from the government-run liquor stores and no state income tax and the delicious irony of living in a state where convicts make license plates that say “Live Free Or Die,” but didn’t last very long there despite those boons: the arts are nonexistent – the state’s greatest cultural achievement is a rock that looks allegedly like an old man –

the winter weather is atrocious, and the citizenry comprises the sort of rock-ribbed can’t get there from here republicans that make even rock-ribbed can’t get there from here republicans such as myself rethink their rock-ribbed can’t get there from here republicanism. Not to mention that it’s next to Massachusetts, the worst state in the union other than California, California being peopled in the main by mellow extroverted assholes in Bermuda shorts. I can’t place the year I was there exactly but it was long enough ago that I had a square job waiting tables at a downtown Concord restaurant run by the sort of Greeks who hate their customers only slightly less than they hate the staff. There was nothing much notable about it except that one day I waited on alleged comedian Pat Paulsen, late then of Rowan and Martin and the Smothers Brothers, who was running for president, which he did every four years. His wife had a vanilla milkshake while Pat took a shit; she was nice enough but he didn’t leave a tip, which isn’t surprising as he was running as a democrat … New Hamphire’s sports mascot is the wildcat, by which I assume they mean mountain lion, because it’d be weird if they named their team after Johnny Bench, Ernie Ladd or Andres Galarraga, big cats all. I never saw a lion while I was there but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any: I never saw a minority either and I assume there are some as the state’s population is allegedly one and a half percent black. Which perhaps explains the futility of UNH’s basketball program, which is described in its Wikipedia article as having “a long-standing reputation for futility … since 1903 no Wildcats team has made it to the NCAA or NIT tournaments and no Wildcat player has made it to the NBA.” Current Coach Bill Herrion  – who can perhaps be forgiven as he learned everything he knows about basketball studying at the feet of Mike Jarvae at George Washington – is 172-251 in 14 years at UNH and has had two winning season in that time and yet his job seems pretty secure; his predecessor Phil Rowe was 45-125 in six years; and those are two relative success stories compared to the conga line of incompetents that preceded them, a conga line so incompetent that they defy description, even for a writer of my prodigious talent and access to a thesaurus: Jeff Jackson was 21 and 61; Jim Boylan – who went on to coach the Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers – was 15-69; and Gary Friel was 188-335 in his twenty year career. The last coach to have a measure of success was someone called Butch Cowell (119-54), who also coached football and baseball, except when the university was unable to field sports teams due to a little thing I like to call “World War One.” … The university’s notable alumni – and I hesitate to plow this ground as I notice that Norman Rose over at Rumble has cleverly come up with this idea all by himself – include major league baseball players Carlton Fisk and Del Bisonette – the first player to hit a bases loaded triple and home run in the same game and as a rookie only one of five players in MLB history to be walked with the bases loaded (the others include Barry Bonds and a presumably sober Josh Hamilton); the novelist John Irving, a first rate writer who’s scared to write a first rate novel; Michael Kelly, who edited the work of literary fraud Stephen Glass before going on to die needlessly in the first Gulf War, leaving behind a widow and orphan, because journalism; the saxophonist Jeff Coffin; and a  bunch of hockey players and Canadian football players, which who cares … Fox Sports 2 had four halftime analysts which I thought a bit of overkill for a Tuesday night preseason game until I learned that they were naming – wait for it – the Mount Rushmore of SJ’s basketball. That this turned out to be merely an opportunity for these dopes to shout out the names of random past players – Willie Glass! Bill Wennington! Sergio Luyk! – shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. What didn’t come as a surprise was that histrionic personality disorder poster boy Steve Lavin opined that one of his players – D’Angelo Harrison – should be considered, as he might have been the school’s all-time leading scorer “if I hadn’t suspended him,” which statement allowed Lavin simultaneously to thrust himself into the center of the conversation while diminishing the accomplishments of one of the players directly responsible for his meager success. What a repulsive, repulsive person. No wonder Mary Ann cucked him.

Central Connecticut, saint john's

Devils May Care

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I was going to half ass my way through this essay the way I half assed my way through the last one but then ‘Wait a minute fun,’ he thought, referring to himself in the third person, ‘What if we,’ he thought, referring to himself as the royal we, ‘What if we were to sit down and see if we can’t pound out two thousand words, just like we did in the good old days when having written meant looking forward to getting paid — and to make it even more difficult we’ll do it sober, I mean relatively sober anyway, there were those mimosas this morning and the beers with lunch, but we haven’t started drinking martinis yet and it’s nearly 1 PM.’ So here we are.

So yes, St John’s defeated Central Connecticut State Saturday afternoon 87-57, about which there’s not much to say about it except that a mere two games into Coach Third Choice’s tenure at St John’s the team came out flat and stayed that way for about 20 minutes. In fact the only reason they weren’t behind at the half was because the threes they kept chucking up kept going in. Whereas the other guys not so much. Still, whatever halftime adjustments CTC made worked a treat and SJ put CCS away early in the second half and didn’t look back.

To put this in perspective though the last time St John’s played CCS the score was 80-55 and that was under the lazy and unmotivated Chris Mullin, who couldn’t coach his way out of a paper bag and spent most of his tenure at SJU drinking inappropriate amounts of water and tying his shoes. Remember too that even though CTC’s first class was pretty lackluster Mullins 4-star leftovers and his two-star bluebloods are outplaying only the no-star recruits they’ve had the good fortune to be facing. For which reason until conference play starts or they lose to Vermont I’ll be withholding judgment on just how bad this team is going to be … Not much of interest in the box score: all of SJ’s 11 three pointers came from Heron and LJF, while the rest of the team was a combined oh for eleven, which carry the one is not very good; nor is 15 turnovers against barely a Division I school very good; and neither is shooting 53 percent from the free throw line. One basketball guru noted on a fan board after the Mercer game that lost in the shuffle of that resounding victory was that SJ had shot 80 percent from the free throw line and when was the last time that had happened, which note to that dummy the last time that happened was two games ago in the Big East tournament and the next time it happens you might want to keep it to yourself because evidently you’re Eddie Mush.

PLAYERS: It’s almost like Mustafa Heron is trolling us now: after shooting 3-15 from three in his last six games last year — including an oh fer in the NCAA tournament — he’s this year shooting 76 percent. Prediction: he cools off … LJF had what for anyone else might be a career: 17 points, six rebounds, and six assists. For him he seemed a bit off … Champagne once again displayed some lively basketball instincts and was a couple of rebounds away from a double double, which is pretty good even considering the competition although prediction: he cools off and then later hits the freshman wall … Josh Roberts had his second seven rebound four block game, although it might be a little early to pencil that in for the rest of the year. He does have mad hops though yo … The rest of them came back to earth a bit. Nick Rutherford — who one geriatric wag compared to the late great Mel Utley and I’m not even making that up — had one assist and four fouls in 18 minutes … Much to the chagrin of the red and white crowd great white hope David Caraher was 2-7 from the field which means he’s shooting 35 percent from the floor and an appalling 14 percent from three. Prediction: He heats up, a little … Damien Sears had 11 rebounds in 14 minutes, which seems like it should be a misprint, Earlington was Earlington although less so and Greg Williams continues to look lost and out of place.

NOTES: I took a bunch of notes last night but they make little sense, which is odd because I wasn’t even that drunk yet. For example in the middle of the page it says “Frank Thomas, WAC!,” which WAC stands for ‘what a cunt’ and in light of day I can’t imagine why I’d want to call the Big Hurt a cunt … St John’s allegedly hosted last evening something called “Basketball Family Day” as a part of which 125 former athletes and team managers were honored at half time. I can’t barely find any mention of it on the internets but am led to wonder: who was number 126, aka the guy who failed to make the cut. My money’s on Paul Berwanger, but then it is always … The game was called by someone and Len Elmore, who told for the umpteenth time the story of how he was all set to come to St John’s and then Louie went to the Nets and Len hied off to Maryland where he went on to become an All American and a first round NBA draft pick. I suppose if you’ve never heard the story before it’s interesting but it’s also a bit rude. I mean imagine if some girl you never quite managed to bang every time you saw her she went out of her way to tell you about the guy she fucked instead. It’d get pretty tired pretty quickly … Speaking of tired Coach Third Choice might want to consider losing that soul patch, unless he’s going to start wearing zoot suits on the sidelines. And speaking of facial hair LJF might want to consider a trim as well, because he looks like the best supporting actor in a beheading video … Central Connecticut State is coached by Donyell Marshall, a former BE Player of the year and lottery pick who went on to a long and respectable NBA career. Unfortunately for CCS being a successful NBA player does not always translate into coaching success: DM is in three years at CCS 31–61 total, which includes 16–38 in conference. Still, you’d have to think that as a prodigal son returning to the site of his former glory for a program that’s made the NCAA tournament a mere three times this century he has some measure of job security … Along with 10-odd other universities CCS are called the Blue Devils, which got me to thinking: what the hell is a blue devil? I know what a red devil is (aka Beelzebub) and a Sun Devil (a whirlwind) and even a sea devil (aka the angler fish, also known as the monkfish,

which is sometimes called the poor man’s lobster, which btw is not a reason to put fucking mayonnaise on it and you know who you are), but the etymology of blue devil escaped me. Well. Evidently blue devils are apparitions supposedly seen by sufferers of delirium tremens, aka the DTs, which explains why I never heard of them, because the DTs are an affliction that affects those who lack the willpower to not give up drinking. It’s come to mean over the years more than that: its synonyms include “mulligrubs,” a word meaning stomach ache or colic and “collywobbles,” meaning depression and which apocryphally was shortened to refer to a type of music allegedly inspired by melancholia, aka the blues. This seems a bit fanciful to me, but I read it on the internets so it must be true. As a mascot for athletic teams the term seems to have arisen from the moniker of a brave group of World War I French paratroopers called “les Diables Bleus,” which seems apocryphal to me as well, I mean a brave Frenchman, pull the other one.

 

Mercer, saint john's

Bear Necessities

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Well I’m back to burst your collective bubbles. For how long who knows but for the time being: you’re welcome.

I couldn’t be arsed to take any notes during last night’s 109-79 drubbing of the hapless Bad News Mercer Bears, but I did have a few observations I thought to share:

*I’d say Mercer is awful but that’d be insulting to awful.

* Have to be impressed by the final score – St. John’s scored 100 points for the first time since they scored 100 points last year – but what impressed me was how classy it was of Coach Third Choice to leave his starters in to almost the end of the game so that Mercer didn’t  feel like they were being condescended to.

* For all the talk of defense amongst various basketball intelligentsia today I thought it pretty porous. Mercer got a ton of open looks from three and got the ball inside seemingly at will – although that might have been ploy by CTC because Mercer’s big men made the Frankenstein monster look like a ballerina. If Ömer Yurtseven gets the ball on the block like that I suspect there might be a different outcome. And neither was I terribly impressed with the press – it created turnovers but a lot of them were the result of boneheadedness of the sort that happen when your point guard careens wildly down court, leaps into the air and looks around for someone to pass to. And anyway I suspect that a good coach – Doug Mcdermott’s father for example – is going to run more than one inbound play all game, aka throw the inbound pass to the corner and hope for the best once the point guard gets trapped.

* Of the players not a lot was to be gleaned: Figueroa looks like a late first round draft pick; it’s a shame Heron can’t shoot threes against Arizona State as well as he can against the likes of Mercer and Sacred Heart – but for his spectacular choke last year SJU might have won one more NCAA game than Mercer has this century, which they have not, Mercer having beaten DoOk within recent memory and SJ having squeaked by Northern Arizona shortly after the Y2K bug ended life on the planet Earth as we know it; fun’s favorite player Marcellus Earlington showed why he’s fun’s favorite player; Roberts is very active – regarding the latter two it’s obvious that a year working with Mitch Richmond really paid off for them and kudos to Coach Chris Mullin for sacrificing some production last year to allow these two fine student athletes to adapt to college, because as the great Steve Lavin once said “Some things are more important than winning,” although in Lavin’s case what was more important than winning was a getting a table at Rao’s where he could stuff himself with carbohydrates, the fat slob; hopefully Williams has some sort of lingering injury because he looks like less than he looked like last year; if Rutherford is forced to play point for extended periods of time this year is going to be even longer than it’s already going to be; Champagnie seems to have some basketball instincts; Sears does not; and David Caraher looks like Tim Doyle lite, which is unfortunate because he can’t transfer to Northwestern.

* Hoping Jim Gaffney and company shake off their early season rust: they called only 49 fouls, which isn’t even two a minute. They did though accord SJU the home field advantage for a change, because SJU got away with a lot of things they might not get away with against Villanova, which need I remind you last year played an entire game without committing a foul. Off the top of my head, Heron’s forearm shiver to some guy on an inbound play; Figueroa pushing off on a step back three; and Earlington routinely hooking guys on his way to the basket.

*Announcers though were in midseason form. Sarah Kustok – who’s a pretty chipper person considering her father is in prison for murdering her mother (she testified on his behalf) – said eight minutes into the first game of the season that Marcellus Earlington was assuming a bigger role “thus far this season” than he had last season and then the rest of the time she and Brian Custer babbled about sneakers.

* Yes I know wags, hopefully I shake off the early season rust as well.