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.