RECAP: Steve Lavin was such an atrocious coach that every once in a while you still catch a whiff of the stench of his failure. Sunday afternoon that smell took the form of three Seton Hall upperclassmen who Lavin couldn’t be bothered recruiting because he was too busy being played for a fool by Isaiahs Whitehead and Briscoe: Brooklyn’s Khadeen Carrington, Bennie Blanco Desi Rodriguez from the Bronx and Angelo Delgado – he’s not from anywhere, he has his own zip code – combined for 42 points, 24 rebounds and 12 assists in Seton Hall’s 86-73 defeat of Saint John’s in New Jersey. The final margin makes it seem like it might have been a game: for those of you who were lucky enough to have missed it, it wasn’t. Seton Hall went up early and stayed there and made Saint John’s look foolish in the process. To the extent that there was a bright side and there wasn’t much of one it’s that once Seton Hall punched their teeth in Saint John’s didn’t curl up in a ball and allow Seton Hall to kick them in the head and stomach until their legs got tired, which is what happened a couple of weeks ago versus Georgetown. Instead, Saint John’s got to its feet and threw a few feeble punches, which, okay they didn’t land, but at least they didn’t stay down. That’s progress. The fact is that they were just out talented and especially out muscled and there’s nothing to be done about that, at least not this year, when some nights the only lesson they’ll learn is how to take their beatings like men … Once again the graphic shows exactly what went on, saving me the trouble of describing it and you the trouble of reading about it
If you were to look only at the Saint John’s side of the box score things don’t seem too bad: 40 percent from the floor, 30 percent from three, 33 rebounds, 10 assists, only nine turnovers, that isn’t awful. But compared to Seton Hall’s numbers – 50 percent from the floor, 40 percent from three, and 20 assists on 32 made baskets and 45 rebounds (+ 12) – they are. If like me you’re no great fan of the Pirates and their rat faced coach Kevin Willard you’ll be pleased to note that they shot 14 of 25 from the free throw line wherefrom they are now at 60 percent from the year, which poor shooting will hopefully bite them in the ass at some point, preferably in the Big East tournament. Colorman Len Elmore kept mentioning their tournament chances but he must have been reading last year’s game notes because this year their chances appear to be zero.
PLAYERS: Only two Saint John’s players bothered to show up, Marcus Lovett, who had an acrobatic 22 points and Bashir Ahmed, a bust who finished with 19 points and 7 rebounds, including a four-point play early. Get him out of there!! … Shamorie Ponds was 3 for 11 from the field and is 15 of 45 from the floor over his last four games. Knowledgeable Saint John’s fans who’ve scoured his Snaptagram account claim that his recent run of poor play has led him to consider transferring, which if these gossipy old biddies are to be believed makes him about the ninth player who’ll leave the program at season’s end. Personally I don’t follow any pubescent boys social media accounts (except for Harry Styles obviously, he’s dreamy) so I can’t confirm …. Those thuds you heard yesterday afternoon were the bodies of people hurling themselves off the Malik Ellison bandwagon , which they had jumped on after his 20 point performance against DePaul. On the bright side yesterday neither Rich Ackerman nor Len Elmore mentioned his parentage, which is the first time that’s happened in a year and a half … Together Saint John’s front line of Yawke, Owens, Williams and Alibegowtch had 14 points and 9 rebounds. Whereas SH’s front line of Angelo Delgado had 21 points and 20 rebounds …. Missini’s only points came on one of his heroic dagger threes late in the second half that pulled Saint John’s with 17. Unfortunately his teammates were unable to capitalize on the huge swing in momentum and the lead soon drifted back up to 18.
NOTES: I’d be remiss if I failed to mention this week’s big event: Spice Girl Geri Halliwell had her second child, a girl. Just kidding, it was a boy. No, just kidding again. Of course I’m talking about the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States. Although I wouldn’t describe myself as a Trump supporter – I’m more of a set the whole thing on fire and sit across the street drinking a six pack watching it burn supporter – I certainly understand the anyone other than who’s there now impulse that got him elected: having been bequeathed a republic we are now subjects of an corrupt oligarchy; once free citizens the minutia of our lives – from what kind of light bulbs we use to what sort of toilet we shit in – is controlled by a cadre of unelected clerks and bureaucrats whose seeming sole goal in life is to maintain their ravenous suckling at the public teat. In more civilized times these sort of people had their heads guillotined and mounted on stakes as a warning to other would-be tyrants, but these times are far from civilized. So I’ll take what I can get, especially if it includes a thumb jabbed deep in the eye of my alleged masters and betters. As fat slob Michael Moore said, this was the greatest fuck you in the history of fuck yous, and it was to aficionados of fuck yous as satisfying as Michael Moore finds his third breakfast.
Odds are that Trump is not the answer to the restoration of the republic – why should he succeed where Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams failed? And besides, the problem with political nihilism – besides that it postulates that there are no right questions, much less answers – is that nature abhors a vacuum, which means that every time you throw the bums out another crew of bums appears to take their place; history, his and ours, suggests that he will turn out to be just that. But so far he says the right things: that you and I are free citizens of the greatest and richest country in the history of mankind; that our liberties are under assault by fascists in the name of the greater good; that US blood and treasure should be expended to enable US citizens to pursue life, liberty, and property; and that the ideas underlying the expansion of liberty should rule the body politic.
Do I believe all that? Fuck yeah. Do I believe that he believes it? Fuck no. Probably he doesn’t believe in anything, other than his own vanities – he’s a child of privilege who parlayed his gifts into a career as a vapid celebrity. It’s fair to say that he is a shallow man. But also to be fair probably no more shallow than any other man who sought to be the most powerful man in the world: Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, these are not well adjusted individuals. And unlike that crew Trump is not a sociopath: he’s a game show host. Which is why I don’t share the phantasmagorical fears of the left, who after two months of ameliorating their disappointment with coloring books and stuffed animals emerged briefly from beneath their couches to throw a public temper tantrum in our nation’s capital where, dressed up in Halloween costumes and led by downtrodden dissidents like Katie Perry and Madonna Ciccone they spoke truth to power by setting fire to park benches and limousines. Well, they needn’t have bothered. Donald Trump is as likely to rob you of your civil liberties as Wink Martindale is to kidnap your children and chain them up in the basement as his personal sex slaves.
It goes without saying that as a libertarian I’m delighted to see the hind quarters of President Jugears and his cadre of Stalinist cronies: they have done incalculable damage to the republic and to our rights and liberties. I wish I could say that we’ve seen the last of him in public life, but his type never go away: they too much crave the spotlight. I cannot for the life of me fathom why someone with so much contempt for a nation and its citizens would want to govern them, much less bask in their adulation, but it seems his life blood. Which is something I’ve noticed about democratic presidents: they never go away. Jimmy Carter’s still plaguing us, and the satyr Bill Clinton – odd how the Clinton crime family foundation shut its doors just this week on the heels of Hillary’s defeat isn’t it, move along, nothing here to see – and Obama has already announced his plans to spend his retirement hectoring us for our unamerican behavior, presumably between rounds of golf and writing his third autobiography – Winston Churchill and Otto Von Bismarck got by with one – and vacuuming in huge sums of corporate cash. Whereas Reagan disappeared to his ranch with Nancy, and George Bush the younger retired graciously, and Bush senior you only heard from once a year when he jumped out of an airplane on his birthday. I think it’s because republican presidents had lives before politics that they went back to, whereas for democrats politics is the only life they know. They’re like those strip mall stores that are always having going out of business sales but never actually do. Well, for this week at least, everything that must go did.