RECAP: I try not to plow the same ground when writing these things but it bears repeating that it’s in no one’s best interest that I’m stumbling around looking for martini fixings at 9 PM on a Friday night. But stumbling around I was and for my trouble I was rewarded with the first disappointment of the young basketball season, a 92-86 road loss to the Minnesota Golden Gophers. Things started off promisingly enough: Saint John’s was ahead 22-9 when the bottom fell out. They were outscored 32 to 9 to close out the half and never got Minnesota’s 10 point half time lead down to more than five or so the rest of the way. Not a bad loss and not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but it was certainly a winnable one that got away …. It’s still a little early in the year to be poring over the box score and anyway anyone with eyes could see that the difference in the game was Minnesota freshman Amir Coffey and his 30 points, which included 11 of 12 from the free throw line. Besides which the box score would not reveal this important stat: that too many players on this year’s team wear headbands. There’s like four of them. That’s way too many …. Michigan State up next, then six winnable games before Syracuse at the carrier Dome. That’d make us about 8-3 going into league games, which seems about right
PLAYERS: Lovett had 31 points and five assists in 38 minutes, a performance one knowledgeable Saint John’s fan described as “awful.” If so we could use three more awful players, we might make the NIT …. In his third college game Shamorie Ponds had 23 points and 8 rebounds in 39 minutes, including 5 of 9 from three. Looks to be a star in the making, get aboard the Ponds train now … Ahmed double doubled but still appears a bit uncomfortable in the offense. Notice I didn’t say anything about the defense … Yawke and Sima combined for 12 points and 13 rebounds, which would be a good night for either one of them but is disappointing if you consider them in tandem. Sima though was 5 of 6 from the free throw line …. After Tariq Owens grabbed 12 rebounds versus mighty Baruch College one well respected basketball analyst stated emphatically that the debate about whether Christian Jones might have helped the team this year was over. It’s a shame no one told Tariq Owens that before last night’s game, which he fouled out of in 14 minutes … And he was the best player off the bench. The rest of them scored zero points in 36 minutes, led by the best shooter Saint John’s has had since Chris Mullin, who scored zero points in 19 minutes. Mussini is now 2 for 10 from three since torching Bethune Cooke a couple of weeks ago and is shooting 19 of 68 from three since last January – take away the B-C game he’s 14 of 62, that’s 22 percent. At what point do people realize that he’s just not a very good basketball player. Probably not until he gets a tattoo. Or a tan …. I still believe that Malik Ellison is the sort of four year player that all good programs need, it’s just too bad this is only year two. Although I’d be happy to see him relegated to garbage minutes I don’t see how that’s going to happen, which means we’re going to be suffering through performances like last night, in which he missed six shots in eleven minutes …. Freudenberger and Alibegovix rounded out the incompetence by combining for zero points and one rebound but to be fair they only played six minutes between them
NOTES: Minnesota is coached by little Ricky Pitino, who as far as I have been able to determine through cursory internet research was not spawned as the result of his repulsive father’s congress with a stranger in a crowded restaurant in front of members of his coaching staff but through normal marital coitus with Mrs. Pitino. If I were Rick the elder though I might ask for a DNA test because little Ricky looks suspiciously like the actor Simon Helberg, aka Howard Wollowitz from the Big Bang Theory
Uncanny, right? Hopefully that’s just a happy coincidence, if Missus Pitino was unfaithful to her husband that’d be worse than 9-11 …. I did a long and hilarious screed about the state of Minnesota the last time these two teams met (a nine point win in Lavin’s last year) but failed to note the many illustrious Golden Gophers graduates – like the Bearcat another apocryphal animal, there’s no such thing as a golden gopher – including world class dope Tom Friedman, failed presidential candidates Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, alleged serial rapist Henry Fonda, Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan, and a bevy of television legends including Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert), Jennifer Marlowe (Burt Reynold’s heavy bag Loni Anderson), Gomez Adams (John Astin), David Michael Starsky Kenneth Richard “Hutch” Hutchinson (David Soul) and Napoleon Solo (Man from UNCLE Robert Vaughn, a notorious lefty who passed away from a broken heart last week at age 83) … Speaking of resting in peace the great Sharon Jones passed away from pancreatic cancer last night at the much too young age of 60. Take 3 minutes and 33 seconds and listen to this, you’ll be happy you did
GAME: During the Steve Lavin era I used to lean forward in my seat to hear the inanities he’d spout in his postgame interviews. Sunday morning I was on the edge of my seat rooting for Chris Mullin to defeat Saint Francis Brooklyn at Madison Square Garden, which they did 63-56. What a difference a year makes – although not in terms of the Saint Francis Saint John’s rivalry: Saint John’s has won 32 of the last 33, their only loss recently coming on Lou Carnesecca Night in 2004, when some guy named Tory Cavalieri lit up Cedric Jackson for 26 points in a 53-52 squeaker … This game was even until Saint Francis went on an 11-2 run about halfway through the first period to go up nine; my notes accompanying the event read “you’ve got to be kidding me.” But lo! A Mullin timeout, after which everyone’s favorites whipping boy Durand Johnson scored 10 points to key a Severe 20-2 spurt by Saint John’s that left them eight up at halftime. Saint John’s had stretched the lead to 13 with 8 minutes left when Saint Francis it made a game: Amar Albivicwitch turned the ball over on 17 straight possessions and if it were not for the fact that his brutal play was met by an even greater level of incompetence by Saint Francis, the outcome would have been very different. Fittingly Durand Johnson made an off balance jumper and a couple of free throws to put the game away … Both teams shot poorly: a combined 35 percent from the floor and 25 percent from three. Saint John’s made their FTs, outrebounded Saint Francis by 12 (45-33) and had 12, count ‘em, 12 blocks. They turned the ball over 18 times though, which is not particularly good … A reader emails and says fun, “How come you give Mullin a pass on his wardrobe when you gave Lavin such a hard time about his.” Well reader, the answer is:
Seriously, who gives a shit what Chris Mullin wears? Chris Mullin can wear whatever he wants. There is in fact no aspect of Mullin’s tenure thus far that has given me a moment of disquiet. He’s clearly having fun on the sidelines, and it’s fun for me to see Chris Mullin having fun. He seems to know how to coach the team, even if the team does not know how to be coached by him – I almost get the feeling that he’s waiting for his roster to get to the point where it can benefit from his expertise. This doesn’t seem to be an issue, given the recruiting. In game I like his strategy and rotations, although I frankly don’t understand the Mussini dribbles around pointlessly at the top of the key offense he’s running – perhaps he’s just putting the system he intends to use in place for when he has an actual point guard … Riding a one game winning streak and up next Niagara, coached by another SJU alumnus Chris Casey. Fans might be tempted to sleep on Niagara but recall that the only non Georgetown loss in Chris Mullin’s Final Four year was to the Purple Eagles, although to be fair to Mullin starting PG Mike Moses did not play and the then #4 Redmen were force to rely on unreliable underclassman Mark Jackson, whose 3 TOs in the last 2 minutes sealed the loss.
PLAYERS: Sima had a double double (17 points, 13 rebounds and 5 blocks) but Durand Johnson was the player of the game. He led the first half run that put them on top and made big shots late. I don’t know that he’s a starter at the three – maybe start Yawke there and bring Johnson off the bench. Although maybe I just think that because he has a little hitch in his jump shot that reminds me of Vinnie Johnson. Which is the only thing Durand does that reminds me of VJ … Former great white hope Frederico Mussini is now in his last two games 3 for 18 from the floor and 1 for 10 from three. Welcome to the NEC son. His struggles are so palpable that it’s almost worth putting up with Ron Mvouika at point guard. Which it’s probably not. Mvouika was awful Sunday, maybe he was hungover or something, quite the pathetic display … Christian Jones was solid: 13 point and 9 rebounds. If Christian Jones played for 30 minutes like Christian Jones plays for 12 minutes Christian Jones would be a hell of a ball player … Once again Balamou looked better posting up than he did driving wildly to the basket … Yawke looks like the real deal. He needs a little meat on him but he’s going to be a nice player … Jessica Albawhatever really just almost gave the game away. I’m literally shaking my head thinking of something awful to say about him, but you people have eyes, he stinks.
NOTES: Most basketball fans would readily agree that Norm Roberts has had a marvelous career. As a teenager he won a PSAL championship at Springfield Gardens; he was a 1000-point scorer at Queens College, where his retired # 15 jersey hangs in the rafters; as a grown-up he’s been to three Elite Eights and a Final Four as an assistant to some of the most accomplished coaches in recent memory, Bill Self and Billy Donovan. That’s a hell of a resume and infinitely more impressive than those of the racist middle-management dopes who are continually bringing up his moribund record as a head coach Queen’s College as if it defines his career. Little noticed though is Roberts impressive coaching tree: three of Norm’s assistants have gone on to their own head coaching careers, Glen Braica at St Francis, Chris Casey at Niagara, and Jose Martin at Marist; his former assistants Kimani Young and Fred Quartlebaum are on staff at Minnesota and Kansas respectively. Compare that to Louie’s tree, which had one sclerotic branch in Brain Mahoney; or to Mike Jarvis, who was forced to drag his otherwise unemployable son Mike Junior around like a withered thalidomide flipper arm … Saint Francis Brooklyn is named for – wait for it – Saint Francis, this one of Assisi, who, if the stories are true, was a dyed in the wool lunatic. Amongst other things Francis preached the Gospel of Christ to birds, mediated a dispute between a wolf and a pack of dogs, saw apparitions of angels, and bled from his hands and feet in imitation of the Baby Jesus. If you saw this guy babbling outside Penn Station you’d cross the street to avoid having to talk to him. Instead he’s the patron Saint of Italy. Go figure …There are in the hierarchy of Catholic saints a total of nine Francises (Francisi?), including Francis Caracciolo , the patron saint of cooks; Francis of Paola, who raised his nephew from the dead and kept a pet trout called Antonella; Francis Ferdinand de Capillas, whose efforts to woo the heathens to the one true god ended unsuccessfully when he was decapitated in China; and Saint Francis Xavier, whose body travelled in death as much as Paola’s did in life. Francis X died in China and was buried there. Thereafter his body was disinterred and reburied in present day Malaysia. Later his patron Diogo Pereira removed the corpse from the grave and brought it his house for safekeeping until finally shipping it to India, where it now rests in a handmade silver casket. All except his right arm, the one he used to bless people, which was considered so holy that so it was removed and shipped back to Rome, where it is worshipped today by morbid supplicants who attribute to it various miracles and cures … Saint Francis alumni include Saint John’s own Barry Rohrssen; delusional presidential candidate Peter King; James Luisi, who played one year in the NBA for the Baltimore Bullets before going on to play Jim Rockford’s bete noire Lieutenant Doug Chapman on the Rockford Files; and former referee Dick Bavetta, who was investigated by the FBI for fixing the NBA finals at the behest of NBA commissioner David Stern.
GAME: Usually when I sit down to write these gambols I’m in a pretty good mood – even on those morning when I’m not yet or still drunk. I’m about to talk about Saint John’s basketball, which is a very old and important part of my life, and I get to write, which I enjoy – or at least enjoy having done afterwards – and I get to make fun of Steve Lavin, who’s just the sort of gaseous bloated self-important buffoon that I revel in taking the piss out of. But there’s little joy in in funville this morning, not after Saint John’s was humiliated by Butler 85-62 in Indiana on Tuesday night. I wish I could say I was surprised, but as someone who figured Lavin out early on I’m not: I saw this sort of meltdown coming a mile away and at the risk of injuring myself patting me on the back have being writing about it in one form or another for a couple of months now. I knew it would happen, but I didn’t think it would happen now, not in early February, not when the small or baby steps the team has been taking up the mountain or incline would just be beginning to take effect or operation so that the players would be able to do something special or memorable in their senior or last year. For Lavin this could not have come at a worse time – and I’m not talking about while he’s looking to renegotiate his contract, which, good luck with that – but because this period between the Super Bowl and spring training is just the time when lazy sportswriters casting about for column fodder have nothing better to do than take pot shots at an otherwise irrelevant basketball program. Irrelevant because the season was effectively over after the Creighton loss. Oh sure, there are still Lavin lickspittles and toadies on various Saint John’s fan boards parsing their way to an NCAA six-seed: if they win the next eight and then make the finals of the BE tournament and Zzzzzz sorry I dozed off there for a moment: the way they go about it reminds me of those apocryphal stories of Hitler down in his bunker with Eva Braun pushing nonexistent panzer divisions across a map of Europe in 1945. There is no there there. And no doubt various dopes who predicted an Elite Eight appearance in November are probably this morning still counseling patience; I’d give odds that somewhere this morning someone has compared Lavin to Norm Roberts as proof that things aren’t so bad. Well I have news for those dummies: things are so bad. Last night the wheels came off. This was as appalling a performance as I can recall going back to the Notre Dame game a couple of years ago, a performance of which both the players and staff should feel ashamed. Say what you will about Roberts and his players, but they at least took their beatings like men, not like little punk bitches. The question is now: will Saint John’s be able to hold it together enough to avoid a cosmic meltdown. And the answer is: who knows. You’d like to think so. You’d like to think that alleged educator Steve “there’s more important things than winning” Lavin gives half a shit enough and knows half enough about human nature to right the sunken ship but he gives the impression that he’s more concerned about his dinner reservations than he is about almost anything else. So we’ll see … To the extent that the game deserves mention, I suppose I’ll mention it. Saint John’s came out flat, as they usually do on the road: they missed 10 of their first 12 shots and if it hadn’t been for sloppy play by Butler it would have been over a lot sooner than it was. Instead, Saint John’s hung around and managed to keep it respectable until halftime. The second half was another story and perhaps lost in the shuffle surrounding Obekpa’s ejection (about which more later) is that this was another in a long line of second half Saint John’s meltdowns – other than Providence SJU has been manhandled by teams after halftime going back half a dozen games. Butler guard Kevin Dunham noted that it was Butler’s intention to “come out in the second half and kind of punch them in the mouth,“ which is exactly what happened, which played into Steve Lavin’s second half strategy, which was to get punched in to mouth and throw in the towel. Saint John’s was down 15 when Pointer was given a technical for arguing that he had not fouled a three point shooter – in Pointer’s defense he was likely surprised because he’s complained about every foul that’s ever been called against him and has never been T’ed up once before – which resulted in 5 free throws and a 20 point lead Butler lead. In retrospect the technical might have been the best thing that could have happened. Not only did Butler stop playing with any intensity figuring the game was over, but the referees, who previously hadn’t been calling anything – the Obekpa assault happened right in front of one of them and he was going to let them play on until he saw blood spurting out of the gaping wound on the back of the BU player’s head – started calling everything, which resulted in clock stoppages and the sort of ugly herky jerky play at which Saint John’s excels. Saint John’s got it within eight before they ran out of gas and Butler closed it out with a whatever to nothing run, I can’t be arsed to check. It’s worth noting though that at game’s end Butler had their starters in and meanwhile Saint John’s ran out a line-up of Branch, Myles Stewart, Felix Balamou, Dom Pointer and was running isolations for Doughy De La Rosa down in the box. That it was only a 20 point loss in retrospect seems an act of charity … Lavin seem resigned after the game, saying only that he was disappointed and that it was time to move on and prepare for Creighton. You could tell he was starting to feel the heat though, as during the game his helmet of carefully coifed hair was slightly mussed. If by preparing for Creighton Lavin meant that he’s going to prepare his team to not further humiliate themselves and the university they represent, that would be a good start.
PLAYERS: D’Angelo Harrison scored his 2000th career point. He deserves better than this. This is the third or fourth game in a row now that he’s been curiously passive on offense. It can only be that he’s hurt worse than he’s letting on … Pointer had 19 points and kept them in it early with a variety of circus shots that went in despite the laws of physics. He attempted to replicate the absurd three pointer he made at the end of the of the first half versus Providence by taking a similarly ridiculous shot, except this one was an air ball. Pointer took a dook-esque dive under the basket with not a player within 5 feet of him in an attempt to draw a foul and for which he is being roundly mocked this morning on the internet, which mocking is roundly deserved. I mean, get a load of this
… I was surprised to see that Jordan took 21 shots – it didn’t seem to me like it was that many or that he was forcing it any more than usual, except late. Anyway, most of them didn’t go in. He finished with 17 points to go along with 4 rebounds and 4 assists … Funfave Felix Balamou got a bunch of run in the second half and scored several garbage points around the rim. Ever the optimist Lavin pointed to Balamou’s play as proof that things were moving in the right direction … Phil Greene air-balled two lay ups on his way to a 6 point performance. LOL at Phil Greene, he stinks … Things were so bad that even Chris Jones got in the game after both Joey DLR and Amir Amirovickovich got burned on multiple possessions by some lumbering doofus who was slightly less lead footed than are they. Jones immediately got a put back, his first basket since the Long Beach game in December, which no doubt cheered the hearts of Saint John’s fans who were as late as last November touting Jones as a replacement for NBA forward Jakarr Sampson, who they deemed a cancer and for whom they blame last year’s dismal performance. Who will they blame for last night I wonder … Which brings us to Chris Obekpa, whose ridiculous antics – his inappropriate grinning, his stupid shorts, his Princess Leia hairdo, his flexing and woofing , his chippy play – I’ve been chronicling in this space for some time now. At the risk of giving myself yet another reach around so soon after the one I gave myself in the first paragraph, which can lead to chafing and aggravate the prostate, it was just last game where I noted that Obekpa’s increasingly bizarre behavior made him difficult to not dislike and suggested than someone give him a swift kick in the ass. Evidently no one did. Last night eight minutes in Obekpa stalked a defenseless Butler player down the court and viciously elbowed him in the back of the head, sending him to the locker room with a possible concussion. Obekpa was rightfully ejected – he should have been arrested, and possibly deported, but I guess that wasn’t an option. One wonders whether Coach Eye-roll will finally take measures to rein in Obekpa’s behavior, which has been out of control for some time now. Let me quote myself, from the Fordham recap:
This is not the first time Obekpa has demonstrated immature and untoward behavior on the court and I am hopeful that Coach Lavin recognizes that Obekpa has anger issues and suspends him for his own good for the rest of the season so that he can seek counseling without the distraction of basketball because some things are more important than winning. Ha, just kidding of course, Lavin is coaching for a contract extension, he wouldn’t suspend Obekpa if they found a couple of nun’s heads rolling around in the back seat of a car he stole from a crippled Gulf War veteran …
If I wasn’t used to being right all the time I might even be embarrassed.
NOTES: I stopped even taking notes during the game last night it was so bad and was going to skip this section altogether but am for some reason this morning reminded of the prolific serial killer Carl Panzram, pictured above. At this point I no longer question these digressions so let’s where this leads, if anywhere. Panzram was born in Minnesota in 1890 and sent to a work farm at an early age as an incorrigible youth, where in an attempt at rehabilitation he was beaten and sodomized for several years. These attempts failed and he burned the reformatory to the ground. He was committed to a second reformatory where further attempts at rehabilitation were similarly unavailing. None of this worked out too well for Panzram, but it was even worse for the 1000 men Panzram admitted to raping after he was released and even worser for the 25 he admitted to murdering. After drifting about for several years Panzram joined the army, which didn’t much affect his criminal lifestyle and he was eventually sent to Leavenworth by virtue of an order of future President William Howard Taft, then Secretary of War. Panzram promptly escaped from prison and made his way to NY, where he burgled Taft’s house; he used the proceeds from the robbery to buy a yacht, onto which he lured unsuspecting sailors, who he robbed, raped and murdered. He dumped the bodies near Execution Point in Long Island Sound, so named for the practice by British revolutionary war authorities of chaining suspected traitors to the rocks at low tide and leaving them to drown at high. Soon growing bored with cavorting thusly Panzram travelled to Africa, where he continued his killing spree. He was arrested after his return to the states while in the midst of plotting to kill the entire population of NYC by poisoning the water supply. Panzram was convicted of various crimes and sentenced to prison, where he promptly beat an inmate to death for “bothering” him, and was thereafter sentenced to be hanged. For all these things, Panzram said in his journals “I am not in the least bit sorry. I wish the entire human race had one neck and I had my hands around it.” (Panzram’s writings, published in the book Killer: A Journal of Murder, are remarkable for their lucidity and the beauty of his prose. And that’s not even sarcasm. It is remarkable writing and not just for the juxtaposition of what he’s saying with how he’s saying it.) Incorrigible to the end Panzram, spat in the face of his executioner and it is his last words of which I was thinking of when I started this paragraph: “Hurry up you Hoosier bastard, I could have killed a dozen men while you’ve been screwing around,” Hoosier being the official demonym for residents of the state of Indiana, where last night’s massacre took place. That is I suppose a thin reed upon which to hang 500 words, but it’s more than last night’s game deserves.
GAME: Usually my game notes comprise two or three pages of amusing scrawling, which makes this part of the recap a breeze, but this morning I’m at a bit of a loss: there are a mere nine entries comprising 10 lines, one of which is about the odds of Al Sharpton being named Grand Klagon of the Ku Klux Klan, which I have no idea what it means. So I’m left to point out only that Saint John’s defeated Long Beach State 66-49 at Alumni Hall Monday night in what was the worst display of college basketball I’ve seen since Friday. Playing without Rysheed Jordan – home nursing an upset stomach, more about which later – and with D’Angelo Harrison in foul trouble for most of the first half, Saint John’s struggled to find a rhythm most of the game until they put LBS away late. And in fact if LBS had not been so inept – they shot 30 percent from the floor, from three, and even from the free throw line – things might have turned out differently. But they did not. Which means that Saint John’s rides six game winning streak into Sunday’s long-awaited grudge match against Tulane, the last one before the real season starts. All in all and despite their multitudinous ineptitudes they’re a little ahead of where I thought they’d be at this point in the season, in which I figured they had a Sweet 16 ceiling if everything broke their way. Of course I thought they had the same ceiling last year and we saw how that turned out. I’m a bit concerned that they’ve so far this year played one real road game and have not yet played outside NY State, but I guess we’ll see what we see … Once again Saint John’s was not all that good by the numbers: 45 percent from the floor, 3 for 15 from 3, and an appalling 56 percent from the free throw line, where they’re 20 of 35 over the past two games. On the bright side their free throw defense remains exemplary: opponents are now shooting 110 of 186 … Bit of an interesting cut in to a huddle late in the game where Lavin, always coaching his tender charges, advised them to “keep working the thirteen, because they don’t know what the fuck it is.” I listened to it a bunch of times and concluded that thirteen was one of the defensive sets, maybe the 1-3, the intricacies of which Lavin thought the Long Beach players found perplexing. No word from the FCC about sanctions for Lavin’s potty mouth. Mrs. Fun found his language appalling, but then she’s something of a delicate, whereas I became inured to swearing after sitting behind Louie for lo those many years and nowadays work in profanity like Modigliani worked in oils
PLAYERS: Chris Obekpa had 16 points, 8 rebounds and 6 blocks and was dominant in the middle, although much of his production came against Temidayo Yussef, a freshman. Obekpa had less success against fifth year senior Eric McKnight, who played sparingly despite looking to me like the best player in yellow. I point this out only to highlight Obekpa’s delusional thinking in regards the NBA, where everyone is a fifth year senior. Also to be unremittingly negative, because I know some people dig that … Dom Pointer, who Lavin described in the post-game presser as a “Batman, Spiderman and a super hero,” had 11 points and 7 rebounds. That output seems pretty pedestrian for someone who has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men – especially considering that that’s what Jakarr Sampson averaged over his career and he was, I am continually assured by knowledgeable fans, awful at basketball. Anyway, I guess during the day Pointer works at Costco under his secret identity and then at night he pulls off his red vest and becomes Batman. One game after claiming that the team played better without Chris Obekpa versus Saint Mary’s, Pointer dissed Rysheed Jordan, noting that the latter’s loss did not make LBS “a tougher game to negotiate” … Phil Greene met his quota of nine missed shots in leading the team with 16 points. Made just 2 of 8 threes to drop below 30 percent for the season. Through 10 games Greene has taken only 12 fewer shots than D’Angelo Harrison while accounting for nearly 100 fewer points … speaking of Superman, Harrison scored under double figures for the first time I can remember in a while. Ten rebounds though … Lavin lauded Jamal Branch for “really orchestrating our offensive attack,” which offensive attack barely managed 60 points. Branch played extended minutes because Rysheed Jordan was home in Philadelphia nursing an alleged stomach virus. Assuming that Jordan is really ill and that the story of Jordan’s absence is true – and it’s eerily similar to last year when Jordan nearly quit the team – it still sets my Spidey sense tingling. Is it too much to think that someone doctored Jordan’s food? Think of the suspects and motives: Branch, a senior jealous of the younger player’s talent; Felix Balamou, angry at losing a year of his career and anxious for floor time; and Lavin himself, whose abject failures on the recruiting trail have left him in a precarious position next year should Jordan bolt. Regardless, something isn’t right, and it would not surprise me if a Baylor situation revealed itself down the line … Balamou did not show much in 10 minutes; Myles Stewart missed a couple of threes; and the rest of them got garbage minutes
NOTES: The game was called by Bob Wenzel, who evidently had the bad judgment to have a third bottle wine with dinner, with the end result that he just would not shut the fuck up until I was forced to shut him up by muting him with about five minutes to go. Wenzel – a former coach who had only 6 winning seasons out of 15 and only won 20 games once – is usually an amiable drunk, but last night he was out of control: at one point he went to commercial screaming “two blocks … four blocks … six blocks … eight blocks” ostensibly in relation to Obekpa’s defense, but sounding instead like a retarded child counting his toys Christmas morning; and then later described the repulsive Jim Burr, the worst basketball referee of all time, whose every appearance on the court cheapens amateur athletics, as “one of the greats.” Hiccup. … LBS is coached by Dan Monson, who coincidentally has coached at Gonzaga, where he was 52–17, Minnesota, where he was 118-106, and now Long Beach, where he’s a nearly identical 119-108. Clearly Gonzaga was the outlier … Long Beach is in the midst of an extended road trip, at the end of which they’ll be about 5 and 10. Wenzel – who knows something about losing – opined that Monson scheduled the trip to collect the guaranteed money that acting as cannon fodder for programs like Louisville and Syracuse brings: up to $ 100,000 per game Wenzel said. If true that seems a cynical way to run a program, since with ten losses by New Year’s day LBS will be out of NCAA tournament consideration unless they can run the table in the WACWCC Big West. This did not stop sideline reporter Jon Rothstein – displaying all the warmth and sincerity of a Ukrainian kidney broker – from opining that LBS was looking at the SJU game as a Selection Sunday resume builder … Long Beach State’s basketball program first achieved national prominence under Jerry Tarkanian, whose teams went 122-20 in four years, never losing more than 5 games in a season. Each year LBS reached the regional semi-finals of the NCAA tournament and twice the finals, losing three of those games to UCLA, then in the midst of winning eight straight national championships. Despite UCLA’s dominance and the proximity of the two schools, Steve Lavin’s alleged mentor John Wooden refused to schedule LBS during the regular season. Which is kind of like the relationship Saint John’s has with Hofstra and Iona, except with NIT banners … LBS alumni include Richard Bach, author of the putrid bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull; the terrifically unfunny Steve Martin; hack director Steven Spielberg; chubby songstress Karen Carpenter; baseball players Jason Gigumby, Evan Longoria, Harold Reynolds and Troy Tulowitzki; footballers George Allen, Willie Brown and Terrell Davis; and the great George “the Iceman” Gervin, inventor of the finger roll …Yeah, about that Jordan being poisoned stuff, I don’t really believe any of that. See what happened is that I have some readers who are offended by the allegedly negative tone my little monkeyshines take, special little snowflakes that they are. One reader went so far as to favor me with an essay explaining why I am “irrelevant.” (Let us leave aside the inherent absurdity of explaining to an irrelevant thing why the irrelevant thing is irrelevant.) It is not, as you might imagine, that I produce an obscure blog read by 300 people that describes the exploits of a college basketball program that has made one final four since Kaiser Wilhelm invaded Austria Hungary. No, it’s much more serious than that: it’s because I’m “not funny anymore.” Which is on the scale of stupid somewhere between “exquisitely” and “mistakes own imbecilities for cleverness.” So anyway I threw that poisoning stuff in there for their benefit, because it amuses me to confound humorless dopes. I should though note that this is not the first time that a SJU player has missed a game suffering from food poisoning – it happened a bunch of times last year. There’s really only a couple of ways to get the creeping crud, the most common of which is through the ingestion of human feces. What happens is that one of you slobs has a bowel movement and in the act of wiping yourself gets fecal matter on your hands and because you don’t wash yourself like a civilized human being you spend the rest of the day depositing E.coli on every surface with which you come into contact, which surface is then touched by some innocent who then eats his lunch with your stool as a condiment. Which is why I have not touched a door knob or used a public toilet in 20 years. So please, in this holiday season, could you wash your hands after doing your business. If not for me, do it as a birthday present for the baby Jesus … Regular readers are aware that I play in a band called the Weasels, described by one wag as “XTC on PCP,” albums on sale in fine stores nowhere. In the old days one of our marketing schemes involved creating fictitious press notices announcing the release of this CD or that, which we’d fax to various newspapers around the country. (This does not sound terribly amusing now, but to be fair we were out of our minds on mescaline most of the time.) Anyway, you’d be surprised how many desperate for content entertainment desk editors printed the releases verbatim – this was in the old days, before journalists realized that they could win Pulitzer prizes for making up stories about gang rapes and 8 year old heroin addicts. One editor from the Sacramento Bee went so far as to put the non-existent Weasel CD “Hello My Name is Larry” on his list of top indy albums of the year. Anyway the Hasselhoff jpeg above is the fake cover I created for “Life Is a Beach.” Holds up pretty well I think … Finally, speaking of George Gervin, here’s this:
Saint John’s fans usually don’t have a lot to be thankful for but this year is different: we can be thankful for Elliot Eliason, the Minnesota forward whose atrocious performance – he threw an outlet pass to Dom Pointer, who subsequently posterized him, and one; committed a stupid foul and got T’d up for it; and fouled Harrison on a three late – provided the margin of victory that will afford SJU the opportunity to be humiliated by Gonzaga Friday night in the NIT championship game. I had this game down as a loss – to be fair I had not seen Minnesota and so did not know how awful they are – with a win in the consolation game and so coming out of this weekend we are about right where I figured: on the road to the NIT. The players spent much of the week talking about how they had to treat this as an NCAA tournament game – not that they’d recognize one – so it was nice to see that they didn’t come out as flat as usual. And in fact it was Minnesota that started slowly, throwing the ball out of bounds and bouncing the ball off their feet and missing everything insight, at least until freshman Nate Mason replaced starting point guard Andre Hollins, after which things quickly turned to shit for Saint John’s on the way to a 10 point half time deficit. Now, fluids have run down Rick Pitino’s leg that know more about basketball than Steve Lavin, so one would think that a fertilized zygote like Rick Junior would be at a huge theoretical advantage, but that was not the case in the second half Wednesday: in a Lavinesque move MiniPitini sat Mason for most of the second half, allowing Saint John’s to hang around until a humiliating and protracted scoring drought – MU scored only 10 points in the last 12 minutes – ended it. Some of the credit for that drought probably goes to the Saint John’s defense, but not as much as certain delusional Saint John’s fans think … The stats were per usual: Saint John’s was mediocre from the field (40 %) and once again awful from 3 – they’re now shooting 22 percent for the year. They missed 15 free throws, managed 9 assists on only 23 made baskets, and turned the ball over 18 times. Fortunately Minnesota out-sucked them, shooting 35 percent from the floor turning the ball over 21 times. What was somewhat surprising was that SJ outrebounded MU 51 – 39. I say surprising because MU is huge across the front line, but their biggest player Mo Walker (an Adonis clone at 6’10 250) is the softest Midwest big man since Bob’s Big Boy: he made Kyle Cuffe look like Maurice Lucas … For his part Lavin did not do anything terribly stupid (other than once again wearing a sport coat over a sweat suit – it’s a shame that John Wooden, who probably put on a tie to go take a shit, failed to impart his fashion sense to his alleged protégé) and for the most part confined himself to jumping up and down on the sidelines pumping his fist. Sure, he burned some pointless time outs late – once after a Harrison field goal capped an 11-0 SJU run and once with 30 seconds to go up 8, immediately after which Chris Obekpa committed a foul to stop the clock and give MU one last gasp – but for Lavin reining in his stupid is as important a strategic device as backdoor screens were to Pete Carill so all in all this was a successful outing … I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the referees, who were atrocious. They called the first 35 minutes like a rugby scrum and the last 5 minutes like a badminton match, 40 personal fouls in all; the primary beneficiary was once again SJU, who were awarded 37 free throws to Minnesota’s 16. Despite SJU appalling foul shooting – they missed as many FTs as Minnesota took – the free throw differential once again accounted for the margin of victory. That’s the fourth time this season out of four for those of you scoring at home
PLAYERS: Harrison – who Lavin threw under the bus during his halftime interview – had 19 point and 9 rebounds and is averaging a double double for the year. Colormoron Dan Dakich noted that if Harrison “played with Chris Obekpa’s passion he could play in the NBA.” Dakich also claimed that “if everyone had Obekpa’s desire this team could compete for a national championship.” Dakich also spent an inordinate amount of time focused on the Obekpants ®, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Dakich’s mancrush finished with near a double double but was nowhere near the force that he’d been against Division 2 opponents: most of his points came from the FT line and he managed only three blocks … Rysheed Jordan is 18 points and 7 rebounds closer to playing professional basketball … Dumb Pointer – I can’t believe it took me three years to think of that – had 11 rebounds, 5 steals, and 8 points … Phil Greene had his usual 9 points on his usual sub 500 from the floor game. He did though credit where due hit a couple of big shots in the second half. Had a remarkable zero assists in 35 minutes and remains oh for 2014 from three … Jamal Branch played 12 pointless minutes. In the first half he threw a behind the back pass into traffic that was so stupid that even an imbecile like Dan Dakich was able to recognize it as “idiotic” and in the second did a spin move into the lane on a one on five fast break only to bounce off two Minnesota players who were standing motionless under the basket. He’s awful … Another fine game by Chris “Addition by Subtraction” Jones, who had two points and 1 rebound in 9 minutes. On the bright side he still remains the only Johnnie to attempt to take a charge this year. Jakarr who? … Of the rest only Balalou played and only 3 minutes. Note that five players played 88 percent of the available minutes. On the one hand it’s refreshing that Lavin has figured out who his best five players are – last year it took him until March to work that out – but on the other the new Wonder Five are but a sprained ankle away from disaster. Evidently Lavin realizes that after 4 years of failure and ineptitude he risks being exposed as a fraud should he fail to make the tournament this year and so is going to ride his best horses and if they drop beneath him on his way to glory so be it
NOTES: Sideline reporter John Goodman noted that MU guard Daquein McNeil was suspended after an incident in which he’d “allegedly had it with his 28 year old girlfriend.” I don’t think that’s what he meant to say – I listened to it three times to make sure – but that’s what he said, a Freudian slip which leads me to suggest to Mrs. Goodman that she makes sure John’s dinner is on the table tonight when he gets home, and hot if she knows what’s good for her … Minnesota is coached by little Ricky Pitino, who as far as I have been able to determine through cursory internet research was not spawned as the result of his repulsive father’s congress with a stranger in a crowded restaurant in front of members of his coaching staff but through normal marital relations with Mrs. Pitino. Former Gopher coaches include Bill Fitch, Bill Musselman, Clem Haskins and Tubby Smith. Musselman’s tenure was marked by a near fatal on court brawl in which NYC’s own Ron Behagen nearly beat an Ohio State player to death and Haskins by an academic scandal that vacated a run to the Final Four. Former gophers include HOFers Lou Hudson and Kevin McHale, Dave Winfield, Jim Brewer, Mychal Thompson, Flip Saunders, Voshon Lenard, former Knicks Trent Tucker and Ray Williams, and the great Archie Clark, inventor of the cross-over dribble …. As for Minnesota itself, it’s pretty messed up, much of this probably due to its close proximity to Canada, the worst country in the world. The state motto is (predictably) French and their politicians comprise a motley conga line of professional wrestlers, failed comedians, career criminals and communist sympathizers. Minnesota is the site of the largest execution in US history – 38 likely innocent Sioux were hung in the aftermath of the Dakota War of 1862 – and its most important cultural artifact is either a shopping center – the Mall of America – or a cartoon – Rocky and Bullwinkle, which spawned Cracked Fairy Tales, Dudley Do-Right, Peabody’s Improbable History and the World of Commander McBragg … Rocky and Bullwinkle was narrated by William Conrad, of Cannon and Jake and the Fat Man fame. Oddly, Conrad was great friends with polymath Anthony Burgess, who died 10 years ago this week at his home in Saint John’s Wood, London. For the illiterates in the audience, and let’s face it that would be most of you, Burgess is probably best known for having written A Clockwork Orange, which is not his worst book, but is close to it … Today is of course Thanksgiving, the day on which Americans commemorate the transfer of smallpox infected blankets to the Native American race traitor Sasquatch, a member of the Wambaugh tribe who helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter in Plymouth in exchange for 40 pieces of silver and a mule. Although we think of Thanksgiving as a uniquely American holiday involving turkey and crappy Detroit Lions football it is in fact a harvest festival celebrated in various countries around the world, including Canada, although in the great white north it is instead of Thanksgiving Day called “Thanksgiving, Eh?” and commemorates the fact that being Canadian they really having nothing to be grateful for.
The center cannot hold. And neither can the point guard.
