Green Means Go For Storm

The Johnny Jungle bus trip was canceled.

All my friends bailed on making the trip.

Parking was atrocious and expensive in Philly (25 cents for 10 minutes).

I felt guilty lying to the hospital saying I was visiting a sick relative as I parked there instead.

The bar we arranged to meet up at said they were closed.

To top it off I saw hundreds of ugly green sweaters walking the sidewalks of University City.

….

….

….We’re doomed.

I walked into the Palestra and already heard buzzers. I missed the first two minutes of the game and the score was 9-2 in favor of Siena.

As I sat down, I looked around for the panic button. It was now 12-4 in favor of Siena so I switched my seat thinking that would help things out.

I finally nested in somewhere behind the St. John’s bench and the Red Storm, to my surprise, started to play some really good team basketball finally putting me at ease.

Despite heading into the locker room at the half trailing by five 36-31, the Red Storm built up some confidence and swagger to come out with in the 2nd half.

The Red Storm trailed by 9 points with 17:34 remaining in the game and the bench sparked the comeback. Malik Stith, Dwight Hardy, and Justin Brownlee were instrumental combining for 28 points on 48% shooting (11-23). Another new comer, Omari Lawerence grabbed 7 rebounds in 9 minutes of play contributing to many fast break 3 on 2 opportunities.

The usual suspects (Pennsylvania boys) DJ Kennedy, Paris Horne, and Sean Evans all had big games. Kennedy might have had the most impressive performance of the season out shining his counter foe Edwin Ubiles for 23 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists.

Now lets breakdown our notes from our pre game column Calm Before the Storm: Siena versus the Storm

Keys to the Game:

Don’t Get Rattled. Down early in the game…St. John’s came back. Being down early in the 2nd half….St. John’s came back. St. John’s also limited their turnovers in the 2nd half. As much as I looked for the panic button sometimes, the team didn’t do it once. They showed a lot of maturity. I’m going to have to bust Justin Burrell’s chops for finding the open man in the 10th row of the stands. Wow that pass was ugly.

Grade: A

Defend the Basket. St. John’s did an excellent job of closing out on their man around the perimeter preventing penetration not allowing many open looks. Thank goodness they didn’t because Siena knocked down almost all their open looks. Having said that (that was for all the Curb fans out there) St. John’s did allow a big time performance from another front court player. Rossiter played chess while we played checkers. He made our bigs look foolish leaving their feet and over committing.

Grade: B+

Defend the Basket From Rossiter, Franklin, etc. I touched a little upon this in the last key but we’ll go a little deeper. Rossiter and Franklin combined for 9 offensive rebounds and 22 overall. They passed back and forth to each other getting many easy looks. They are quite a tandem up front and hopefully our guys learned a little something. On the bright side we didn’t foul them too often as they only got to the free throw line a combined 9 times and better yet they missed 4 of those attempts.

Grade: C-

With Authority! Yes! Yes! Yes! Finally we went to the basket and finished strong. We didn’t settle for deep jumpers. Stop us if you can. We’re bigger, faster, stronger. What are you gonna do! DJ Kennedy got at least 6 of his 8 made baskets off of layups. Paris Horne had some big slams in transition and Sean Evans had some rim rocking put backs.

Grade: A+

Take Advantage. We definitely had our fair share of runs in this game and forced Siena to be out of rhythm in their half court offense. A smart and deep rotation was used to our advantage getting out and running for a full 40 minutes. Our starters looked fresh at the end of the game while Siena looked completely gassed.

Grade: A

Overall GPA: 3.75 (Deans List)

No time to waste. Check out the Calm Before the Storm for the game tomorrow against Temple. Saturday Night, Brotherly Love