I find myself with little interesting to say about St John’s 85-73 loss to Marquette Wednesday night in Wisconsin. I even wrote that in my notes: “I have nothing to say” it says. As losses go it was entirely predictable: a road game in another time zone in front of 12,000 or so antagonistic fans, not to mention Brian O’Connell. I can’t even work up the energy to slam floor slapping dope Steve Wojoasdjhgfski, a mediocre basketball player, mind and coach. (I was struck however by the fact that Marquette, with a full complement of players and a worse SOS has a mere two more wins than SJU, a team that recently loss 11 straight.) Instead I look forward: they’re at .500, they have three games left, they win two and they’re in the NIT, which is just about where I figure they’d be in year three of the five year rebuild. Their destiny is in their hands, let’s see what they’re made of.
Despite playing pretty poorly in the first half St John’s was within a basket with the ball with halftime looming. A bad shot by I am Marvin Clark with too much time left on the clock though led to a MU three that instigated a 17-1 run that effectively ended the game. St John’s got within ten or so midway through the second half but the outcome was never in doubt. And let’s face it SJU isn’t going to win a lot of games when Brian Trimble is the leading scorer. Which is not a slam on Trimble: he’s played surprisingly well for an unheralded freshman: he makes his shots, is a pretty good rebounder and doesn’t turn the ball over. I know it’s fashionable to say that he’s fat but personally I’d take three more unheralded kids just like him, each one fatter than the next. Adonis DeLaRosa was too fat to play at SJ as well, and he’s averaging nearly a double double at Kent State in 30 minutes a game. Shamorie Ponds had for him an off night: 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists. And Justin Simon was not far behind: 14 points, six assists and five rebounds. But let me say this about Justin Simon: he’s a dumb player; he’s Malik Ellison dumb. He turns the ball over way too much and it’s not because he’s dribbling the ball off his foot or travelling or whatever. It’s because he tries to make spectacular plays when mundane ones would suffice. Case in point was a stupid lob he threw on a three on one break a minute or two into the game. I find it really annoying and especially because he doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes. Speaking of annoying I am Marvin Clark stood flexing under the basket after making a lay up that brought his .500 team that recently lost 11 games in a row to within 15 or whatever late in the second half. Note to I am Marvin Clark: do fewer curls, practice more shooting. Tariq Owens was pretty much invisible, as he has been since his father announced that Tariq should be the focal point of the offense and should shoot every time he touches the ball. Ahmed was invisible as well, despite which I was surprised to see him not start the second half, not because of anything he did on the court but because the team’s won four straight with him starting the second half. Mullin’s so superstitious he won’t let Ron Linfonte change his tie but he’s juggling the line up in mid February. Seems Lavin-esque to me. And dopey Amar Alibegowitz got Kassoum Yakwe’s few minutes; I can only assume they were part of his don’t let the door hit you on the way out farewell tour.
The game was called on YES by Jeff Levering, partner to the great Bob Eucker on the Brewer’s radio network; unfortunately this was a basketball game. Also unfortunate was that rather than Eucker he was partnered with colorman Dickie Simpkins, because Dickie Simpkins stinks. In the first place he’s called Dickie – I mean, what sort of a grown ass man introduces himself as Dickie, especially considering that his Christian name is LuBara Dixon Simpkins, Lubara being the God of Pestilence who was commanded by God to slaughter the people of Babylon, which he did with extreme prejudice, every man, woman, child, and oxen. Whereas a dickie is a piece of man’s clothing that was once called a “detachable bosom.” So let’s see, I can either be the agent of the biblical god’s old testament wrath, or a piece of haberdashery. Yeah, haberdashery, definitely, call me Dickie. In the second place he routinely makes factually incorrect statements: St John’s is a good rebounding team, no they’re not, they’re awful, they’re the 337th best rebounding team in the country out of 351, which carry the one means they suck; Marcus Lovett is transferring, no he isn’t, he quit on his team mates; and comparing Rhonda Andrew Rousey and his stupid Marco Bourgault bouffant to Dwayne Wade. And in the third place and most egregiously Simpkins tries to be cute, like e.g. he kept calling Sam Hauser a PA, which evidently stands for “professional assassin,” which I call that DB, which stands for douchebaggery; and he even comes equipped with stupid graphics to promote his stupid catchphrase HASHTAG OMG which sounds like a trending topic on Instabook or whatever platform pubescent girls frequent to discuss how dreamy Justin Bieber is. HASHTAG GFY.
Speaking of professional assassins and in honor of black history month I note that yesterday was the 53rd anniversary of the execution of Malcolm Little, aka Malcolm X, at the hands of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Ever prescient the liberal bastion New York Times wrote after his death that Malcolm was a “twisted … evil man.” I did not find him so, at least not in his autobiography, which I recently re read. In fact I like to think that we are kindred spirits he and I, sharing as we do a healthy contempt for white people and the US government.
And speaking again of assassins, finally a word about the shooting that took place in Florida this week. Obviously a horrific event – tragic even – and I’d like to think that it’s one that I can view without my usual cheap cynicism, but regular readers know that it’s not. What’s shocking to me about it – and it’s not that a child can be so disturbed that he feels that murder is a rational consequent of resentment, that to me is a logical outcome of post moderism, because if everything is normal nothing is evil – is the lesson that this national teaching moment (gag me with a spoon) has engendered. It’s not that our world is an dystopian mergence of chaos and mayhem and murder and that man is the most pernicious species of vermin that nature has suffered to crawl across the face of earth, the antidote to which is liberty and eternal vigilance. It’s that man is evolving toward perfection in a potential utopia, which potential is only achievable through carefully calibrated intervention by the very same government that runs the schools that trained the murderer and failed to protect his victims. That is, that the antidote to brutality is totalitarianism. Because I think we tried that one already and all we learned was that arbeit macht frei. Which is why I ordered an AR 15 this week, because if CNN and MSNBC and Nancy Pelosi think I shouldn’t have one than I’m pretty sure I need one. The only more absurd aspect of the national discussion that’s taken place in the wake of the shooting is the idea that we should partake in a new children’s crusade: that we should listen to the opinions of the survivors, because their suffering – well, not their suffering, the suffering of the classmates they bullied in the lunch room – has made them wise. That seems to me like anointing the survivors of the Titanic as experts on ice bergs. I do though take solace in the fact that the last Children’s Crusade resulted in the rape, murder and enslavement of 30 thousand similarly delusional teens, who wandered off into the desert, never to be heard from again and hope that after their 15 minutes of fame have expired these brats are similarly expunged from the national consciousness.
