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Redmen dot dum

In the wake of St John’s disappointing first round tournament loss I checked in at redman dot com this afternoon, home of the basketball intelligentsia. Suffice it to say that everything is rotten in the state of Jamaica. And the stench is not just from the bay. According to the various college basketball insiders there and former Division 1 athletes and current CYO coaches and self-important in the know drama queen avatar shifters the following changes are impending:

Mullin, who hates coaching, is leaving for the west coast to be closer to his family, just as he did last year

Matt A is leaving for Nebraska, just as he left last year for LSU.

Of the players, these nine guys are gone:

Ponds (turning pro)
Heron (turning pro)
Simon (grad transfer)

Trimble (he posted Oprah-esq pablum about every change being an opportunity, hence he’s leaving, just as he did when he posted a picture of an airplane on his Twitter feed earlier this year)

Keita, a low D1 player, is transferring

As are all the freshmen, because as one knowledgeable insider said, “I’d be shocked if any of our current freshmen spend their sophomore years at St. John’s,” because Williams is unhappy with his playing time, as is Roberts; and Earlington – whose father tweeted recently that he was the future of SJ basketball – is fleeing to Rutgers to play football.

More bad news. Of the incoming players Tabor is decommitting, Cam Mack is staying but he’s a head case and Wright, Caraher, Manuel and Steere are not D1 players, because someone watched a 30 second youtube video.

On the bright side lazy and shiftless Mitch Richmond is staying, along with boy wonder Greg St Jean and LJ Figueroa. No word about the walk-ons.

Also on the bright side our next coach is lined up: if Jared Grasso (11-42 lifetime as a head coach) is not available we’re going to break open the piggy bank for Rick Pitino.

Also also on the bright side new AD Mike Cragg is going to address the “composition of the current roster,” because that’s what big time AD’s do. They micromanage the basketball roster. And he has the experience to do so, because you know that at dook Cragg had long fruitful discussions with Mike Schrewshrenski about how and who he should recruit when.

I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in my life, mostly having to do with broads (too many fast ones), horses (too many slow ones) and drinking and drugs (not enough of either). One of the smarter things I’ve done though is delete my RDC account, because that place is a cesspool: a bunch of middle aged men who haven’t seen their dicks since the Clinton administration stalking teenage boys and slandering them on the basis of their interpretation of their Instagram emojis. And when they’re not doing that they’re talking about how classy they find themselves and how classless they find everyone else. The only interesting things I read were the various mentions of me and what I might be doing, because evidently I am legend and live in their heads.

Jesus fuck those cunts make me feel dirty. And I’m a piece of shit.

Send it in jerome

I went back to look at what I wrote last year after the season ended as it did this year when Xavier kicked the shit out of St John’s Thursday afternoon at Madison Square Garden and the similarities are eerie. Last year St John’s beat Georgetown in the 8/9 game Wednesday and got pummeled by the number one seed in the next round, which game I fast forwarded through the last ten minutes of, sober. Uncanny. Other similarities include my disinclination to rehash the game and the appendage of some lame existential ramblings at the end. So at least you have something to look forward to.

Regarding the season, obviously it was a disappointment. It started out well enough – I know it’s hard to remember back that far but St John’s was at one point 10-2, having lost only to Missouri (currently 20-11) and then # 16 Arizona State (also currently 20-11). Fans were checking plane schedules to Charlotte, where St John’s was a projected 10 seed and calling on all the wiles they’d honed coaching third grade girls CYO to devise a scheme to stop Tennessee’s sophomore phenom Grant Williams, Tennessee being St John’s projected first round match up. But then Marcus Lovett got a hang nail or whatever and the losing streak happened and the season imploded. And just when things couldn’t get any blacker, when had all of us given up hope, just when we thought we were out, they pulled us back in, in what might have been the most miraculous week in St John’s basketball history: beating dook at the Garden on national television and number one Villanova on their home floor, ditto. And then, having gotten our hopes up – for an NIT bid at least – they let us down, losing three of their last four, leaving themselves with the impossible task of winning four games in four days in the best college basketball conference tournament in the country, because fuck the ACC. And today we saw how that worked out. So it’s another season down the toilet. I will though say pretty definitively that taking into account the 10-2 start and dook and Villanova and the Butler double overtime game which was maybe the best most exciting St John’s basketball game I’ve ever seen – I mean probably it’s not, but it was pretty good – this has to have been the best worst basketball season of my life. So there’s that.

Before moving onto more important things, just a quick note about the scuffle that allegedly took place after today’s game. This is not the first time Xavier has nearly come to blows with its opponent. In 2011 they were involved in the so called Crosstown Shootout brawl, when Xavier and Cincinnati’s benches emptied and a brawl for the ages ensued. This past December Mick Cronin – and ask yourself how awful someone would have to be to make Mick Cronin look like a sympathetic figure – had to be restrained from attacking JP Mascara – who looks like he should be muzzled like Hannibal Lector, that’s how crazy he seems – who told Cronin several times to fuck off and invited him to suck his cock. And then today. Two things might be a coincidence. Three things is a pattern. And in each of those cases proboscis monkey looking motherfucker Chris Mack

blamed the other guy. If Mack is to believed his delicate charges are angels who play hard nosed basketball and the other guys are thugs: if you want to infer that when he and his fans call the other guys thugs they use that word because it’s impolite to call them niggers, I wouldn’t argue the point. Because you know that’s exactly what they’re thinking. The fact is that today Xavier beat a team comprising inter alia Amar Alibeowitz and a walk on whose name I can’t recall, and if you’re dunking and woofing up 30 against those guys, that belies a dearth of character and humanity and a misunderstanding of sportsmanship and college athletics. Which is not to excuse St John’s: everybody takes a beating every once in a while and it’s good if you can take it like a man. But still: fuck Xavier and fuck Chris Mack. Because karma’s a bitch. They should all die in a plane crash.

Seeing that this is the last recap of the year – and perhaps forever – I thought I’d hand out some season grades. These are on a true curve: someone gets an A and someone gets and F.

PONDS – A: Despite the fact that today he was less a Pond than a puddle, what else am I going to give him? Ponds is preternaturally talented, as good a freshman as ST John’s has had since probably his coach and potentially as good as him and Berry and everyone else all-time if he were to stay four years and I don’t say that lightly. What Ponds doesn’t have – or maybe he does and I don’t see it – is fire in his belly. I recall early in the season there was a quote of his floating around, and I paraphrase because I don’t remember it exactly, but it was to the effect that it doesn’t matter what happens this year because the money will always be there. Which is a troubling mind set. Because that quote reflects complacency and nobody who ever became anybody got to be somebody by being complacent. I kind of wrote it off when I heard it as the immature expression of an immature idea by an immature adult. Unfortunately his early season performance disabused me of that notion: the flick of the wrist 40 foot jump shots and the behind the back no look passes and the rest of the Brooklyn insouciance – all of which is reflected in his stats: 40 percent from the field and 25 percent from three and 3 turnovers a game. He’s too good to have those numbers and he’s too good to not show up like he did today and like he did against Butler in January. I can’t be arsed to look but I don’t remember Chris Mullin ever scoring two points in a game, or Walter Berry. And that’s his head and that’s his heart. That said, if he doesn’t come back next year we’re fucked. Fortunately he’s not an NBA player as currently configured and I expect he will.

SIMON – B PLUS: Simon – 12 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals a game – essentially had Dom Pointer’s amazing senior year – 12 points, seven rebounds, three assists, two steals – as a sophomore. If he tightens up his handle and develops a jump shot – and his isn’t pretty, although he’s at 40 percent from three for the season – he’s going to be an All-American in two years and maybe a lottery pick.

CLARK – B: not the player we were hoping for, which was a bruising power forward. Whereas he’s sort of a brobdingnagian three. That said, what he does he does well. He shoots threes at a good clip, has not a bad handle and is explosive going to the basket. He is though suspect on defense and fouls way to much – he averages a foul every ten minutes and fouled out of 10 games – but with natural improvement is on track to have a stellar senior year.

AHMED – B MINUS. Everybody hates Ahmed. I don’t. Everyone hated Jakarr Sampson too. I didn’t. Obviously he’s a flawed player. But his career stats – 12 points, 5 rebounds, 35 % three – match up favorably with any number of favorably regarded St John’s players. Willie Glass averaged 11 and 5; Shelton Jones averaged 11 and 6; Billy Goodwin averaged 13 and 5. The thing that annoyed me most about Ahmed was that he could have been better than he was: there were times that he rebounded as authoritatively as any player St John’s has in recent memory. He just didn’t do it all the time: he could have had ten rebounds a game if he cared to. And of course there was his free throw shooting, which you can’t play his game and miss four of ten free throws. Essentially James Scott lite, but I had a soft spot for James Scott.

 

OWENS – C: beats up on pre season opponents , disappears when it counts. His father might think he should shoot every time he touches the ball but I don’t. Have a fucking milk shake, it won’t kill you.

TRIMBLE – C MINUS: He’s an average freshman and I would have given him a C but for his mouthing off at Mullin last week. Good shooter, tries on defense. My own philosophy about freshmen is that they should be seen and not heard. In a real program he wouldn’t have played. Definitely a keeper and the sort of four year player every program needs.

ALIBAGOITZ – D PLUS: Some wag on a St John’s forum gave Amar a B as a season grade, which unless the B stood for bad I’ll have what he’s having, and that’s on top of what I’ve had. The gem of Steve Lavin’s 2015 recruiting class has had four years to learn how to play basketball and for the most part has not. Yeah he played well the last couple of games and maybe he could have contributed more this season but let’s face it, he stinks: his greatest skill on the basketball court is waving a towel. So in conclusion: on the way out don’t let the door hit you and take the stench of the Lavin years with you.

YAKWE – D: It’s a good thing this blog only goes back a couple of years because I spent a good portion of Yawke’s freshman year raving about his play and his potential and reading today what I wrote then would be embarrassing and I don’t embarrass easily. I don’t know what happened to him and at this point I don’t really care. Clearly he has a foot out the door and the rest of him following that foot would be best for all involved. I still think that in the right environment against lesser competition – a mid major program like Iona for example – he could be a contributor.

LOVETT – F MINUS: I’m currently reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, which I’ve never read – which I mention not because I’m a pretentious fuck, although probably I am – but to make a circuitous point. The Comedy is one of those books that’s considered a classic that almost no one reads, like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (which is too long), Finnegans Wake (which is gibberish) and the Origin of Species (which is hokey pseudo science, in which Darwin postulates that if the theory of evolution is true – and it isn’t, the theory of evolution is slightly less believable than a literal interpretation of the Bible – that future generations will find evidence of transitional species in the fossil record, of which there isn’t any and what there is is made up). Anyway I found a nice old copy with crazy old William Blake’s illustrations


at a book sale a while ago and it’s been sitting on my shelf forever and I decided this winter to slog my way through it, which I’ve been doing a canto or so a day. (For those of you scoring at home a canto is essentially a long boring poem.) Comedy is Dante’s narration of a guided tour of Hell given to him by the poet Virgil. At the center of hell is Satan – makes sense – and surrounding Beelzebub in concentric circles – each circle corresponding to a deadly sin – are his minions and sinners and the closer they are to him in hell the worse they were on earth. Towards the outside are not so bad deadly self-directed sins – lust, gluttony, wrath – and further down heretics and tyrants and sodomites and sorcerers, all of whom were bad actors whose actions were directed outwards. Nearest Satan are the worst sinners who he reckons were for example Cain, who invented murder when he slew his brother Abel; Judas, who betrayed the Baby Jesus; and the prophet Muhammad, who caused the schism between his followers and the one true god (let me add a hasty allegedly to that, lest I get my head cut off.) Anyway I bring this all up to note that if St John’s had a ninth level of Hell Marcus Lovett would be its newest resident. (Other residents include Mike Jarvis, Chris Obekpa, Abe Keita, and Lou Alcindor. To those of you who are surprised that I don’t have Lavin there, Lavin was merely stupid, needy and incompetent, none of which is a sin.) Because Lovett blew this season up through self interest and greed. I have no problem with a kid doing what’s best for himself but I have absolutely no doubt that Marcus Lovett doesn’t know what’s best for himself and the best proof of that is that he’s having his career managed by Marcus Lovett Sr, a developmentally disabled stage mother with a near moron IQ. No doubt Marcus will go on to a lucrative career playing basketball for money in Europe and god bless him but if I were the general manager of a basketball team and someone came to me and said I have a 6 foot 180 pounds guard with suspect knees who falls over every time he takes a jump shot I’d take a pass, but as I noted last time you’ll never get anywhere underestimating the stupidity of the other guy.

MULLEN MULLIN – C PLUS: It should be a C but it’s Chris Mullin, so I bumped him up half a grade. Obviously the results were not what any of us would have hoped and you are what your record says you are. That aside, he looks active and engaged on the sidelines and he did a good job holding his team together in adverse circumstances – as bad as things got his players never quit on him and he never quit on them. Although he’s been recruiting well and strategy is overrated he probably nonetheless needs to adjust his staff a bit: Matt can’t be the only guy out there recruiting and having no one on the staff with college basketball experience can’t be helpful. Someone like Mark Gottfried, currently floating around the D league might be a good fit. Next year’s a big one. I hope Chris Mullin’s up to it. And because he’s Chris Mullin I’d wouldn’t bet against him. PS, there’s been talk this year about Mullin riding the referees. Today I hear d him say a couple of things I found hilarious: first, when Ahmed was given a foul in the first half that was Trimble’s he said something like you can’t identify the right player because there was no foul in the first place. The other time he was jawing at John Gaffney – who I know it doesn’t seem possible but he makes Pat Driscoll look like Solomon – and he said “If you had a feel for the game it would fucking help. It’d really fucking help.” Which yes it would, absolutely, but maybe that’s not something you want to say to their faces.

So that’s that. We have all of us survived another disappointing college basketball season and are now one more disappointing college basketball season closer to death. (I told my dentist the last time I had my tooth cleaned that according to actuarial tables every time I visit him I’m 2 percent closer to death than I was the last time I saw him and that every time I see him that two percent creeps closer to 5 percent and then soon enough it will be creeping closer to ten. He laughed but the hygienist looked at me weird, but she’s new. She’ll come around eventually, they all do.) I don’t know what the future holds: whether I’ll be alive next year or if so whether I’ll have the energy to do this again and if I have the energy to do this again you’ll have the energy to put up with it. In the meanwhile, enjoy the Kentucky Derby, work on your tan, shoot off some fireworks, and stuff your fat faces with as many lobster rolls as you can washed down with Brooklyn IPAs. I’m out of here. See you in the funny papers.

Po’ Boy

I’ve been dreading this moment since the horn sounded on March 9th of 2017, when St John’s was last seen dropping a 41-point squeaker to Villanova. Not the sounding of the horn that will herald the beginning of a new St John’s basketball season, one that will inevitably end in failure and disappointment. That I’m inured to. What I was dreading was the task of chronicling it. So much so in fact that for most of the summer I considered myself retired into casual fandom: that is, one who gets drunk, watches the game and gets progressively drunker and drunker until even lobster rolls sound appetizing. It wasn’t until mid Friday morning, when I trended briefly on Twitter – just below Roy Moore, the alleged ephebophile who will be the next senator from the great state of Mississippi and just above Louis CK, a serial Onanist – that I resigned myself to my fate: writing 60 thousand words about a basketball team that’ll make the NIT if everything goes well. Because 60 thousand is a lot of words, just about a novel: Lord of the Flies and As I Lay Dying come in under that and Nineteen Eighty-Four and Catcher in the Rye just above it. And really unless you’re a gaseous hack like David Foster Wallace or a blind lunatic like James Joyce that’s all you need. My own unfinished great American novel, a tale of Jewish gunfighter in the old west with a working title of A Man Called Chutzpah (although I’ve also considered The Oy!Klahoma Kid) clocks in around there, and if I put as much effort into that as I’m going to put into this I’d be short listed for a Booker Prize come October. But really, what’s a the value of a Nobel Prize in literature when weighed against the opportunity to rehash box scores and post pictures of titties on the internets for 200 readers. I think you’ll agree I made the right decision.

About the game there’s not a lot to say – it’s still early in the season as one genyious fanboy posted during the second half of St John’s first exhibition game a week ago – and besides at this point I can hardly tell one player from another. In  general they looked okay. The ball movement was there (17 assists on 25 made baskets) and there seemed to be a bit more effort on defense, although whether NOP shot 40 percent from the field and 30 percent from three because of St John’s defense or because they stink I can’t say. Lovett (23 points, 4 steals) and Ponds (12 points, 7 rebounds, six assists) looked as they are touted to be, one of the better back courts in the league and maybe the country. Clark and Simon looked like legitimate D1 players. Tariq Owens is still a twig but he had six rebounds in 20 minutes and made five of his six free throws and committed zero personal fouls and that’s not a misprint. Even Bryan Trimble looks like a player. The bad news is that the guys who’ll need to step up for St John’s to overachieve their way onto the tournament  bubble – Yawke, Ahmed and god help us Amar Alibagowich – did not look particularly sharp: Ahmed had four of SJ’s 11 turnovers, Yakwe had no points and no rebounds in eight minutes, and AA was worse than those two … For his part Mullin wore most of a suit and didn’t sit anywhere inappropriate and looked active and engaged. Which is good, because this is the year when things have to start getting better.

NOTES: I had a bit of a kerfuffle with Direct TV at the start of the game, which was supposed to be on but wasn’t. Credit them though, a quick call to a beddy beddy solly representative righted things, meaning I only missed the first 10 minutes or so. The bad news is that I had to watch in real time, meaning I had to sit through at least a dozen commercials for some weird cult called values dot com that featured John Lennon caterwauling his way through Imagine, which made me want to hang myself. I know it’s fashionable to think Lennon was the genius in the Beatles but at his worst he was just as treacly as McCartney and a pretentious hypocrite to boot: a faux socialist multimillionaire junkie who described himself as bigger than the Baby Jesus explaining how we could all live as one if only we had no possessions or gods, which lyrics he wrote on a $100,00 Steinway grand piano he could barely play in a chalet he rented in the south of France where he lived while his castle was being renovated. I also had to sit through the first appearance of Steve Lavin’s double chins during halftime. I don’t remember what was said but I’m sure it was stupid and self-aggrandizing and similarly shameless… New Orleans University is located in – wait for it – New Orleans, New Orleans being located in the Louisiana, home of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, who once won the Democratic Party vice presidential primary in the state of New Hampshire. (Look it up.) Famous alums include the lesbian Ellen DeGeneres; modern first collector and Emmy winner John Laroquette; former MLB players Wally Whitehurst, Jim Bullinger (one of five pitchers to have hit a home run on his first major league pitch) and Ellen’s favorite player Randy Bush, a two time World Series champion with the  Minnesota Twins; and the actor Billy Slaughter (no relation to Enos), who I’ve never heard of but who once appeared in a movie with Margot Robbie, the talented actress seen above …. New Orleans mascot is the privateers, privateers being a species of swashbuckling rapists that included such luminaries as Harvey Weinstein, Francis Drake, Captain Kidd (whose buried treasure I searched for futilely as a child during idyllic summers on Long Island’s north fork) and Jean Lafitte, an otherwise degenerate frog whose heroics in the battle of New Orleans in 1814 are as much responsible for existence of the United States as pretty much anyone. Still, he’s french, so fuck him. (Lavin’s a POS, check. Democrats are racist, check. The french suck, check.) Despite their recent entry into Division I the Privateers have arguably been as successful as St John’s over the past generation (five NCAA tournament appearances) and in their taste in head coaches as well: Butch Van Breda Koff, Tim Floyd, Tic Price, Monte Towe (all five foot seven of him) and Buzz Williams all coached there before moving on to better things, which used to be a show Louis CK produced, until yesterday, when it was discovered that he forced women to watch him pleasure himself. So having come full circle, imagine banging this for 20 years, you’d invite Mark David Chapman in for coffee:

 

Michael Graham, Crackers

GAME: Missus fun and I were out and about this afternoon and stopped in as we sometimes do to this little bar and grill in the middle of east buttfuck that for some reason produces the most delicious lobster rolls crab chowder you’ll ever taste. We sat down and ordered and having acclimated myself I heard over the jukebox blare of REO Speedwagon’s Greatest Hits something about coverage of the St John’s Georgetown game resuming after a commercial break: it turned out that we were sitting under a flat screen tuned to Fox Sports One. I thought for a second about asking them to change the channel but that far out in the country I don’t like to do anything other than overtip and so instead I called for the check and paid it in full and and we left, sans bisque. Had St John’s not defeated Georgetown 85-80 in the battle for 9th place at Madison Square Garden Saturday afternoon I would have been kicking myself, because the chowder is to die for. Since they did though and in a relatively thrilling fashion I’m happy to have forgone my lunch. Although this isn’t your vintage Georgetown team or even much of one – if John Thompson III were an apple he’d have fallen so far from the tree that you couldn’t tell what sort of fruit he was – if you’re an old school fan wins like this one and like the one over Syracuse are just a bit sweeter. Butler and Xavier might be St John’s current and threatening rivals but the mention of their name doesn’t produce the same sort of primitive visceral hatred that certain members of the old Big East do … So the game:

 

After a bit of back and forth and a Mullin time out St John’s took a commanding lead by virtue of a 17-point run midway through the first half that had everything to do with marvelous play by Federico Mussini, who hit back to back threes and scored 11 points in about five minutes. Just when they were on the verge of blowing things open – and after Mussini missed a technical free throw that opened the door – Georgetown went on a 17-point run of their own to take a one point lead into the half. St John’s could have folded then, or they could have folded in the first five minutes of the second half or they could have folded when Tariq Owens went to the locker room having rolled his ankle or they could have folded when Georgetown got within a basket on more than one occasion at game’s end. Instead they did not fold: credit their continuing growth and maturity; credit the home court advantage – they’ve now won four in a row at home; credit the presence of two hall of fame players on the sidelines. Credit whatever the hell you want. The fact is that St John’s has now won seven league games in one of the two or three best college basketball conferences in the country with what is approximately the least experienced team in the country – as opposed to the one game they won last year. I know that there are fans who were not happy with Mullin’s hiring and that those fans would rather St John’s lose than that their opinion of his hiring be proven wrong, but I think it’s pretty evident now that barring an unforeseen catastrophe next year – and no less an eminence than Seth Davis thinks St John’s prospects next year are rosy – those fans will have to learn to swallow. Or at least eat crow … Once again the referees were atrocious. They called 50 fouls in 40 minutes that resulted in 61 free throws that comprised 27 percent of the points scored. I might be able to overlook that, but what’s amazing about it is what they miss. In the first half Lovett was called for tripping a Georgetown player who was running down the court with his hand between Lovett’s legs: I’ve had third dates where I got less action. Ponds was called for a tripping foul by a referee running down the court with his back to the play. St John’s was denied a basket when a Georgetown player pulled the rim down and the ricochet sent the ball bounding into the stands: that one, the three guys whose job it is to see stuff just like that missed, whereas Mullin saw from 75 feet away. Which is the frustrating thing about it: the referees pretense that they are omniscient beings who notice every bump and jostle and stray hand would be a lot easier to believe if they didn’t miss the egregious obvious things, and they miss them every game. It’s not even vaguely an isolated event … I mentioned last time but will mention again: if you were to flip five bad losses this team had in the fall they’d be at about 18 wins and of their losses the worst would probably be Seton Hall on the road. They’d be a bubble NCAA team and at worst a lock for a favorable seed in the NIT. That doesn’t sound like much but a year and a half into a five year rebuild it really is … Two games left, a likely loss at Creighton and a give the points rematch versus Providence at home. Anyone who wouldn’t have signed up for that outcome in November is delusional.

PLAYERS: Despite the fact that Shamorie Pons

led all scorers with 24 points on 10 for 15 shooting I was all set to award the game ball to Federico Mussini – until he threw the ball away on an inbounds play under the basket with about a minute to go, at which point I was ready to ship him back to Palermo in stowage. Since they won that boneheaded play will fade into the annals of boneheadedry and we will instead choose to remember that Mussini scored 16 points on six shots in 22 minutes, including 11 points during St John’s 17-0 first half run … I spent the week defending Bashir Ahmed from all comers and he rewarded me by playing the worst first half he’s played since junior college. Thanks Bashir. He did though finish with 16 points and five rebounds, which is about what he’s been averaging since the first of the year and he had a huge block on a three in the corner to seal the victory … Lovett had 11 points and four assists but sat most of the second half late. He did though hit four huge free throws with under a minute left … Alibegovitch was pressed into service when Owens (four points, three blocks) rolled an ankle after a block under the basket. Before Owens injury AA had been his usual moribund self: he had a Lovett pass bounce off his chest on a two on one breakaway and airballed a finger roll, which you wouldn’t even think was possible. After Owens got hurt though something strange happened: Alibegowitch played competently. He provided yeoman’s defense against the terrifying Jesse Govan and with about two minutes left miraculously stole the ball and dunked it at the other end to give St John’s an eight point lead … Williams had six rebounds in 15 minutes … Yakwe had four fouls in 10 minutes and was not a factor. He does though seem to have stopped fumbling the ball every time it’s thrown to him, which is something of a positive, because sometimes catching the ball is the hardest part … I seem to have no notes about Malik Ellison except that he made four free throws late and the box score says he had six points, six rebounds and two assists but my impression is that he stunk for most of the game and might have done less damage had he been wearing black. If you disagree, email me at MalikEllisonIsNotBraindead@theweaselsdotcom

NOTES: Dopey Steve Lavin showed up in the studio at halftime sporting a weak imitation Don Johnson stubble that’s presumably designed to camouflage his rapidly multiplying chins. Note to dopey Steve Lavin: it’s not working. He rewarded devotees of his Norm Crosby-esque commentary by noting that Villanova is “surgical in taking care of the basketball in terms of ball security” … After some hulking Georgetown player was T’ed up for shouldering Darien Williams under the basket after a hard foul Donny Marshall said that that neither John Thompson nor his son would approved of that sort of rough play because “that’s not their kind of basketball.” That will come as a surprise to anyone who watched John Thompson the elder coach, because his teams comprised the dirtiest collection of thugs that ever donned a basketball uniform that did not say DOC on the back. He gave a scholarship to Michael Graham for god sake … I received a bit of push back via email this week about my characterization of a “well-known well-respected” poster as a “misanthrope.” One well-meaning poster even suggested that I delete that reference, which obviously is not happening. In the first place it was an anonymous reference to a screen name disguising the well-known poster’s identity, so no harm could come of it; in the second all 200 people who were going to read it already had by the time it would have been deleted; in the third the only reason this blog exists is so that I can say whatever I want without the sort of petty censorship to which I am routinely subjected in other venues; and finally consider the source, by which I mean me, who readers should take seriously at their own risk. But lest I had missed the point I went so far as to ask missus fun (before the chowder) if she thought I was out of line – and she spends half the time we spend in public kicking me under the table and the other half shooting me disapproving glances – and she said no, that she thought the term misanthrope something of a compliment, which is essentially what I said to my email correspondents: that one of the few things I find to like and admire about other people is their willingness to dislike people arbitrarily. My misgivings to the extent that I had any were that I used the wrong word – I should have said pessimist, because I meant to convey that there’s a sentiment common among long-suffering St John’s fans that something tragic is always around the corner: just this year there are rumors of half a dozen disgruntled players transferring – Lovett, Ponds, Yakwe and Ellison are unhappy; Missini, Alibagadounts and Freudenbeugh are in over their heads and have already booked flights back to the euro leagues; Chris Mullin’s house is on the market; and Mitch Richmond has one foot out the door and will be followed closely by Matt A. My own take on the sad sack St John’s basketball program is that things are bad enough without imagining abstract scenarios in which the sky is falling on the caving in roof. That was all I meant to say and to the extent that I said something else I misspoke. Frankly the word I worried about using when I used it was “ossified,” which is old time slang for inebriated, but since no one had a problem with that one I guess it’s fair to conclude that the misanthrope to whom I referred is a drunkard.

This week’s exchanges though got me to thinking about the nature of this project and the interactions that arise from it. Because let us be clear: although this is for you free entertainment, it’s not free for me. It costs me money to host this website and it costs me time and energy to write 30 sidesplitting essays a year and that doesn’t even take into account my bar tab. Complaining about it – and you would’t believe what people think to complain about – is like complaining about the quality of the cheese they give out as free samples at the grocery story: not only is it rude, but it’s not going to have any effect on the quality of the cheese, it’s just going to make the person handing out the cheese think you’re a cunt. Pro tip: if you don’t like cheese, don’t eat cheese. You’ll be happier and healthier for it. Trust me, I’m not thin-skinned and that’s not what this is about: there’s nothing the individual among you who despises me the most could think to say about me on your most miserable day that would not pale in comparison to the self-loathing I feel when I’m in a relatively good mood. And neither am I afraid of disagreement: there’s nothing I enjoy more than sharp elbows thrown in the marketplace of ideas. But to round the circle: why do you follow St John’s basketball if following St John’s basketball makes you anxious and depressed and prone to flights of fancy comprising phantasmagorical scenarios where tragedy strikes the program and sport you profess to love? If you don’t like eating cheese, why are you eating it? If you don’t like reading this, why are reading it? If the answer is because you like complaining about things that you think make you happy, then you need professional help and medication. Me, I like complaining, but only because I hate everything.

Regarding the emails I get, they’re essentially of two types. First there’s fan mail, which believe it or not I get occasionally: people taking time out of their busy lives to say that they enjoy what I write and to encourage it. This is at least rational. It’s like saying thanks for the fellatio after a professionally done blow job: it expresses consideration for the time and effort it’s taken the practitioner to perfect her art and to encourage her to practice it more often. Which equals more blow jobs. Which makes perfect sense.

What doesn’t make sense are the the malcontents. First there are people who write to say that they don’t enjoy reading my writing. One guy for example wrote a couple of months ago and said something to the effect that he read a couple of my pieces and that they didn’t hold his interest and that he wouldn’t be reading anymore and that I’m not as funny as I think I am. My initial response – besides how do you know how funny I think I am – was okay thanks, that makes you one of the seven and a half billion people on the planet who don’t read my blog. But why stop there? Why not tell me what movies you don’t watch and what books you don’t read and what restaurants you don’t frequent. I know it’s meant as an insult, but it’s a strange sort of insult: someone I didn’t know writing to inform me that he will no longer be doing something I didn’t know he was. Which on a scale of one to ten is somewhere short of devastating.

The other complaint is people fact-checking the jokes. Hey fun, you transcribed the score of the Marquette game or hey fun you said Michigan but it was really Michigan State. The only rational answer to which is: shut up. Why did the chicken cross the highway. Well in the first place it wasn’t a highway, a highway is a main road that connects two municipalities, what the chicken crossed was a boulevard and anyway it wasn’t a chicken it was a rooster. Zzzz. The fact is that jokes are not true or false, they’re funny or not funny. When Don Rickles calls someone a hockey puck you should either laugh or not laugh: if you complain that the insult is not true because hockey pucks are small rubber projectiles used in a sport played on ice with sticks whereas human being are not made of rubber, then either you’re at the wrong show or you don’t own a Fleshlight. Either way, you’re wasting your time, and mine.