It's A MAAC, MAAC World (Part I)

Game 035: Rider 89, Loyola (Md.) 69
Monday, January 17, 2005
Pepsi Arena - Albany, NY

In the interest of maintaining time-frame, brain-cell and day-job, I'm going to have to institute near-Draconian measures when I attend multiple games in a single day. Luckily for me, there is the "Game Diary™" format pioneered and perfected by the Blah Blah Blah basket-blog. While Ken Pomeroy uses the Game Diary™ to dispense timeless wisdom where ESPN commentators would fail, this site's cheap knockoffs will offer you, the viewer, the unique opportunity to experience an obscure game with a snarky yet well-meaning mid-major über-geek... without having to experience the ignominy of actually having to sit next to him.

This odor-free Mid-Majority GameLogg™ whisks us off to the capital of New York State for the annual Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference M.L.K. Day doubleheader. First up: cellar-escaping Loyola (Md.) against surprisingly 5-1 Rider. We paid a visit to the home of the Greyhounds last week, and this is our first check-in with the Broncs so far this year. Last March, these two met in a 7-10 conference tournament game in this very same arena, attended by this very same narrator. Rider, the higher seed, won that one to put a merciful end to Loyola's 1-27 season. Off we go!

First Half

19:58 - There are less than 100 people present for the 4 p.m. tip-off, taking Boston University off the hook for lowest attendance at a 100 Games Project contest so far. The people who are making the most noise are those on the Loyola sideline - this is a marked difference from last year, when the Greyhound bench gave John Cage compositions a run in the silence department.

19:32 - Early on, it's easy to see why Rider has enjoyed success so far this MAAC season. They have a big dominating guy surrounded by a phlanx of big, wiry, athletic dudes: it's a visually appealing presentation. 7'0" center Steve Castleberry has really filled out. I mean, his arms are huge now. I've always wondered about guys who spend time doting on players' physiques, as if sports were an excuse to allow homoerotic tendencies to rise to the surface in a safe-yet-still-burly setting. But Castleberry's got these hunched shoulders and there's this whole Igor/Quasimodo thing going on - he's definitely not my type.

13:03 - Rider has jumped out to a quick lead. Jim "Biff" Chivers goes out, and Loyola goes small. Freshman point guard Rick "McFly" Manning makes his first appearance. Rider is tinkering with different looks too, it's like there's a different five out there every time I look up.

9:30 - Junior guard Charlie Bell nails a jumper and converts a three-point play. Loyola is on a spurt-like spurt, and they've turned a 17-11 deficit into a 22-17 lead. I know the real reason for the 11-0 run: Biff and McFly are on the court at the same time, and Rider can't keep their damn hands on the basketball.

5:38 - Loyola's Freddie Stanbeck is the recipient of a perfect baseball pass, and they're up 26-24. Stanbeck is a freshman, one of new coach Jimmy Patsos' new guys. Patsos is jumping up and down, screaming himself hoarse, his voice echoing in the cavernous Pepsi Arena. His charges, many of whom were on last year's 1-27 disaster, are playing with real confidence.

3:48 - Media time out. The arena camerapeople are zooming in on people in the crowd and showing them on the big Trans-Lux screen. Using simple math based on number of breaks remaining in the game and spectators, this means that I should make it up on the big screen by game's end.

1:49 - The Greyhounds are unraveling a bit, it's 35-30 Rider now. There's a guy sitting behind the Loyola bench wearing a jeans jacket - perhaps inspired by Patsos, he's gruffly screaming after every foul call, after every turnover, after every stoppage of play. "You gotta be kidding me!" "That's awful!" Problem is, he's not cheering for either team and is doin this just to get laughs out of the four people seated in his section. Congratulations, Jeans Jacket Guy, you are our TIAA-CREF Asshole Of The Game.

0:00 - Halftime. Rider has jumped out to a 43-34 lead, and their superior athleticism is winning out.

Second Half

18:00 - OK, we're back. The Pepsi Arena doesn't salt their popcorn - while I appreciate that they're looking out for my health, they might want to pop some up fresh instead of doing it all at 10 in the morning and putting it under the heat lamps. This reminds me of that one time I had to eat a handful of packing peanuts in a truth-or-dare game at summer camp. Loyola's come out of the locker room with a burst of energy, and have cut the lead to 45-42 with a run keyed by another freshman, guard Brad Farrell.

17:15 - Rider answers frosh-style with a sweet up-and-under move by 6'9" Jason Thompson. it seems like the Broncs can penetrate and score any time they want, but that they simply aren't choosing to do so. So I have a feeling I'm not catching Rider on a day when their A-game is on... but it's not like they know or care that this game is being GameLogged™ for the benefit of hundreds of Mid-Majority readers.

15:03 - The all-important Fifth Five Minutes of the game are over, and Loyola has won them by a 15-6 margin. They only trail 49-47 now, erasing seven out of the nine-point lead. During what came to be the 82 Game Project last year, I unofficially logged the F5M and found that roughly three-quarters of the teams that won them ended up winning the game. In the other quarter's worth of cases, the F5M ended up defining how the rest of the game would be played.

13:55 - The twelve-minute media timeout. That's me in the corner, that's me on the big screen, losing my anonymity. Yes, for the first time in my life, I'm up on the 'Tron. The camera captures your narrator slumped in a chair with nobody else around, wearing a black Roots sweatshirt. My first response is, "Ohmigod, I'm up on the big screen." My second is to sit up straight, because I'm writing in this notebook with my knees up and it doesn't look good. But I'm too late, and the Pepsi Arena TransLux switches to an "future events" screen highlighting an upcoming Hillary Duff concert. So if anyone who was there yesterday is reading this, I was not masturbating.

10:33 - Rider has stretched their legs again and opened up another 11-point lead again, and Patsos calls time out. The F5M has indeed defined the endgame - Rider got angry and started crashing the boards more, and Loyola isn't getting the second-chance opportunities they had been enjoying earlier. Jerry Johnson, Rider's little gamebreaker, has 12. Wiry guard Robert "Beattie" Taylor has 12 as well. Thompson leads with 15. I just looked at the Loyola side of the scoreboard and Farrell has 18. Not bad.

6:35 - It's 66-53. The Siena fans, band and cheerleaders are filing in for the second game. Big Greyhound James Corrigan (Friday night's hero) and a little 5'11" sophomore guard named James Fox come in, the signal that the competition is over and it's time for some larnin'.

4:09 - As the Siena fans swarm my section, one looks up at the scoreboard and says, "Man, Loyola's still awful." This is a prime example of why the old wives' tale that the last five minutes of a basketball game are the only ones worth watching is a crock of crap. The Greyhounds are at least 10 times better than they were last year, and they hung in for about 28 minutes with a very good Rider team.

3:15 - Patsos is practicing calling defenses on-the-fly. On one Rider sequence, with 20 seconds left on the shot clock, he calls my favorite D-scheme of all, the box and one. Fox runs around the court like a kamikaze pilot. He's very quick. Rider's law firm of Johnson, Taylor and Thompson have 17 points each.

1:40 - Garbage time is officially under way: Rider's half of the detailed scoreboard shows a line of five zeroes. Yes, this was the 7-10 matchup a season ago, and the result is much the same as those in Loyola-Rider games last year, but this game was played at a higher level. I'll have to see them again before I issue any sort of knowledgable statement on Rider (like "They can win this league!"), but they is definitively impressive. Explodability, a dominating inside force, and a swarm of coil-springed athletes. Loyola? They still have a very long way to go. They'll eventually mature into a team that can play 40 minutes of focused ball, one that has an organized offense. They've already added a key component of a winning team: they don't lose confidence in themselves when they're down, and they keep fighting. Credit that to an excellent coach.

0:00 - The buzzer sounds, and it's an 89-69 runaway final. There will be a twenty-minute break, and we'll be right back for the second game.

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