The Marist College Women's Red Foxes (7) are playing LSU (2) tonight in Baton Rouge. This is going to be a tough one. Marist has dominated the MAAC this year (32-2 overall) but this is....LSU.  Of course, they can't think that when they're playing. I would, but then again, I don't play Div. I ball. LSU has the Southeastern Conference player of the year, Sylvia Fowles. She's big and big. Did I mention she's big?

LSU's coach  Van Chancellor called Marist "the best defensive basketball team I've ever seen." That's high praise and I'm not arguing. (They remind me of my youth team, who, did I tell you lost to the first place team in the playoffs by only three points?!! We held them to their lowest offensive effort all season - 19 points! It would've been like Giants vs. Patriots! We ended up third in defensive stats, holding our opponents to low scores all season long. But enough about us...back to Marist...)

My daughter is rooting for Rachele Fitz (same name) and Nikki Flores because she's short and she's good. I'm rooting for a homegrown favorite,  Julianne Viani. She's got an evil-good 3-point shot and she went to high school here in town. She was also coached by the Marist coach, Brian Giorgis in high school. They go way back.

My paper's writer covering the Red Foxes, Sean T. McMann said Marist is ranked 22nd in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today national polls and they have longest winning streak in the country at 22 wins.

Marist is fun to watch. The ESPN announcers are calling them "spunky." That's not the right word...it should be "tenacious." I've never seen them get rattled, even when they're down. They had an amazing second half comeback against DePaul on Saturday to get them to this round. They play their game and they're patient, patient and more patient. 

Both teams have a ton of key, high-scoring seniors playing. This is going to be an intense game for both the Red Foxes and the LSU Tigers. I've already seen a few rejections by LSU and it's very physical. LSU is forcing turnovers which is quite unlike Marist. They typically have great ball control  They're keeping Marist outside, but that's not necessarily a disaster for Marist with a Julianne Viani in the game.

Going into the half, Marist is only down by two...a nail-biter!

Go Marist!

I took some of my girls hoops team to the MAAC Marist vs. Siena game last night for "Pack the House" night. Marist crushed Siena, 78-48 and at halftime, right there on the Marist court, the two top teams in our league played a mini-scrimmage.

After a few (nervous) minutes of no scoring and a lot of turnovers, they finally sunk their first basket, and the rest kept on coming. All the kids loved having their league's name on the announcements to the record-breaking sold out crowd.

And they liked the soda. And the candy. And the snacks. I liked that the snacks were cheap. I'm so used to mortgaging my house to buy snacks at ballgames, that I forgot I was at a college game.

The girls got to see a zone defense, man-to-man (woman-to-woman) and how fast they pass the ball. Their star guard Nikki Flores was showing off her hot-stuff dribbling, which of course had the girls saying they wanted to do that in the game. OK, that's fine, but learn to dribble without looking first, then dribble behind your back and through your legs.

They noticed, without me telling them, how there were no offensive rebounds. "Why aren't they rebounding, Coach?" It was too noisy to explain. They liked how two really short players were dominating the ball-handling and outside shooting (tons of 3's).

I can't wait to see if I see some better passing today. Or shooting (I pray). If nothing else, they bonded as a group and got a taste of victory.

Holy cow, that's a lot of points. Meg Dahlman is the 13th player in Marist College history to hit the mark, according to this brief in my hometown newspaper. She scored most of them in her last three years as a Marist starter.

To put this in perspective, when I played basketball in middle & high school, I scored 43 points. It took three years to get 43 points. 43...1,000. Uma...Oprah.

Congrats Meg!

And congrats to the Marist women's team. They're having a fine season at 13-2, playing Loyola tonight. The Marist coach, Brian Giorgis will be profiled on MSG's Aeropostale College Basketball Weekly this Sunday.

I'm taking my girls team to see Marist on Friday, Jan. 25th to see them play Sienna. First 1,000 fans get t-shirts! Of course, on the girls, they'll be huge...they can wear them as pajamas, maybe. = )

Go Marist!

Wowsa. Marist is coming out on fire, shooting in the paint, six straight points. It looked pretty good there for the opening minutes. Tenn. has dropped back from the press to get back on D, but they're still an offensive threat. Might help if one of their players missed an outside shot once in awhile. Sigh.

 It's 51-31 with 12:32 left. They're getting the ball into Marist freshman Rachele Fitz on the right side and she's sinking them.

Twenty points down...they're going to need some fantastic shooting to catch up or some insta-height or insta-steals. Something.

In mere minutes, I will be able to tune into my favorite channel on TV, ESPN (oops, sorry FoxSports...you're second, I swear) for the Marist College (13) women's basketball game against Tennessee (1). The numbers are worn off my remote, of course, but I'll hit the 3 and then the 6 and bam, they'll be right there on my TV.

Marist College is twelve miles from my house. I get stuck in their pedestrian traffic every day on the way home from work (world record: 8 minutes to go 1/4 mile through 3 traffic lights...woo!). If they win today, could some excited and very rich booster please donate money to build an elevated pedestrian bridge to the college in honor of the women's team? Please?

Marist is the college that got the most ink when I was going to the local community college a few miles east of Marist.  They always seemed bigger, even before they were Div. I. Now they're the "tiny" school from Poughkeepsie, NY. The Cinderella story of the tourney. They've got three pages in the today's sports section and infinitely more coverage on TV and the Web. I'm hoping they can shed the pressure of the limelight and play their game against tough Tennessee. I hope nobody looks directly at Coach Summitt...she can be scary! lol.

My (sage) advice as a coach who just came off a championship victory (shameless self-promotion), play your game, forget the crowd (what crowd?), take your time and have fun. Hey, you don't get to the top (out of four teams) of the 7 & 8-year old girls league without this kind of insight, ya know?

I'd link you to FoxSports' coverage, previews or in depth analysis of the game, but, alas, there is none. (BOO!!) (And where are the clickable brackets?!!!!) (Correction: here are head-to-head stats I just found...my bad, Fox.)

Oh! They just threw it to the sports desk to talk about the women's tourney! They're talking Duke but any minute, they'll be getting excited about Marist again! "David and Goliath" they said about Marist and Tennessee. I'll write about the game in comments...

Check out links for the best regional coverage from my fav. local writers here.

GO MARIST!!