Liveblog: St. Joe’s Women’s Basketball vs. GW

3:57: With final box score in hand, it’s clear to see who today’s star was. Brittany Ford absolutely dominated the second half, finishing with 23 points overall, going 10-13 from the floor and 3-3 from the line. Both Logue and Djouara had better games than against La Salle, and Ashley Prim even began to heat up in the second half. With momentum in their favor, the Hawks will now face Temple on Tuesday night to try and extend their winning streak to 3. On a side note, this was head coach Cindy Griffin’s 200th win as head coach of the Hawks.  From the Hagan Arena on a snowy, windy afternoon, this is Tom Hagan signing off with the Hawks beating George Washington by 63-47.

3:51: And that’ll do it for the Hawks. St. Joe’s gets a healthy 16 point win over GW, 63-47. Be back with a wrapup in a little bit.

3:49: Prim forces a turnover with Baker now in the game. Wilson picks up the rebound on a Prim miss, but Gillespie picks up the Allums miss. Ford again adds to her point total today, and the Hawks are now up 63-47.

3:47: Prim again hits two free-throws on a foul, and on the other end Logue draws her third foul of the game. Shelton hits both FTs to cut the lead to 14.

3:45: Prim knocks down both free throws to give St. Joe’s a 57-42 lead. Myers knocks down a three to lower the lead to 12. Ford continues her dominant pace with another layup and it looks as little can stop the Hawks from winning today. Now, I’m no coroner, but I think it’s almost time to pronounce this game over.

Turning a corner, but to where?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. They don’t mention what happens on instance number seven.

That’s the position many St. Joe’s fans are in now (thought the estimate of seven is very low) after falling into the oh-so-familiar trap of buying into the heightened expectations that a handful of consecutive wins creates.

The loss to UMass was especially tough to swallow, as will be most from here on out, because the win over Dayton gave everyone a tantalizing view of what the Hawks are capable of. Yes, last night’s effort was tempered by the fatigue of three games in five days, something largely out of the team’s control. But the loss still stings, and you can’t help but think that if the circumstances were different, the result might have been as well.

After the Penn game, I went though a checklist of things that needed to happen for the St. Joe’s streak to continue. Here’s the report card from UMass:

Ford, Prim spur Hawks to victory at La Salle

The St. Joe’s women’s basketball team traveled to La Salle last night where they looked to get back to .500 against a struggling Explorer team. After a second half comeback and an outstanding performance by Brittany Ford, ’10, the Hawks (10-10, 3-2 A-10) managed to leave La Salle with the victory by a score of 45-39.

In the first half of play, the Hawks could not find any semblance of an offensive rhythm. After 20 minutes, the Hawks had scored only 11 points, seven of which were scored by Ford. What saved the Hawks from being left with an insurmountable deficit was that the Explorers (5-16, 0-6 A-10)weren’t able to find rhythm themselves, with the exception of a late 11-1 run to end the half that gave La Salle a 19-11 lead.

Down eight points to the Atlantic 10 basement dweller, the Hawks would need a serious turnaround to get the victory. With a combination of Ford and key scores by Mariame Djouara, ’10, the Hawks quickly gained the lead in the second period. With less than nine minutes left in the game, the Hawks pulled a complete 180, leading the Explorers by 10. In the final minutes of the game, the Hawks were able to prevent another Explorer run and win by a final score of 45-39. Ford finished with a team-high 15 points and two blocks while Ashley Prim, ’13, finished with 8 points and seven rebounds. Up next for the Hawks will be an afternoon matchup against George Washington at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Hagan Arena.

-Tom Hagan ’11

Minutemen dump tired Hawks, end three-game winning streak

A third game in just five days finally caught up with St. Joe’s, as they had their three-game winning streak stopped at the hand of UMass, 87-80.

Ricky Harris led all scorers with 23 points, and the Minutemen pulled away thanks to four second-half threes by Freddie Riley.

“[It’s] very disappointing,” St. Joe’s head coach Phil Martelli. “We disserve better because we had been playing better. We looked tired, and we thought tired. We didn’t fight through when we had chances in both halves. We worked our tails to get back and get the lead in the second half and we step off a known three-point shooter [Riley] for them to tie it.”

Garrett Williamson, ’10, led the way with an impressive line, highlighted by a double-double of 16 points and 10 assists. He also swiped six steals, three bocks, three rebounds, and no turnovers.

“We got a team like that and we were on the ropes with them, but we never got that knockout punch.” Williamson said. “We never really had that surge of stops and good possessions on offense that we’ve had these last few games.”

There goes Dayton, now what?

Who ever came up with the idiom “once bitten, twice shy” was never a St. Joe’s basketball fan. Keep that in mind as I jump in my inner tube and float out into the shark tank that is optimism about this program.

Last night’s win over Penn puts the Hawks at 8-11 with 11 games to play. And a crazy little thought popped into my head on the walk from the Palestra to 30th Street Station: what does this team have to do to salvage a .500 season?

The obvious answer, which hit me not unlike a splash of water from the 42 bus heading up Walnut Street, is to go 7-4. But is that something that this team, who looked dead in the water and could have folded after losing eight of nine and were on their way to another loss at halftime at the hands of Fordham at home, is capable of?

Here’s what’s left for the Hawks:

Hawks stay hot in rout of Penn

It started out dicey, but by the end of the night the Hawks made no mistake in romping over Penn, 85-64. The win is their third in a row and just their second away from the Hagan Arena all season, joining their victory over Boston College at the Paradise Jam in the US Virgin Islands.

The game got off to a nervy start as neither team was able to impose their will offensively, and the teams were deadlocked at 27 with 5:41 left in the half. Compounding it for the Hawks was foul trouble for Garrett Williamson, ’10, who had to sit the last 9:45 of the period with two fouls.

But even without their senior marathon man, the Hawks mounted a charge into the halftime break, and finished with a 13-0 spurt to take a 40-27 edge.

St. Joe’s-Dayton men’s basketball live game blog

10:00- I’ll leave you with this final, parting thought: there is now way I would take credit for calling this victory, as my earlier score prediction testifies. But I did say this in my blog on the Towson game Monday night:

No one expected this team to beat URI at the Ryan Center, but none of the other games are out of the realm of possibility. A win over Dayton would take a gargantuan effort, but the team that played against Villanova could get it done.

This team put forth one hell of an effort tonight, and they won because they wanted it more. They won a lot of hustle plays that won’t show up in the box score, and used that desire to overcome a team that was clearly superior in terms of skill and athleticism. For all the other things this mediocre team has done wrong this season, they deserve all the credit in the world for tonight’s effort.

That’s all for this evening, one that will go down in the St. Joe’s history books. Goodnight everybody!!

For full game story, click here…

Top prospect trades corner outfield for corner tabernacle

We always see baseball players point to the sky as the cross home plate, but one highly touted prospect has preempted that celebration by retiring from professional baseball to join the priesthood.

Foxsports.com is reporting that Oakland A’s outfield prospect Grant Desme is retiring from the ranks of pro ball to pursue a life in the priesthood. (An aside: kudos to Foxsports for the unbiased article title of “Touted A’s prospect leaving baseball for…priesthood?” Nice.)

It’s not for a lack of talent, as Desme’s play in A ball last year and the Arizona Fall League garnered him some serious acclaim. He spent one season at San Diego State before tearing things up at Cal Poly (a public school, by the way) and earning the 2007 Big West conference Player of the Year award. He was drafted in the second round (74th overall pick) by Billy Beane’s notoriously thorough scouting department.

Desme got a taste of minor league ball in 2007, but was limited to just 14 games total between ’07 and ’08 due to injuries. He rebounded for a huge year in 2009 between Kane County (Northwest League, short-season A) and Stockton (California League, high-A), batting .288 in 131 games with 31 homers, 89 RBIs, and 40 steals (the only 30 steal-30 homer player in ALL of minor league baseball). He continued to rake in the Arizona Fall League, taking home league MVP honors thanks to a .315 average, 11 dingers, and 27 RBIs 27 games. Baseball America ranked Desme as he A’s eighth best prospect.

Resilient Hawks deliver Dayton first A-10 loss

When the roller coaster ride finally ended, it was Mariame Djouara and her team who walked away with the win.

The Hawks squandered a 15-point lead and went down by as many as four late in the second before surging late to score a 68-62 upset of Dayton. Djouara led the way with a game-high 13 points and added eight rebounds to ice secure the win for St. Joe’s.

“Especially because  we know the next one is going to be on the road, and after losing a tough one to Temple, we knew this was the one we really, really needed to get,” said St. Joe’s head coach Cindy Griffin. “I though we shot the ball real  well, obviously in the first half. Hopefully this is a stepping stone for us because it gave us a lot of confidence.”

The Hawks (9-9, 2-1 A-10) jumped on the Flyers early behind lights-out shooting from behind the arc, hitting seven threes in the first half as part of their second highest first-half total this year. They stretched the advantage to as high as 15, and entered the halftime break up 13, a margin that was only that close thanks to three late turnovers by St. Joe’s.

Hot Reads: Jan. 19, 2010

We’re a little delayed this week thanks to last night’s game between St. Joe’s and Towson (read more below), but here we are with this week’s edition of Hot Reads. As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day (Doc Rivers has a nice quote at the Boston Globe) and rue the return of classes, the sporting world is gearing up for what promises to be a scintillating week of Conference Championship games after a decidedly underwhelming Divisional round.

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In the AFC, the Colts and Jets will do battle for the Lamar Hunt Trophy in a tantalizing rematch of Super Bowl III. The game is rife with story lines, starting with the Colts’ Week 16 resting of starters against the Jets to allow them to crawl back into the playoff picture, despite the somewhat misguided view of CBS analyst Dan Dierdorf. The NFC Title game is a matchup of two teams in the Vikings and Saints who have never lifted the Lombardi Trophy, and pits Southern posterboy Brett Favre against the team he cheered on a kid growing up in Mississippi.