I could do the same old song and dance...

Blogging about how Michael Beasley is a dumbass, dropped an impressive as hell double-double, but his team couldn't win the game, but I'm kind of sick of blogging about that for now.

So let's blog about something different. JUST KIDDING!
MARIST WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TEAM!
They finished off the regular season with a 71-58 win over St. Peter's at the James J. McCann Center last night.
Though they won by 13, it was by no means a blowout. The game was tied most of the way, until about 50-50 when Marist went on a huge run to put the game away. Their offense struggled at times without Julianne Viani, but Sarah Smrdel, Meg Dahlman, and Lynzee Johnson put forth tons of extra effort on offense to support Nikki Flores and Rachele Fitz.
Freshmen Elise Caron and Erica Allenspach fill Viani's shoes while she's out with mono, but they haven't been integrated into head coach Brian Giorgis' offensive gameplan yet, so they're on the court for defense and ball-handling purposes, which they did great last night.
St. Peter's used full court pressure the entire night, constantly trying to trap the Red Foxes, but great ball movement (see: last year's 2nd round win vs. Middle Tennessee), usuing the entire court and all five players, thwarted most of the pressure.
Flores and Dahlman both dropped a team-high 17 points and both of them knocked down timely threes (each 2-2 from long range).

It being Senior Night, the starting lineup was a little shaken up, giving Alexis Waters and Sarah Smrdel well-deserved starts and a good amount of minutes. Marist completed a perfect 18-0 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference season, the third MAAC team to go undefeated throughout the season, but the first do win 18 conference games in doing so.
Dahlman, Flores, Smrdel, Waters, and Courtney Kolesar, who missed this season due to injury, were all honored before and after the game. They are the winningest class in Marist history, with 102 wins over their four years under Giorgis.

The MAAC tournament starts Friday, and if Marist wins it, look for the Red Foxes to enter the NCAA tournament ranked in the 15-18 range in the ESPN/USA Today poll, and probably around #20 in the Associated Press poll, perhaps garnering as high as a #7 or #8 seed in the Big Dance.