American beat St. Francis last night, 71-65. If we were one of those six-degrees-of-separation types, we might try to read something into American beating the same Red Flash team that beat Bucknell last week.

We won't ask anybody to find their way all the way back to the first post of the season, (now might be a good time to recheck the blogger settings, since we could have sworn we were archiving individual posts as separate pages, which would make for an easy link). But we pointed out after that game that the officiating had a lot to do with the outcome.

At the same time, though, give the Eagles credit. They shot 55 percent against St. Francis and that is not out of the norm for AU so far. They are shooting over 50 percent from the field through four games. Even in their two losses they hit more than half of their shots. Even scarier, they are shooting almost 50 percent (47.1) from 3-point range. They keep hitting like this and they will be awful tough to beat.

We'd love to link to coverage of the AU-SF game, but alas, it is all but nonexistent. Apparently only one paper staffed the game, the Altoona Mirror.

On its Web site, here's what you'd find, if we wasted your time with a link:

WASHINGTON D.C. - St. Francis seems to prefer trying to win games in 32-34 minutes rather than the full allotment of 40.

The Red Flash have a problem of sleepwalking through the first three or four minutes of each half. They got away with that last week in rallying to beat Bucknell, but American didn't allow a repeat Monday night.
"We've just got to find a way to start the game and start the second half and not dig such a deep hole," SFU coach Bobby Jones said of the Flash's 71-65 loss to the Eagles.

For details, please see Page B1 in the November 30 edition of the Altoona Mirror

For details, please see Page B1 in the November 30 edition of the Altoona Mirror.

How lame is that?

We understand sites trying to sell subscriptions to get news from their Web site, but this is ridiculous
What if you happen to live outside the thriving metropolis of Altoona?

On the other hand, give them credit. While the little Altoona Mirror sent someone to D.C. to cover St. Francis on the road, big papers like the Washington Post and the Moonie Times couldn’t be bothered to catch the Metro across town.

Here’s what we found on the Post’s site, buried at the bottom of a story about Howard-Portland State:

AMERICAN 71, ST. FRANCIS (PA.) 65: Andre Ingram scored 18 points, and Raimondas Petrauskas had 15 of his 17 in the second half to lead the Eagles at home.

American (2-2) opened the game on a 15-1 run and held the Red Flash (2-1) without a field goal for more than six minutes.

Reserve Rahsann Benton scored a career-high 22 points to lead St. Francis, and Darshan Luckey added 19. The Red Flash committed 16 turnovers.

Patrick Okpwae had 12 points and Jason Thomas added 10 for the Eagles, who won their sixth straight at home.

Here's the recap, box and play-by-play from the AU official site.

Holy Cross gets a vote in the latest AP Poll -- If Feinstein up to his old tricks again?

By the way, Iowa State, which struggled to win at home against Bucknell and Northern Colorado over the weekend, got 3 votes. Remind to to check and see which Iowa papers get a ballot.

Turnpike talks resume -- Here’s hoping they settle by tomorrow. We want to go to the Palestra for the Bucknell-Penn game, but we won’t cross the picket lines to do it (even though we like the idea of only paying a two buck toll). Getting to Philly from the Harrisburg area without the turnpike is not impossible. But it is way too time consuming, especially the return trip after the game. Doubly so when you need to get up the next morning to blog and get to work.

If the strike continues, we’ll just stay home and listen to the game on WXPN.