Rough Notes: Night of Invitations
1.01.25 / Seton Hall @ Villanova / Villanova, Pennsylvania
It’s the first day of a new year. Like everyone else, I’m receiving an onslaught of unread emails capitalizing on life as a clean slate. I can’t relate. Instead, I’m relieved that women’s college basketball season inherently rejects the premise of time’s arbitrary rebirth. I think about the college basketball players beholden to an unrelenting NCAA schedule, its own locomotive between November and March, the holidays just a misty background. This perhaps is a more accurate cadence, in accordance with the familiar suffering that makes life impervious to the deadline of a “new year.” And so I am grateful to attend a basketball game on the first day of 2025; an inconvenience to many, but to me a refuge.
I am traveling once again, journeying on the East Coast. This time, I’ve taken my car like a pair of hiking boots, leaving Chicago soaked in its heavy endings, the unknown released like a pack of rabid dogs. When did this city become so all-encompassing to me?
I can still remember the shock of arriving in Chicago 12 years ago, alone, without friends or classmates, just a pair of distant relatives who let me live in their attic. I was 23 and fresh out of college. I wrote poems like: Hello to the bedroom / where I've placed my suitcase. The wall’s purple trim and I / will now exchange jokes. It was 2013. the same year I took the Blue Line train toward O’Hare and got off at Rosemont to attend the Chicago Sky’s first season with rookie sensation Elena Delle Donne. It was the first time I ever tried to cover a WNBA game: I took a paper notebook and pen, and I wrote a few short blog posts for a Blogspot called “Womhoops Guru,” then promptly decided sports journalism was, in fact, not the place for me.
“Womhoops Guru” is not just any blog however. It belongs to Mel Greenberg, who is almost 70 now, and a legend: the creator of the ranking system we know as the AP Poll and the first writer to be inducted to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. I emailed Mel as a college student in 2012 during my last winter in Vermont, where I was writing a thesis about Brittney Griner. (This was 10 years before her detention, of course, and my thesis was about BG’s vilified college career, the slippery rule of heterosexuality in women’s basketball, and the sharp crook of Kim Mulkey’s reign at Baylor.) In any case, it was really the first time I wrote about basketball, rather than playing it. And I was hooked. But in my sort-of literary circles at the liberal arts college I attended in rural Vermont, there were exactly 0 people I could talk to about any of this.
So in that yearning 22-year old way, I confessed to Mel over email that I was interested in sports writing: “I've spent several years hiding among poets and storytellers as a ‘closet-jock’ after leaving a childhood of competitive basketball… my secret dream is to one day write about women's basketball.” Mel responded immediately. He offered an invitation to write for his blog and a swirl of information I could barely understand: “I may start a sweet 16 poll in early january ala bcs style,” he said. “You might be able to help on that from afar -- wonders of technology.” He couldn’t pay me, but he wanted to give me a platform: “I'll get you in the mix,” Mel wrote. “Lots you can do… exposure offers plenty opportunity.” I forwarded the emails to my father with a note: “not entirely sure what i'm getting myself into.”
But a few months after graduating in February of 2013 and fumbling my way to Illinois, I agreed to cover the Chicago Sky for Mel. “You are in bright lights,” he told me. I felt very much the opposite, swept up in the undoing of leaving the familiar (undergrad) and arriving somewhere new (adulthood). It rocked me to my core. And in that stunted pall of Rosemont’s Allstate Arena where the Chicago Sky played at the time, I got overwhelmed by the lack of community around me. I had no idea how to assert that I wanted to write about women’s basketball in a weirder and less traditional way. Other than communicating with Mel over email, I was too nervous to speak to other writers back then, and my friends (nearly all of whom were living in other places, pursuing their own delicate careers) never watched WNBA or cared about it at all. After those two blog posts for Mel, I spent years of feeling guilty and basically avoiding women’s basketball. Because despite Mel’s kindness, I found a way to psych myself out of it. I can be pretty good at that.
But on the opening night of 2025, walking into the matchup between Seton Hall and Villanova with my friend Molly, I am delighted to find Mel Greenberg again. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in years. There he is, sitting in press row with his iPad. (It reminds me of how once, in blog post from 2013, Mel wrote: “Delle Donne… had both a game and career-high 23 points, a record that will last about as long as the Guru can stay off his iPad!”) I stop Molly in our tracks. “I know that guy!” I tell her, approaching him. “Hi Mel, it’s me, Maya,” I say, and Mel nods along. He’s silent, or maybe mumbles something in response. And so Molly and I move on, and take our seats, and I can’t tell if Mel remembers me at all.
Villanova’s crowd is sparse and overwhelmingly white, a goy-ish white, and very pale. There's a feeling of wealth here, too: the game is airing on Fox Sports, lots of cameras hovering, and “Finneran Pavilion” has clearly gotten a millions-of-dollars facelift in the recent past. We’re surrounded by people wearing navy blue “Nova,” sweatshirts, a familiar word to me, though in this context one that has nothing to do with smoked salmon or the whimsical name my best friend once considered for her first child.
But I’m not here for Nova. Instead, I’m most excited to watch Faith Masonius, the star for Seton Hall, who has transferred in her senior year from Maryland. Faith is notable for several reasons, including the fact that I just find her very cool. She has highlights and more than one tattoo. Her girlfriend is her former teammate from Maryland, Shyanne Sellers. They are very in-love and also funny, which I know because Faith is really good at Tik Tok, and I am one of her 61,000 followers.
My friend Molly and I chat with the 16 year-old sitting behind us: she’s come (with her grandpa) because she loves Faith’s Tik Tok, too. We are the Faith Masonius fan club! I remember, from her recent Christmas Tik Toks, that Faith has a giant family, and I try to track them down behind the Seton Hall bench by pulling up a video from Christmas Eve where they’re all barely holding in gut-busting laughter for some unexplained reason. I pause it every second to scan the crowd, but I still can’t locate them. Faith transferred to Seton Hall from Maryland in part because she’s from New Jersey and her family alone is the size of a small town. I wonder whether Faith likes being home, the hero of her giant Italian family, or if only now that she’s back, she realizes how much of her heart has already migrated elsewhere.
I ask the 16 year-old if she knows whether Faith has made any videos addressing how she and Shyanne are handling their recently long distance relationship. The girl pauses, looking serious, then says with certainty, “No, she hasn’t.” I imagine a world in which I go to a press conference and ask Faith this very question: “great game, good job, so what coping strategies are you and your girlfriend in Maryland using?” My fleeting desire to puncture a post-game presser with this kind of question is as much about learning the answer as it is a fantasy of making everyone loosen up a bit. The dream would be to get Faith to crack a smile or laugh, though I wonder if it would just come off as scrutinizing.
The game starts stiffly and stays close throughout, a back-and-forth of small runs and turnovers, like ice suddenly melting, then freezing up again. At the end of first half, Villanova’s freshman guard Jasmine Bosco hits a shot at the buzzer by weaving the ball behind her back, then stepping through the defense and draining an open shot off one foot. It’s incredible, and we all head into the second half with renewed energy.
In the third quarter, Faith is a clear leader on the court. She hits a three early on and Seton Hall nudges ahead while Villanova goes cold. Faith moves around and directs play, pointing her teammates to invisible spots, urging the offense on like the head of a wave. Her coach is a short Italian man, who to me looks like someone who wanted to be a dentist but instead now sells dental equipment. He’s pretty quiet, so he has his assistant coach yelling things out for him much louder, and this guy looks like a car mechanic who mercilessly makes fun of you for going to any other car mechanic.
Then Villanova climbs back, led by Bronagh Power-Cassidy (what a name), who scores 8 consecutive points. There’s a frenzy of frustrated turnovers, an indication of rivalry, so much pride on the line tonight. This time, Nova claims a 2-point lead while Seton Hall stalls in paralysis, though the third quarter ends with a cross-court pass and a layup for Seton Hall, again while the buzzer sounds. We are thrilled for the fourth quarter to begin. This is a real game. The score remains close, the teams scurrying back and forth, stuck and unstuck like a fist; we’re rapt with that feeling of too many people wanting the same thing. Both teams make a series of mistakes: a turnover, an offensive foul, a five second violation inbounding the ball. The clock is draining.
For nearly the entire final minute, Villanova is up 55-54. But with 6 seconds to go, Seton Hall rebounds off two missed free throws and pushes the ball up court. Which is when Amari Wright chucks the ball to Faith Masonius, right under the basket, 2 seconds to go. Four defenders descend around Faith with their arms up. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this before: receiving a basketball alongside the crush of human bodies attempting to ensnare you, completely, but it’s terrifying. The stuff of nightmares.
Except in this case, Faith sees the defense coming and keeps moving, unafraid. She protects the ball while pivoting through all the players, so that her back is to the basket. And then she steps forward, a gutsy move that breaks her from the knot of defenders, except she’s headed away from the basket. While she steps, her right arm soars up with the ball, and it flips from her fingers, the shot hooking up and backwards, Faith bending her neck back to watch as the ball bounces gently atop the rim, then drops straight in. The buzzer sounds; Seton Hall wins by 1. And Faith, who is facing her own bench already, simply opens her arms as wide as possible while her teammates leap into her with astonished celebration.
I run to find Mel Greenberg, now fully regretting that I didn’t get press credentials for this game, serious now about finding Faith for a post-game presser. “That was amazing!” I say, arriving to press row. “Mel, do you remember me?” He chuckles. “Of course I do,” and Mel lists off times he’s seen my name in his inbox, a trail of pieces I’ve written. And back at Mel’s side, I feel just as excited as ever to write about women’s basketball. I am glad to no longer be 22, to have a little less terror. “Do you think I can get into the press conference?” I ask Mel. “Just follow me,” he says, and I trail behind him to a basement room where Villanova’s coach soon arrives, still a bit stunned, talking about resilience and aspirational chemistry. Turns out the opposing team doesn’t do a press conference at all, so there will be no Q&A with Faith, no opportunity for a celebratory question, a chance to glow about her feat.
But then Mel says, “Hey, want to be my Uber? I could use a ride home,” and I tell him of course. “I gotta go talk to Faith’s mom,” Mel says, so I follow him once again, back to the court, where he and Ellen Masonius ask me to take a photo of her and Mel, side by side, since of course Mel once covered Ellen’s college career at Saint Joseph’s University in the mid-1980’s.
Faith is there too, talking with Shyanne and a few others, who congratulate her before trailing away. Faith yells “love you all!” after them. I’ve just handed the phone back to her mom Ellen, and before mother and daughter bend into each other and away, I ask Faith, “Have you ever done that before?” “No,” Faith says, smiling. “I’ve made that shot before but never a buzzer beater to win a game.” A tiny, exclusive interview. It’s better than any press conference.
I also tell Faith that her shot better be plastered across my Instagram feed by every women’s basketball highlight congregor, and she laughs, shrugging me away, and I don’t know how to keep the conversation going. I turn back to Mel. “Are you ready for your Uber home?” I ask. He says he is, and that we’ll pass by the 24-hour diner where sometimes he works all night, and where I’m always welcome to join him for a meal.
A few minutes later, Molly, Mel and I are winding through the suburban Philadelphia neighborhoods. From the backseat, Mel is still the guy I remember, spinning through memories and personal theories, lists of accomplishments. And I realize now that a decade ago, I couldn’t see how thoroughly and warmly Mel Greenberg had attempted to welcome me, without question or pretense. This is my favorite thing about Mel Greenberg. And I know he’s done it for so many other writers, too (if you pay attention, you’ll see his name sprinkled across bios, mentioned on podcasts, inscribed in the world of women’s basketball media.) When we arrive to Mel’s apartment, I appreciate him in this new way: as someone who understands that an invitation to join is a sacred act, to be used widely. It’s something I hope to emulate in this industry, too.
Of course, in the days that follow, Faith Masonius’ game-winning shot at Villanova goes viral. I am so glad. I re-watch this single play dozens of times like my favorite poem. And like any good poetry, Faith’s game-winner creates something new. Because in freeing herself from the thicket of defenders, and in order to make that backwards shot, Faith had to step away from the basket: technically, in the ‘wrong’ direction. This, of course, turned out to be the most powerful way forward. And in a time when I feel nearly as much fear as I did when I first arrived to Chicago, a time of complete uncertainty and doubt, Faith’s buzzer beater is its own form of invitation, an improbable portal. A small gem, absolutely necessary to pocket, and keep.
Rough Notes is created and written by me, Maya Goldberg-Safir with art & design by the badass team at Rough Notes Productions: Stefania Gomez, Justine Tobiasz, and Clara May.
Love this … beautifully and intelligently written.