Yeah, John Forbes Nash, Jr. is a genius and a Nobel Prize winner, but does he know how many games it will take for Charles Jenkins to break the all-time scoring record at Hofstra?Some of us are born with great gifts: An ability to sing or dance or play a musical instrument, or an ability to play a sport better than 95 percent of the population, or an ability to solve titanic mathematical problems in a matter of seconds, or an ability to pull off the miracle that is ventriloquism. Seriously, that is so cool. How do they talk without moving their lips? Wild!
Anyway, the rest of us are born with decidedly less valuable gifts. Like, say, the ability to sift through the audio torture that is a Monday Night Football broadcast and know when an ex-Hofstra player has been mentioned.
Such is my burden in life, and such was the case Monday night (of course) when Kyle Arrington picked up a blocked punt and raced 35 yards for a touchdown during the New England Patriots’ 41-14 dismantling of the Miami Dolphins. While the trio of ear-splitting announcers (seriously, is there anything or anyone Jon Gruden DOESN’T like?) were raving over Patrick Chung, who blocked the punt, I heard someone mention Arrington’s name. And of course I then ranted about the death of Hofstra football on Twitter.
Arrington was disproving the notion there is no publicity in Division I-AA football long before he scored his first NFL touchdown. The Boston Herald and Boston Globe ran nice features on him Sunday discussing his ascension from practice squad vagabond to starting cornerback. The Herald story includes quotes from Dave Cohen.
Between Arrington, Marques Colston and Stephen Bowen—as well as Kareem Huggins, who appears back from injury and ready to vie for playing time at running back for Raheem Morris’ Tampa Bay Buccaneers, known worldwide as The Official NFL Team of Defiantly Dutch—there should be plenty of opportunity the next three months to provide reminders of the publicity Division I-AA football generates. In the meantime, tide yourself over with some Bits and Bytes to tide you over until then:
—Apologies for the sporadic posting here since the start of the school year. The day jobs—Hooray! Plural!—have been busier than anticipated, but it’s October and it’s time to get serious about time management skills. So stay tuned here for plenty on the upcoming hoops season as well as the fall sports at Hofstra—and, of course, a few stories intended to try and make sure nobody forgets football used to be played at Shuart Stadium.
—The story of the fall sports season at Hofstra is the Flying Dutchwomen soccer team, which is on a school record-tying 10-game winning streak and on the verge of climbing into the national top 25 for the first time in school history. The Dutchwomen are ranked 16th in the RPI—good news, we’re going to the NCAA Tournament for sure, how could a team be ranked so high and miss out?—and first in the NSCAA Mid-Atlantic region poll. The Dutchwomen will go for their record-setting 11th straight win and, perhaps, a spot in the top 25 when they host Towson Friday night at Hofstra Soccer Stadium.
—Your good friend and mine Mike “Janitor” Litos is in the big time now, penning his first piece for AOL Fanhouse on the revival of the Richmond men’s basketball program under head coach Chris Mooney. Figures. His first piece for a national site and he doesn’t leave Richmond. SOUTHERN BIAS!!!
—Speaking of Litos, he evaluates here the then and now predictions made by his super-secret and super-mysterious “Brain Trust,” which ranked the CAA teams last spring and then again last week. Interesting stuff. As Litos notes, Hofstra’s standing actually improved despite the off-season from hell—which, of course, still turned out to be a lot better than the ones endured by Drexel and UNC Wilmington.
—Also chiming in with 2010-11 predictions is another friend of DD, Brian Mull, who, even though I took him to the finest diner on Hempstead Turnpike last season, still hates Hofstra and picks the Dutchmen fifth. Sigh.
—Here’s something fun to ponder: When, exactly, will Charles Jenkins break Antoine Agudio’s career scoring record? Jenkins has 1,767 points in three years, ninth-most in school history and 510 shy of displacing Agudio. Jenkins enters this season averaging 18.6 points per game, which puts him on pace to break the record in the Dutchmen’s 28th game of the season—the BracketBuster on Feb. 19.
However, Jenkins has improved his average every season—from 15 ppg as a freshman to 19.7 ppg as a sophomore to 20.6 ppg last year—so it’s fair to assume he’ll exceed his career average as a senior. Let’s say he increases his average the same amount this year as last year. That would put him at 21.5 ppg and allow him to surpass Agudio in the Dutchmen’s 24th game—at home Feb. 5 against Northeastern.
That sounds reasonable, but also puts him dangerously close to breaking the mark Feb. 9 at Georgia State. I really want to see this in person, but driving to Georgia would be REALLY expensive. So please, Charles, break it Feb. 5. For me!
Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.
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