Days like two Fridays ago, when there’s so much news to
filter and the head is filled with pinballing thoughts, lend themselves to
paying particularly close attention to the random vagaries of life, such as
songs on the radio or street signs, in hopes that something will provide some
clarity and, in particular, a column-worthy hook that will tie everything
together.
Two Fridays ago, clarity and the hook were found on a bumper
sticker. As I walked into the University Club for the press conference
officially announcing the dismissal of Mo Cassara, I saw a car adorned with a
sticker that contained the Voltaire quote “Every man is guilty of all the good
he did not do.”
(I would like to tell you that I minored in philosophy at
Hofstra, which is true, and that I didn’t need to go to Google to find the
author of the quote, which is false. Transparency, and all that.)
And while we’re on the subject of transparency, I suppose I
should get this out of the way: If you’re looking for a coolly unemotional,
middle-of-the-road take on Cassara’s firing, a.) I don’t do that here and b.) I
REALLY won’t be doing that here today.
Mo Cassara is a friend of mine, and it is both fortunate and
unfortunate that he’ll be a friend of mine for a far longer period of time than
he was coach at Hofstra. I imagine that some people, particularly Cassara
critics, will think I am simply the house organ for all things
Cassara—remember, my wife and I may or may not have named our daughter after
him!—or that I like him simply because he talks to me.
And while I suppose my fondness for Cassara is a byproduct
of his open access policies, I am certain, after knowing him for the last three
years, that it would have been my loss if I didn’t have such an avenue by which
to meet and get to know him.
So with all that said: Cassara is the former coach of the
Flying Dutchmen because he is a good man done in by the guiltiness of others.
I get why Hofstra athletic director Jeff Hathaway and/or
president Stuart Rabinowitz made the decision he/they made. I get how bad the
events of this season and the six arrests of ex-players look for the
university, and that the pride the administration takes in Hofstra is far
different than the pride we take as alums.
I respect that it wasn’t an easy choice—if it was, Cassara
would have been fired on March 10, or Dec. 1—and that running an athletic
department or a university often means telling very nice people that their
services are no longer needed.
But just because I get and respect the decision in the
black-and-white sense doesn’t mean I agree with it in a world awash with sepia
and tones.
Basketball-wise, I think Cassara deserved a chance to try
and turn this around. There’s no sugarcoating this: His first attempt to rebuild
the Dutchmen was a disaster. He’d be the first to tell you that the process
failed. After his successful first season, he tried to patch holes in a
decaying foundation, instead of stripping it down and starting from scratch.
But he was getting ready to do that, and going in a
completely opposite direction recruiting-wise after getting burned this year by
true freshmen and troubled transfers. By focusing on prep schoolers (six of the
seven recruits he signed for next year are in the midst of a post-grad year
right now), Cassara was bringing people to campus who were used to living away
from home and surely more mature than most of the knuckleheads who ended up
costing him his job.
He said numerous times over the last few months that he was
looking forward to moving the troublemakers out of the program, via graduation
or outright dismissal, so that he could start anew. Looking back, he spoke with
a certain sense of desperation and worry, as if he feared some of these guys
would manage to get into more trouble before he could get them off campus. If
that was the case, he was right to worry.
In addition, recent history suggests that schools set
themselves back by firing a head coach after three years or less. Between 1993
and 2009, 56 schools that played in conferences possessing an automatic bid to
the NCAA Tournament dismissed a coach before his fourth season. Eight more have
done so since 2010, but I’m not judging their post-firing performance yet
because their current coaches haven’t had four recruiting classes.
In addition, I didn’t count schools that fired coaches
following NCAA investigations, a la Binghamton and Kevin Broadus, or because of
poisonous personalities, a la Rutgers and Mike Rice.
Of the 56 schools to make a change in three years or less
from 1993 through 2009, just 21 made the NCAA Tournament under their next
coach. Maybe Cassara never would have taken the Dutchmen dancing, but Hathaway
will have his hands full finding the guy who can do so—especially with a program
that has a grand total of four scholarship players heading into next year.
He’ll also have quite a challenge finding someone who can
match Cassara’s intangibles. I’ve followed Hofstra basketball for 20 years, and
in that time nobody has tried to do more good for Hofstra basketball—or worked
harder or cared more—than Cassara. And believe me, Butch van Breda Kolff, Jay
Wright and Tom Pecora weren’t exactly mailing it in during their time on
Hempstead Turnpike.
If anything, Cassara worked and cared too much. An avid
Seinfeld fan, Cassara probably could have benefited from pulling a Costanza,
and doing the exact opposite of everything, if only he had it in him to
half-ass something.
Cassara got the job after a whirlwind five-day period in late
April and early May 2010 where he thought he’d be out of a job, and right up
until his late afternoon meeting with Hathaway March 21, he worked every day as
if he’d be fired the next day.
I remember exchanging texts with him after the loss to
Drexel in January 2011, when Charles Jenkins broke the school scoring record in
front of a sellout crowd. It was one of just 10 losses in an often-magical
season, but Cassara was despondent—quite literally to the point where he
couldn’t move off his office couch, several hours after the final buzzer—over
the missed opportunity to win and turn some of the first-timers into the crowd
into repeat visitors.
Perhaps the most indelible image of the Cassara era is of
him running parallel to a loose ball during a game against James Madison in
December 2011, looking as if he might actually dive on it himself so that the
Dutchmen could retain possession.
Cassara’s teams embodied their coach. As beaten up as the
Dutchmen were this year, they impressed impartial writers and opposing fans
alike with their effort and hustle. He should have gotten an extended chance to
coach kids whose character matched their effort.
And he should have gotten an extended chance to find kids
whose pride in Hofstra matched his. In the last 20 years, nobody connected with
Hofstra basketball loved Hofstra more than Cassara—even if Hofstra can be a
tough place to love.
It’s so easy to obsess over what Hofstra isn’t. It isn’t a
giant sprawling campus far away from home with a party life that draws the
attention of US News and World Report (presuming they still rank party
schools). It is close to Manhattan, but it’s not in Manhattan. We play Division
I sports, but not the Division I sports you see on TV. With so many commuters,
added on to the plethora of students who are just going to college because it’s
the thing you do from 18 to 22, it isn’t a place that easily engenders the
unity we associate with college life.
But it can still be great, if you love and embrace Hofstra
for what it is—instead of obsessing over what it isn’t—and realize how
rewarding the place can be if you immerse yourself in it, all the while working
to make the school as great as we want it to be.
Cassara GOT that. He attended club functions throughout
campus and went to athletic events and was on a first-name basis with the staff
at the Student Center cafeteria because he was one of us, and one of them. He
supported those who loved Hofstra and were working to turn it into something
even greater because he was doing exactly that.
Instead of griping that Hofstra didn’t have a practice
facility, like so many of its mid-major rivals, he began planning one. Instead
of complaining about the meager crowds, he reinforced relationships with those
who did show up to the Arena and daydreamed of the upcoming seasons in which the
Dutchmen would regularly play in front of 4,000 fans or more.
He also got that the people who truly love Hofstra are
fundamentally decent people who treat one another well and have no patience for
those oozing arrogance or phoniness.
I heard an amazing story this season about how Cassara
lugged his own luggage—and that of his girlfriend—through the airport on the
way to or from a game. A member of the traveling party, watching Cassara
struggle to balance everything, said, half-kiddingly, that he should have the
student managers carry his luggage. Cassara said he’d been a student manager,
and that carrying luggage was a demeaning part of the job and that he always
swore he’d carry his own luggage if he ever became a head coach.
I don’t know a single Hofstra staffer who has anything bad
to say about Cassara. Employees wept the morning of his dismissal. One athletic
department staffer whom I trust implicitly said Cassara was the nicest head
coach he’s ever encountered at the school.
For every single of the 811 days he was head coach of the
Flying Dutchmen, Cassara unconditionally loved Hofstra and all those connected
to it. And that’s the cruelest, saddest irony here: Few people did more to
generate and spread Hofstra pride than Cassara, and he was undermined by those
unappreciative of the university and the opportunities (often of the second
chance variety) it provided.
Hell, Cassara was undermined almost from day one. If Welsh
was smart enough to call a cab the night of April 29, 2010—less than 48 hours
after sermonizing about the responsibilities of a head coach—I’m not writing
these words right now.
More recently, I have gone out of my way to not mention the
four thieves who ruined a season and so much more. They are unworthy of the
keystrokes needed to type their names and I don’t want the traffic that would
come from those Googling them.
But I hope Shaq Stokes, Jimmy Hall, Kentrell Washington and
Dallas Anglin have it in them to feel remorse for what they did to Cassara, and
the repercussions it will have for their former school in the years to come.
I get that Taran Buie and Jamal Coombs-McDaniel are complex
people trying to emerge from exceedingly difficult upbringings, and that
neither one, despite their recent arrests, is necessarily a bad guy.
Athletic staffers marveled at Buie’s politeness—he always
addressed staffers by“ Mr.” and “Mrs.” even when they said it was fine for him
to call them by their first names.
Personally, I’ll always remember running into Buie on the
Arena concourse after a game and being moved by the gentleness he displayed
upon being introduced to my daughter, who returned Buie’s broad smile as he
touched her hand.
And I get that so much about this season would have been
different if Coombs-McDaniel didn’t have the knees of a 40-year-old. If he’s
playing this season, he’s engaged. He’s kicking Buie and everyone else in the
ass—Cassara always said leadership was Coombs-McDaniel’s strongest trait—and maybe
he’s able to steer four foolish newcomers away from doing something they—and
we—would regret forever in October and November.
Instead, he was just one of many men, young and old, guilty
of the good they did not do, and guilty of getting a good man fired.
Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com
or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.
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