This has happened before. The Flying Dutchmen basketball
team has been projected to contend for the CAA title before. I know it has.
In fact, I’m looking at visual proof of it, right here in a
document titled “CAAPredictionsThru2013.” It contains, as you can probably
surmise, the official CAA predictions every year since 2001, when Hofstra
jumped from the America East in order to find a permanent home for its football
program. No really. I swear.
Anyway, it takes a little scrolling down, but there it is in
my favorite font (14-point Cambria, whatever that is):
2006-07
PREDICTED
1. Hofstra
The 2006-07 season—i.e. the one after The Great Screw
Job—was the first one in which Hofstra was picked to finish higher than fourth
in the CAA. We entered November not only bursting with giddy anticipation, but
also possessing vivid daydreams of the heartbreak from the previous March
yielding the ultimate payback, hopefully at the expense of those bastards from
Fairfax.
Except, of course, it didn’t, thanks to a season that was as
heartbreaking, in its own way, as its predecessor. Mostly because the
championship dream ended with a loss to those bastards from Fairfax in which
Greg Johnson drove the lane down three as time expired, at which point we all
forever turned into Charlie Brown following the 1962 World Series.
WHY COULDN'T JOHNSON HAVE DISHED THE BALL BACK TO THE WIDE-OPEN AGUDIO AT THE THREE-POINT LINE?
Over the subsequent seven seasons, Hofstra was never picked
higher than fifth in the preseason poll – though, of course, we managed, every
year, to find ways to delude ourselves into thinking the Dutchmen’s
championship hopes were better than projected. For example:
2007-08: Sure, VCU has Maynor and the bastards from Fairfax
are the bastards from Fairfax and Old Dominion is Old Dominion, but we’ve got
Agudio, and this freshmen Jenkins might be really good.
2008-09: Sure, VCU has Maynor and the bastards from Fairfax
are the bastards from Fairfax and Old Dominion is Old Dominion, but Jenkins is
really good.
2009-10: Sure, the bastards from Fairfax are the bastards
from Fairfax, and Old Dominion is Old Dominion, and Northeastern is a lot
better, but Maynor graduated and Jenkins is really, really good.
2010-11: Sure, the bastards from Fairfax are the bastards
from Fairfax and Old Dominion is Old Dominion and this Shaka guy from VCU seems
like he might be a decent coach and all our good players left except Jenkins,
but Jenkins is really, Really, REALLY GOOD.
2011-12: Sure, Jenkins graduated and VCU just made the Final
Four and Old Dominion is Old Dominion and Drexel looks REALLY good, but the
head bastard amongst the bastards from Fairfax left and we’ve got strength in
numbers.
2012-13: Sure, VCU is building on the Final Four run, unlike
the bastards from Fairfax, and Drexel just made the NIT quarterfinals and Old
Dominion is Old Dominion, but we’ve got nine really promising new players and
they’re all going to be good, unless two-thirds of them get arrested, but what
are the odds of that happening?
2013-14: Screw it.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to care again. A season of
no expectations and little initial engagement reignited our passion for Hofstra
basketball. For the first time in the CAA era, the Flying Dutchmen were the
preseason pick to finish last. But they finished eighth, and it was the most
glorious eighth-place finish ever.
Victories felt like they did in the winter of 1993-94, when each
win was euphoric because it meant the Dutchmen were another win removed from
being included in the discussion of the worst team in the land.
It was a pleasure to see newcomers such as graduate transfers
Zeke Upshaw and Dion Nesmith, plus CAA Rookie of the Year runner-up Jamall
Robinson, come in and not only begin to lay the foundation for the future but
also maximize their opportunities, unlike the knuckleheads who immediately
preceded them.
And it was a pleasure to watch Joe Mihalich, thrust into the
seemingly unwinnable task of winning over fans who were deeply scarred by the
events of the previous season and loyal to Mo Cassara, manage to win everybody
over by just being himself and embracing Hofstra as Cassara, Tom Pecora, Jay
Wright and Butch van Breda Kolff did before him.
The season ended March 8 with another narrow loss to
eventual champion Delaware in the CAA quarterfinals. Mihalich unwittingly
summarized the unusual affection we all had for the 2013-14 Dutchmen afterward,
when he broke down at the press conference.
“There’s only one way to be for me—I don’t want to get corny
on you here—and that’s to be totally invested,” Mihalich said this summer. “We
were so close [in] so many games. Hey, only one team smiles, and every team
wants one more. So it would have been great to get that one there and get in
the semis.
“But it was a sad ending. It really was. There was so much
emotion with what we did.”
The final buzzer was still echoing at Baltimore Arena when
Mihalich and the rest of us realized the emotions and expectations would be
different this season. With Niagara transfers Juan’ya Green and Ameen Tanksley
and SMU transfer Brian Bernardi—i.e. the three guys we didn’t even want to
think about last season—all eligible, the rebuilding plan was expected to take
a sizable second step forward.
But that was before Mihalich landed Rokas Gustys, whose size
(6-foot-9) and pedigree (he prepped at the legendary Oak Hill Academy) makes
him perhaps the most promising big man Hofstra has ever recruited.
The preview magazines began hitting the newsstands in the
summer, and they all had one thing in common: Hofstra in the CAA’s top three.
And none were written by me!
CAA coaches and reporters covering the league agreed with the consensus and
picked the Dutchmen third in the preseason poll—behind Northeastern and William &
Mary—released at media day on Oct. 21.
Some knowledgeable prognosticators--such as the folks at SI.com as well as the great Zach Braziller of the New York Post--even picked the Dutchmen to win it all. Braziller went so far as to declare Hofstra was becoming New York City's team. (I should note I would think highly of Braziller, even if he hadn't beem telling me for more than a year that my pessimism about Hofstra hoops would soon be unfounded)
“Feels a lot different than last year—same level of
excitement, but a different kind of excitement,” Mihalich said five days
earlier at Hofstra’s basketball media day. “Last year we knew we had to coach
every pass just to have a chance to win. If we play hard and get these guys to
play together, who knows? Maybe we can be one of the teams in the league that
come March can be playing the best basketball of anybody and do something
special and climb up a ladder and cut down some nets.”
He said this 29 days ago, and my response now is the same as
it was then:
AHHHHH THIS IS FREAKING ME OUT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO REACT TO
THIS WHAT IS GOING ON??
Sure, we began every year but last year with visions of an
NCAA Tournament bid dancing in our heads. But we also knew our hopes were of
the long-shot variety, that the Dutchmen would need the type of breaks that
only the other guys ever seem to get.
So when seasons ended before the Dutchmen could even get to
the CAA championship game, there was disappointment, sure, but not the agony we
felt in 2007. And there was something oddly comforting about that routine.
But hitting November and believing we’re about to watch a
Dutchman team that is a legitimate title contender is as fantastic as it is
frightening. Do we want to open ourselves up to walking the emotional tightrope
again?
Yes, we do. This just feels different, and worth going
all-in on. And “this” feels like it is encompassing more than just the men’s
basketball program.
It reminds me of 20 years ago this fall, when the resounding
performances of the football, volleyball and men’s and women’s soccer teams –
the quartet went a combined 61-19-5 – only enhanced the excitement surrounding
Jay Wright’s first Flying Dutchmen basketball team and fostered the notion that
Hofstra, on the verge of Division I extinction earlier in the decade, was
primed for a rebirth.
The circumstances are different this time. Now, Hofstra is
trying to bounce back from the self-inflicted wound sustained by the demolition
of football (did you really think I was going to go a whole piece without
mentioning that?).
But the success this fall of the volleyball team (the likely
CAA regular season champ), the men’s and women’s soccer teams (both of whom
finished third in the CAA) and the field hockey team (which entered the final
weekend of the season tied for second before missing the four-team tourney) has
engendered the same feeling of anticipation heading into a new era of men’s
basketball.
Now, like then, everybody who cares about Hofstra athletics
feels united in optimism, instead of pessimism. One of my favorite Tweets of
the year—and if you know me at all, you know I see A LOT OF TWEETS—came last
Friday from Hofstra athletic director Jeff Hathaway, who snapped a picture of
the volleyball team cheering on the women’s soccer team at Northeastern.
What makes @HofstraPride
athletics special?-
@HofstraVB stops by
to cheer for WSoc in @CAASports
tourney in Boston. pic.twitter.com/F09IpbBZO9
—
Jeff Hathaway (@HofstraPrideAD) November
7, 2014
(Plus, the sequel to the greatest and most quotable movie of my generation, Dumb and Dumber, opens today, one month shy
of the 20th anniversary of the original. And I look forward to
seeing Dumb and Dumber To at the campus movie theatre next spring, over and
over again, with my wife and ex-roommate, just like we saw the original over
and over again in the spring of 1995!)
Buying into the optimism doesn’t mean being blinded by it.
Of the 11 players suiting up tonight, we’ve never seen eight of them in a
Hofstra uniform. We know enough about them to know we should be excited, but we
also know how dangerous it is to invest in the completely unknown.
That well-earned wariness—imagine lapsing in Catholicism yet
becoming a Hofstra fan and you have my existence—makes it impossible to avoid
worrying about the unexpected disaster that we are certain is on the horizon. For
instance, even if players stay healthy and out of trouble, the Sharknado could
always hit Hofstra Arena.
Joe Mihalich, right, tries to save humanity and Hofstra Arena by sawing thru a shark in this future file photo.
And as Mihalich says, only one team is left smiling. But hey.
For the first time in a long, long time, we don’t have to delude ourselves into thinking
we could be the ones smiling on the second Monday in March.
“The exciting thing is we know we can win the league,”
Mihalich said Oct. 16. “We know we can finish eighth, too. But we know we can win the
league. You just want to have a chance. You just want to have a chance.
“And I feel like we do.”
Us too. Finally.
Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com
or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.
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