Jim Steinman, that maestro of Wagnerian rock, knew what he was writing about when he declared it would be over before we knew it’d begun.
Sometime around 8:45 PM on March 10, I raced up the stairs to use the bathroom during the final media timeout of the CAA championship game. The Flying Dutchmen were up two on Northeastern with 3:54 left, and while I usually defer to Ken Pomeroy on numerical matters such as these, there was no way in hell it felt like the Dutchmen had a 66 percent chance of winning the game and the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Indeed, as I did my business and washed up — in a more thorough manner than I might have just a week earlier — I’m pretty sure it felt there was at least a 66 percent chance that the 19-year NCAA Tournament drought would officially reach 20 years in a matter of minutes. I remember looking into the mirror in the bathroom, aware that no supposedly grown-ass man should be as nervous about a sporting event as I was right now, and thinking to myself (or maybe out loud, who knows) that if the Dutchmen could just hang on and win this game, I wouldn’t complain about sports for five years.
I think I added something about how I didn’t want a Hofstra win to come at the expense of HAVING sports for the next five years, which is a weird addendum to make, except, well, stuff was getting weird. But the next few minutes offered the promise of an alternate reality where the stresses were entirely related to a bouncing ball and the only thing that mattered was this basketball game.
All it took was seven minutes to erase 19 years worth of angst, heartbreak and disappointment (but Jim Larranaga is still the devil).
The Dutchmen were teetering before the timeout — Eli Pemberton turned the ball over, Pemberton and Isaac Kante committed fouls and Northeastern’s Bolden Brace and Jason Strong missed potential go-ahead 3-pointers before a turnover by the Huskies’ Guilien Smith stopped the clock — but once play resumed, nothing could stop the Dutchmen and their aim was true.
Desure Buie began a 206-second sequence that cemented him as an all-time Hofstra great by draining a 3-pointer out of the timeout and forcing a turnover as the shot clock expired on Northeastern’s subsequent possession. Jalen Ray drained two free throws before a Tareq Coburn block led to the dagger 3-pointer by Buie.
The game wasn’t officially over, but the Flying Dutchmen were going back to the big dance. It was all a glorious, out-of-body-experience blur. At some point in these seven magical minutes, a friend of mine captured my guttural catharsis, which I will pay him handsomely to keep under wraps until and unless I warrant a Last Dance-esque documentary. But it went something like this.
The buzzer we’d been waiting to hear for 19 years sounded — Hofstra 70, Northeastern 61, in case you forgot — and the first thing I realized was I was too happy and had too much adrenaline coursing through me to cry. It reminded me of the moments after Molly was born on Sept. 17, 2012. I’m not saying this was as momentous an event (I’m also not NOT saying that), but I remember wondering why the tears I’d expected to shed for months weren’t falling. Then I thanked a nurse for helping our family out, the enormity of the moment cascaded over me and I didn’t stop crying until roughly two days later.
I mention this because a couple minutes after the clock hit triple zeroes, I walked down to the court where a fellow long-time fan motioned for and wrapped me in a bear hug.
“We did it,” he yelled into my ears. “This is for everyone who stuck it out after 2012, who was here for all the bad times.”
“Oh man, you’re gonna make me cry,” I said, at which point I was already crying.
This was the first of many hugs, handshakes and teary-eyed exchanges, none of which stuck out to me as much as one with a member of the men’s basketball staff. His first words weren’t about how they’d just done it, or how great it was to achieve the goal of every mid-major in the land. Nor did either of us speak through happy sobs.
All he said was “So you think we’re gonna play?”
***
Even in the best of times, sports are an escape from reality. But throughout the CAA Tournament, sports were becoming the only avenue by which to free oneself of worries about something called a coronavirus. And even that avenue was growing more narrow, seemingly by the minute.
In the time it took us to drive from Long Island to Washington, D.C. on Saturday morning and afternoon, the NHL began shutting locker rooms to the press, New York State declared a state of emergency and a friend of mine who was planning to travel from the mid-Atlantic to Brooklyn for the Atlantic 10 tournament texted me with the information that Amtrak was beginning to cancel trains.
On Sunday, one of the friends we met at the Entertainment & Sports Arena came equipped with his own Clorox wipes, which he used to wipe down his seats and his hands anytime he touched anything. The ushers at the arena walked up and down the stairs, wiping down the railings.
Every check of Twitter delivered another dose of increasingly foreboding news. Sure, it’d been that way since the late-night hours of Nov. 8, 2016, but this was a different kind of dread. It got to the point where I just left Twitter on my mentions so I’d miss the latest real world developments, which was like trying to fix an overflowing sink by leaving the room.
What started as a darkly comic joke — Hofstra finally makes it back to the NCAA Tournament but no one can attend it — amongst my fellow CAA friends started to seem quite possible. As the son of a retired stockbroker, I knew it was really bad when I woke up Monday morning to my wife telling me the stock market stopped trading because the market fell so far so fast.
A little before noon on Tuesday, the Ivy League canceled its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. A little after noon, I got an alert from Molly’s school district “…regarding coronavirus information.” And a little bit after that, a friend who was planning to drive down from New Jersey for the championship game said he might have to head to pick up his son from college instead.
His son’s school ended up remaining open for the rest of the week, so he headed to D.C. (And he ended up being the one who recorded my guttural catharsis) But as he texted to me: “I’m almost nervous to come tonight. I’ve got my wife’s (Purel) and I’m not high-fiving anybody. I don’t care if they win by 100.”
When he arrived, we exchanged fist bumps, because handshakes were no longer a thing, and agreed that not only wouldn’t we high-five throughout the game, we wouldn’t hug if the Dutchmen won.
Just as had happened the previous two days, the Hofstra basketball game provided respite from the closing walls of the real world. And it’s been lost in the aftermath of everything that happened thereafter, but the CAA championship game was one HELLUVA game.
The Dutchmen were down 10-3 (NICE FOOTBALL SCORE) and everything was terrible. The Dutchmen went ahead 26-24 and everything was terrific. They were down 30-28 at the half and our stomachs were in our throats. Coburn delivered a back page-worthy dunk to put the Dutchmen up 36-33 fewer than three minutes into the second half and we were surely going dancing.
Maxime Boursiquot, who had nine 3-pointers all season and none since Jan. 4, drained a trey with 9:20 to put Northeastern up 45-41, and I may have thrown Molly’s stuffed snow leopard, which was perched atop my head because that’d been good luck the night before but now it was Snowy’s fault the drought was going to last at least another year.
Snowy’s back in my good graces (not sure if I’m back in his) because of course the drought ended, even if we were pretty sure we were done traveling for a while and wouldn’t attend the NCAA Tournament game(s) in person. But that was OK. The euphoric aftermath, and getting to experience what it was like to win a conference title at an age when it could be appreciated, was enough. I furiously texted my Dad for his T-shirt size and my sister for my nephew’s T-shirt size. Then I bought T-shirts that weren’t the right size for any of us except Molly.
My phone was blowing up with congratulatory texts and Tweets from friends, some of whom could even pick Hofstra out on a map I thought of what I’d write not only for FloHoops.com but, of course, here, where I’d been waiting 11 seasons to write the OMG WE ARE GOING TO THE NCAA TOURNAMENT post. I knew the song I’d link and how it would inspire the headline. All that would have to wait until at least Thursday because we were driving back immediately after the game, but it would be worth the wait, and I’d hopefully do the moment justice.
The floor at the Entertainment & Sports Arena reminded me of a general admission concert, where everyone’s bumping into one another and exchanging high fives and generally having the very best time ever. And there was even a stage and everything, where Joe Mihalich & the Dutchmen received the CAA trophy and their oversized ticket to the NCAA Tournament while players danced and took selfies and eventually doused Mihalich with water.
I’d never been to a concert where I hugged this many people, though. I hugged the friend with whom I’d agreed we wouldn’t exchange hugs. There was a hug with another friend in which neither one of us said anything because we were crying into the other’s shoulders. My wife and I hugged a lot. The tears flowed every time I tried talking about what this meant with friends and members of the athletic staff.
All these people crammed together, laughing and shouting and crying all while sharing a confined space and breathing the same poorly circulated air. It was all so wonderful and instinctual to participate in this celebration and to remain blissfully unaware, or become temporarily and blissfully ignorant, of how outside these walls, the avenues of escapism were continuing to narrow by the second.
***
“So you think we’re gonna play?”
I believed what I said: That there would be an NCAA Tournament, but perhaps a few weeks down the road, after this virus ran its course and was weakened by the warmer weather, which is what everyone hoped would happen because…well, the alternative was too we’d-only-read-about-this-in-history-books bad to ponder.
As great as Wednesday began — we all got home safely and managed to fall asleep before waking up and realizing Hofstra had really won the CAA championship the night before — there wasn’t a minute where it ever felt as if there was an alternative to the alternative.
A little after 2 PM, the Golden State Warriors announced they’d no longer play home games in front of fans. Not even two hours later, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said fans would not be allowed to attend any NCAA Tournament games in the state. Just before 5 PM, NCAA president Mark Emmert announced no fans would be allowed at any tourney games. My Dad texted me “I hope you weren’t planning on going to any March Madness games.”
I should have spent the afternoon writing, but played basketball with Molly instead. I went out to get Newsday, whose back page featured Coburn landing following his thunderous dunk. The front page headline blared CONTAINMENT ZONE. The subhead read “Cuomo to send National Guard to New Rochelle as part of plan to slow virus’ spread.” Beneath that read PLUS: 2 NEW CASES IN NASSAU 3 IN SUFFOLK on one line and HOW TO PREPARE FOR A QUARANTINE on the second line. I still haven’t read the game story.
The Patriot League title game — featuring Boston University head coach Joe Jones, an ex-Hofstra assistant, and broadcast by former Hofstra head coach Mo Cassara — began around 7:30. By the time the Terriers became the 12th team to clinch an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, the Utah Jazz-Oklahoma City Thunder game was postponed because a Jazz player had the coronavirus. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced they had the coronavirus. By the time the Terriers finished celebrating, the NBA season was suspended.
By mid-morning EST Thursday, the Islanders canceled their morning skate. Shortly before noon, my wife found out her school was going remote. Just after noon, the Atlantic 10 canceled its tournament. St. John’s played half a game before the Big East Tournament was canceled. The rest of the still-active tourneys followed suit. The NHL paused its season a little after 1:30 PM and Major League Baseball suspended spring training less than half an hour later. Duke, Kansas and other major programs suspended activities less than an hour later.
Finally, at 4:31, the band aid was ripped off as the NCAA Tournament was canceled. It was officially over before we knew it’d begun.
Not even half an hour later, the CAA announced one of the officials at the first game of the tournament tested positive for the coronavirus. Molly went to school in her Hofstra championship T-shirt on Thursday and was greeted by Mom and Dad at the bus stop Friday afternoon, because we knew that would be her last day of school. By the weekend, we found out one of the friends with whom we’d celebrated had the coronavirus. He’s thankfully fine and had a mild case, and other than Molly briefly running a fever on March 16, none of us presented symptoms in March.
I’ve written for plenty of non-daily publications in my career, so I’m accustomed to figuring out a way to freshen up old-ish news. But by late Thursday night, everything that had happened about 48 hours earlier was unrecognizable. This wasn’t the time to write about how we felt on top of the world Tuesday night, or to put into context what winning the championship meant to Hofstra and its fans.
And it was most certainly not the time to bemoan how there would be no program- and fanbase-validating trip to the NCAA Tournament. On Selection Sunday, there was little woe-is-me wailing about how we all should have been finding out where the Dutchmen were headed (I didn’t say NO woe-is-me wailing), nor was there much time spent wondering where we’d be watching the Dutchmen on Thursday or Friday.
This wasn’t a time to watch sports. It was a time to understand we were in the midst of the biggest American challenge in decades and that relying on sports to service us by providing our quote unquote escape from reality was not an option.
The absence of sports as spring turned into summer also gave us time to not only pay attention to the spate of police brutality being foisted upon Black men and women but to also listen to their anguish expressed on social media and elsewhere. If we could not understand their pain, or the terror that accompanies every routine traffic stop, we could at least listen and absorb the truth that the past and present state of American race relations we’ve been taught is decidedly different than the reality.
For some people, that meant getting their quote unquote escape from reality interrupted for a few days in August, mere weeks after sports returned not because the pandemic was over but because sports are too big to fail.
And even those of us who were unsure if it was an appropriate time to watch sports lapsed back into watching the games and rooting for our favorite real-life teams or fantasy teams, because guilty pleasures are still guilty pleasures and in the end we’re all Charlie Kelly seated next to a plate of cheese. I really don’t want to admit how frustrated I was to lose a fantasy baseball championship in the last inning of the 60-game season.
The pandemic is not over — and in fact is raging across a rudderless country that will be sans leadership until at least Jan. 20 — but college basketball returned in stop-and-start fashion this week. In another sobering reminder of how far removed we are from the relative normalcy of March 10, the Dutchmen will be coached by Mike Farrelly, who is serving as acting head coach while Mihalich — who locked up a spot in the Hofstra Athletics Hall of Fame and cemented his reputation as one of the best program builders in America with the CAA championship — remains on a medical leave that began in August.
The Flying Dutchmen are scheduled to open their season against Rutgers this afternoon, four days after they were supposed to open their season against Monmouth, at least until that game was postponed seven hours before it was scheduled to start because of a positive coronavirus case within the Hawks’ program. Just getting to an opening tip is a victory in 2020-21.
Proceeding thereafter is also unchartered territory. Winning a long-awaited title changes the rooting dynamic, or at least it should. A championship should lessen the desperation and eliminate our worst Mad Dog Russo reactions to disappointing outcomes. We should be good for a few years now.
Finally winning the CAA without making a trip to the NCAA Tournament shouldn’t change that. As much as the world has changed since March 10, we can’t put that released joy back in the bottle nor replicate the 19 years of buildup that preceded the celebration. We felt what we felt.
Now we wonder how to feel going forward, especially in the midst of a pandemic which has some of us uncertain over whether or not sports should even be taking place.
I see fellow college basketball fans who share my conflicted feelings getting wrapped up in their alma maters and the sport. And whenever the season starts, I’m pretty sure it won’t take long — maybe a TV timeout or two — to get wrapped up in the Dutchmen.
I’ll hopefully pen stories and I’ll Be Quirkys and enjoy digging deep into the archives to find fun statistical minutiae. If the season gets to January, I’ll look forward to the weekend back-to-backs that are scheduled to comprise the CAA season. If the season gets to March, I’ll be all-in on the Dutchmen trying to win a second straight tournament title, and hopefully make a first straight NCAA Tournament appearance.
But however long this season lasts, it will be impossible not to think about how our understanding of reality in America has changed and how much normalcy was redefined in the 263 days (for now) between the end of one season and the start of another. It’ll be impossible not to juxtapose what transpires this season to our memories of March 10, back when none of us were fully aware of the ending we were watching — nor even remotely aware of what had begun before we even knew it’d started.
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