Of Alumni Day, Faux Homecoming and the inaugural Barone Bowl

The annual men’s basketball Alumni Day is scheduled for tomorrow, which in and of itself is typically no big deal and barely, if ever, receives any actual promotion from the school. Ex-Flying Dutchmen show up, maybe scrimmage a little bit before the game and ignore the paunchy, occasionally bespectacled guy sitting a few rows up in John Stockton shorts and Michael Cooper socks begging for some run. C’mon guys I’m an alumni too!! I’ll just play the point, I won’t shoot. I promise.

But this Alumni Day is different than the rest. It’s the first one since Hofstra killed football, and not coincidentally, it’s getting a bit of publicity (free food and drink at City Cellar afterward, whoohoo, ride out the blizzard on Hofstra’s dime!) as Hofstra tests run the concept of a winter Homecoming. Geez, just typing those words makes my stomach ache.

A Homecoming centered around basketball, of course, is even more inevitable than the NCAA Tournament expanding to 96 teams, and it seems to be a particularly cruel coincidence that the beta version takes place when Northeastern visits the Arena. You know, the same Northeastern whose decision to drop football Nov. 22 had absolutely nothing at all to do with Hofstra following suit a mere 11 days later. If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect someone way high up in the food chain scheduled it this way to have a laugh at our expense.

Regardless, Hofstra and Northeastern are the closest thing either has to a kindred soul in the disjointed mess that is the CAA, even though the schools opposed each other once in men’s basketball before Hofstra joined the North Atlantic Conference in 1994 and hadn’t played each other in football in 28 years before Hofstra became a member of the Atlantic-10 in 2001.

Give credit to Husky at the CAAZone boards, who recognized the hilarious absurdity of it all and suggested the winner of the game Saturday receive the football that Frank Barone caught when an unnamed Hofstra kicker (David Ettinger? Walter Olshanski?) booted a world-record 68-yard field goal in a 2001 episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (hey look at that, promotion for a Division I-AA program, oh the humanity!)

Faux Homecoming, the Barone Bowl and potential blizzard aside, this game is plenty compelling on its own. The Dutchmen are on the verge of sucking us all back in after a three-game winning streak, but in order to really get us back on the bandwagon and enter the CAA Tournament with legitimate aspirations of playing Cinderella, they need to record a Signature Win.

Tomorrow may be the Dutchmen’s best and last chance to record it. Drexel, which visits Wednesday, is a legitimate championship contender as well, but Northeastern is in a three-way tie for first place and receiving national attention after turning its season around following a 2-7 start. The Huskies are 13-1 since then (a loss to Drexel in Boston last weekend snapped an 11-game winning streak).

Northeastern is awfully reminiscent of the Loren Stokes-Carlos Rivera-Antoine Agudio era Dutchmen: Three players are averaging at least 33 minutes per game and the quintet of Matt Janning, Chaisson Allen, Manny Adako, Nkem Ojougbah and Alwayne Bigby combining to make all but four of the Huskies’ starts.

The game will be a tasty battle of strengths, as Northeastern ranks first in the CAA in field goal percentage and 3-point field goal percentage while the Dutchmen rank first in field goal defense and second in 3-point defense.

The Huskies might be the most road-tested team in the CAA (they won at Wyoming in the CBI last year and participated in tournaments in Hawaii and San Francisco this season). But the Dutchmen are 3-1 against Northeastern at the Arena since the latter joined the CAA, including last year’s 57-52 upset win that knocked the Huskies from the ranks of the CAA’s unbeaten and jumpstarted Hofstra’s season-ending 11-4 run.

I’ll freely admit I don’t know what to expect tomorrow. I had a bad feeling going into the game Wednesday, and the Dutchmen were barely threatened in the final 30 minutes of a rout over James Madison. Hot is hot, even if the three-game winning streak came at the expense of a trio of scuffling teams, and the Dutchmen should enter Saturday more confident than they’ve been since early December.

The Signature Win will happen if Charles Jenkins shoots anything like he has the last three games (22-for-34), Cornelius Vines suffocates Allen like he did Julius Wells Wednesday and the Dutchmen’s big men limit Ojougbah like they did Denzel Bowles.

Sounds like a lot, sure, but a lot has already happened to make tomorrow matter. Either way, we are going to be there, snow be damned. I’ll leave the house at noon to get there if necessary (of course, my saner wife may have something to say about this). Follow us along on Twitter and come by and say hi if you brave the elements. I’ll be the guy randomly yelling out the names of former football players from Hofstra and Northeastern.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

All these changes taking place…

Do...do...do you remember when the Flying Dutchmen beat Towson? That was awesome. Do...do...do you think it can happen again today?

The Flying Dutchmen have changed by not changing at all (oh yeah, I always wanted to find a way to work into a story my favorite line from my favorite Pearl Jam song). Nine weeks ago today, the streaking Dutchmen met Towson in a game that had the potential to foretell their fortunes for the rest of the season and their ability to exceed modest pre-season expectations.

Today, the streaking Dutchmen meet Towson in a game that has the potential to foretell their fortunes for the rest of their season and gauge their ability to meet or exceed modest mid-to-late season expectations.

These Dutchmen, of course, are streaking in a different direction with two straight losses than those Dutchmen, who had won four in a row. And these Dutchmen need to make a statement like the one those Dutchmen made in Towson, where they knocked off the Tigers 90-81 in perhaps the program’s most impressive win since the graduation of Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera.

It wasn’t a perfect game, but it’s the one that got me to declare the Blue Beetle Bandwagon was up and running and it’s the one that Tom Pecora throws into the VCR (or the DVD player, or the Blu-Ray player, or the Laser Disc player, or the Beta Max, or film strip machine, or whatever device coaches use these days to break down game film) whenever he wants to remind the Dutchmen that they haven’t always been inconsistent, haven’t always battled self-confidence issues and haven’t always been unable to fall out of a boat and hit water.

Five players scored at least nine points, Cornelius Vines hit six 3-pointers and the Dutchmen made 25 of 31 free throws in scoring 90 points in regulation for only the fourth time in the Pecora Era (ironically, in that it’s not ironic at all, Towson is the only venue in which the Dutchmen have twice exceeded 90 points in regulation). The Dutchmen out-rebounded the Tigers 39-30, set a season high with 19 assists and committed just 11 turnovers, one shy of their season-best mark.

The loss to George Mason Tuesday is one suitable for viewing, as well, albeit only for interrogation purposes, and even then only if everything else has failed and you’re running out of time. At 6-6 and in seventh place in the CAA, the Dutchmen are right where everyone figured they’d be back in October, but that hot start raised expectations and the subsequent slumps have lent a particularly frustrating air to the season.

Fortunately for the Dutchmen, perpetually disappointing Towson—which is one loss away from locking up its eighth sub-.500 conference record in as many seasons in the CAA—is in even worse shape. Hofstra has to win this game if it hopes to regain some momentum over the final lap of the conference season, and the Tigers could be the perfect tonic for whatever ails the Dutchmen—and in particular Charles Jenkins, who is 18-of-38 shooting in his last three games against Towson.

Four Towson starters stand 6-foot-6 or taller, so finding the right mix of Darren Townes, Arminas Urbutis and Greg Washington (who had a double-double against Towson in December) is key. The guess here is Townes, fresh off a season-high nine rebounds against Mason, will approach 30 minutes for the first time in more than two months.

It’ll also be interesting to see if Vines and Tony Dennison, each of whom set a season-high in minutes off the bench Tuesday, see the same amount of time following their brutal shooting efforts against Mason. My guess is we’ll see more of Zygis Sestakos, who missed all five 3-pointers against Towson in December and has taken just 14 3-pointers since.

Anyway, see you there. I’ll be the one dribbling a basketball, sporting socks that are too high, shorts that are too short and the faded and shrunken Miller T-shirt I won at Bogart’s for being able to identify where Eddie Vedder was living when he joined Pearl Jam (Answer: San Diego. Honest to goodness. How’s that for tying it all together nicely?) Hey, I’ve got to be prepared just in case there’s an Alumni Day scrimmage and alums are pulled out of the stands to play.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com. And join the Defiantly Dutch group at Facebook today!