Bits and Bytes: Of redshirt comparisons, Hofstra scorers atop the CAA, non-conference facts & Mr. Belvedere

Is the Wesley on the left the one William & Mary beat last month? And if so, did #Beasthoven yell STREAKS ON THE CHINA NEVER MATTERED BEFORE! WHO CARED! afterward?

Ringing in the new year by spending the last strands of time off by doing a little research I won’t have time to do by this time tomorrow and channeling “Just The Facts” week –i.e. CAA Tournament week—with a no-frills approach to the presentation. If you want witty prose you will just have to wait! Without further ado:

—I’ve been pondering this one for a while—ever since Nathaniel Lester scored a career-high 33 points in the season opener for the Dutchmen—and finally got to crunch the numbers: How does Lester’s season thus far measure up to the senior season way back in 2003-04 for Danny Walker, who is the only other upperclassmen to redshirt during the Defiantly Dutch Era and who, like Lester, set a career-high in points in the first game back after missing what should have been his senior season?

Answer: Pretty well. Through 13 games, Lester (13.2 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 38.5 shooting, 10 games with 10 or more points, one game with 10 or more rebounds, one double-double) is exceeding Walker’s 13-game numbers (9.6 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 36 percent shooting,, five games with 10 or more points, no games with 10 or more rebounds, no double-doubles) in just about every category.

Walker was a better 3-point shooter (14-of-39) than Lester (6-of-27) and had 16 blocked shots at this point in his senior season compared to just three for Lester, but Lester has 21 steals as opposed to just eight for Walker. Both endured extended slumps: Lester was just 13-of-58 shooting in a five-game span from Nov. 22-Dec. 3 while Walker shot 4-of-23 in a four-game span from Dec. 23, 2003-Jan. 5, 2004.

In addition, Lester has started all 13 games. Walker started the first eight for the Dutchmen but came off the bench in the next three before returning to the starting lineup for game no. 12.

I have to admit, I thought the numbers would be closer than this. I remembered Walker didn’t start his entire senior season, but I thought his reserve duty happened later in the year. I will try and revisit the comparisons later in the season.

—This is interesting: With Mike Moore leading the CAA in scoring (21.4 points per game) for the second straight week, Hofstra has had the leading scorer in the CAA in 32 of the last 42 scoring periods dating back to the start of the 2009-10 season. And that percentage improves to 32 of the last 39 when the first three weeks of the 2009-10 season—during which Jenkins ranked second or third in the CAA—are discounted.

In addition, Hofstra has had someone in the top two in the CAA in scoring in 38 of the last 42 weeks. The only exceptions: The three weeks from Nov. 21-Dec. 12, when Moore ranked fourth but had played more games than anyone in the top three, and the second week of the 2009-19 season, when Jenkins was third.

Jenkins led the CAA in scoring in 29 of the final 31 periods of his career. The only exceptions: The second week of last season (when Drexel’s Chris Fouch was averaging 24.5 points in two games compared to Jenkins’ 23.0 points in four games) and the final scoring report of 2009-10, when he was edge at the wire (20.8 ppg to 20.6 ppg) by Denzel Bowles, who Denver Broncosed his way into the scoring title by qualifying for the title in the last week of the season (qualifiers must play in 75 percent of their team’s games and Bowles sat the first semester after transferring from Texas A&M).

And win a bar bet with this bit of trivia: Jenkins and Moore are not the only Hofstra players to lead the CAA in scoring at the end of a week. Lester led the league in scoring in the first weekly report of this season thanks to his 33-point effort against Long Island.

—I had some fun on Twitter last week declaring that Rhode Island, which has victimized Hofstra and James Madison for its only wins this season, had clinched a CAA Tournament bye, along with Florida Atlantic, following the Rams’ win over the Dukes Thursday night.

And since I am insane, and since I had a few spare minutes for the last time until next Christmas, I decided to figure out just who fared the best against the CAA during the non-conference season The answer: Florida Atlantic shares the no. 1 seed in the not-really-the-CAA-Tournament along with Virginia at 3-0 apiece. LaSalle went 3-1 while Oregon State, Massachusetts and Missouri all went 2-0. Six other schools, including Dutchmen opponents Boston University and Manhattan, went 2-1 against the CAA.

Other weird and wacky non-conference facts: LaSalle, Rhode Island and Liberty were the only schools to play four CAA schools. Only one non-Division I squad faced a CAA school, and William & Mary easily handled Wesley (presumably named after the bratty kid from Mr. Belvedere) 70-47. Two CAA schools played a non-conference opponent twice: VCU swept Western Kentucky in back-to-back games Nov. 20-23 while William & Mary lost to Liberty Nov. 14 and beat the Flames six days later. And eight of Hofstra’s 12 non-conference opponents played someone else in the CAA the last two months—everyone except St. Francis, Cleveland State, Wagner and Colgate.

—And lastly, one more nugget that has made its way into the last two game recaps but warrants further attention here. The Flying Dutchmen hadn’t recorded as many as 13 steals in a game in almost six years before doing it the last two games against Colgate (13 steals) and Iona (14 steals). Those were the Dutchmen’s most steals since they recorded 17 thefts against Georgia State Jan. 5, 2006. It doesn’t mean this team will get railroaded by Tom O’Connor, or even that it is the best defensive team since the ’05-06 bunch, but it’s worth keeping an eye on heading into conference play.

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

Bits and Bytes: Seasons change!

Because posting the "Seasons Change" video would be cliche! (Freshman year of high school for the win!)

Remember when we were kids and seasons shifted gradually? You’d get a few weeks of increasingly warmer weather in May and June before the heat really kicked in at the start of summer. The warm weather would taper off in September with perhaps a last gasp or two of politically incorrect Indian summer in October before it began feeling like fall.

Nowadays, seasons change in the span of a single day. I walked my wife to her car early Thursday morning, when it felt more like the last week of school than the first. We went out to eat shortly after sunset and the weather so brisk I wondered if we’d run into some trick or treaters.

I blame the sudden shift of seasons on global warming. Or the fact that it’s always been like this but our childhood memories are what we think they were, not what they actually were. I don’t know. It’s like my very own Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or something,

Anyway, whatever the reason for the sudden seasonal shift, it was ironic, in that it was coincidental, that it happened Thursday, exactly one month before the start of college basketball practice. The dropping temperatures seemed to put the scent of hoops in the air and give us the nudge we all needed to start talking and writing about it.

Welcome back, fall, and welcome back hoops. We missed you. Now for some of the better bits and bytes you may have missed over the last few days:

—Our good friend Brian Mull penned more than 3,000 words in a two-day span and unofficially christened the season with his first Colonial X, in which he pegged Mike Moore as one of the 10 best players in the CAA. He’s right, of course, but he’s missing nine other Flying Dutchmen. We’ll give him a pass, although he once again disrespected Dutch Nation (snort) by picking Hofstra eighth in his predictions.

Mull takes one for the team by becoming the first reporter to put predictions to paper, but the task of picking the CAA won’t get any easier in the next four or six weeks. Drexel and George Mason are pretty easy picks in the top two—pick the order, we won’t argue either way—and William & Mary, Old Dominion and VCU are good bets for three through five in some order. Put everyone else in a hat, even Towson, and you’ve got as good a shot of picking six through 12 as you do if you put actual thought into it. Which we’ll do at some point before tipoff, because it’s fun to have something with which to laugh at me in March!

—Speaking of Mull, congratulations to the former PGA Tour caddie on winning the Wilmington City Amateur golf championship Sunday for the third time in five years. Dude does it all. Best beat writer in the CAA, provided excellent and reasoned coverage of Hurricane Irene, chips in on high school coverage in Wilmington, rescuer of stray cats from burning buildings. I may have made that last one up. But seriously, as someone whose athletic career “peaked” around 16, congrats. And props to the Star-News for not making Mull write about himself, like I had to as the de facto sports editor of the Class of 1991 yearbook. “Last-place finisher Jerry Beach tried hard and his Mom loves him very much.”

—Where was I? Oh right. Mike Litos, who also annually hates Hofstra by refusing to pick the Dutchmen first in his predictions, identified the Dutchmen as the team with the toughest “four in eight” schedule. Every CAA team plays four games between Jan. 21-28, and as I noted in my review of Hofstra’s schedule, the Dutchmen’s “four in eight” seems to have been scripted by someone still trying to stick it to Tom Pecora. At William & Mary, at VCU, home for Mason and at Northeastern. Only good thing about the travel is the Virginia trip takes place during Intersession, so there won’t be any back and forth. Still, that is a brutal stretch. SOUTHERN BIAS!!!!

—While we obsess over the season still to come, Mo Cassara and staff are looking ahead to 2012-13 and beyond and just landed promising power forward Jimmy Hall, a senior at national powerhouse St. Anthony’s. Adam Zagoria and Zach Braziller both profiled Hall following his decision. As always with recruiting, I’ll link to what other people—usually Zagoria and Braziller—write once there’s some actual hard news (not this whole “Joe Blow identifies Hofstra as one of the 317 schools he’s heard from” business), because they’re good at it and then refrain from writing anything else until the players are actually on campus, See the Malik Nichols saga for more.

—And finally, a long-overdue recommendation to check out the blog produced by my good friend Joe Suhoski, whom you might know better as @VABeachRep, whom in turn you might know better as that other guy on Twitter who likes Scrubs and Extreme as much as I do. Joe made his press box debut this weekend at the Old Dominion-Hampton football game (Football? What’s that? #ThanksStu) and heeded my advice to be seen and not heard (I think he’d stopped reading by the time I channeled Dr. Cox and wrote of journalism “Get out while you still can!”) so make sure to check out his blog, where he writes about CAA football (grrr) and, of course, Scrubs.

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

Bits and Bytes: How the Dutchmen can get into the 2-3 zone for the CAA Tournament

Will the Dukes sweeping their last two games give the Dutchmen a less Hazzardous (booo!) path in the CAA Tournament?

We have to admit, as the Flying Dutchmen went from one win in a row to two wins in a row to three wins in a row following their three-game losing streak, the ability to listen to our main man Mo Cassara and take this all one game at a time got tougher and tougher. We couldn’t look ahead and worry about finishing higher than fourth in the CAA until a bye had been clinched. What good would it do to figure out what it would take to finish second or third if the Dutchmen ended up fifth?

Well, we don’t have to worry about that anymore, thanks to The &@*#&@* Wolf, whose instant viral classic buzzer-beater to beat William & Mary Tuesday clinched the Dutchmen one of the four byes in the CAA Tournament and assured they’ll be off two weeks from today. So NOW we can obsess over finishing higher than fourth, which would spare the Dutchmen a meeting with scorching hot George Mason before the championship game, and examine the schedules of Old Dominion and VCU and figure out how the Dutchmen could finish second or third.

Technically, the Dutchmen are in a three-way tie for second with Old Dominion and VCU behind Mason. Even more technically, the Dutchmen are actually in fourth place because they lost their lone games this season to Old Dominion and VCU while ODU is in second by virtue of splitting with VCU and splitting with Mason while VCU dropped its only meeting to Mason (thanks to those who noted ODU split with VCU, looks like I picked the wrong week to start sniffing glue). So the Dutchmen must finish with a better record in order to finish ahead of the Rams and/or Monarchs.

Even MORE technically: There could be a four-way tie for first at 14-4 if Mason loses out, ODU and VCU split and Hofstra wins out. But that is not happening, because I will be blogging sweet nothings about Mason before the Patriots lose their last two games to Northeastern and at Georgia State. Mason will be the one seed and that’s that, so carry on here with the schedules for VCU and ODU:

VCU: at Drexel, James Madison

ODU: at James Madison, William & Mary

Clearly, if we want the path of least Mason resistance, we will all be Dukes next week. If Hofstra and James Madison win out, then the Dutchmen will be the no. 2 seed. If Hofstra wins out and the Dukes split, the Dutchmen will be the no. 3 seed. Of course, Drexel and William & Mary could win out or selectively split and also help the Dutchmen grab the no. 2 or no. 3 seed.

Of course, even if some combination of James Madison, Drexel and William & Mary cooperate, there are no guarantees the Dutchmen—whose last six wins have been by a combined 25 points and who have won five of those games by three points or less—will escape UNC Wilmington on the Seahawks’ Senior Night or eke past Delaware on Senior Day. And let’s try and cut off the bad karma at the pass here by declaring that I in no way think avoiding fourth place will result in an easy route to the championship game, or even the semifinals.

As the three seed, the Dutchmen’s three likeliest opponents—James Madison, Drexel and William & Mary—are all teams that present matchup problems and the perilous possibility of an early exit. Oh my, do I not want to see William & Mary again until next season.

And as the two seed, the Dutchmen would likely face a familiar foe in UNC Wilmington or Delaware (the two teams are currently tied for seventh at 7-9), each of whom gave the Dutchmen fits in their first meetings of the year.

But the one thing I think everyone can agree on in the CAA is nobody is playing any better than George Mason. Everybody should be hoping to avoid the Patriots as long as possible.

A couple other quick bits and bytes this fine February morning:

—This is the second time since the CAA expanded to 12 teams in 2005-06 that all four first-round byes were clinched with two games to play. It also happened in 2006-07, when VCU, Old Dominion, Hofstra and Drexel did it. CRAP! That year did not end well.

Two byes were clinched through 16 games twice (2009-10 and 2005-06). One bye was clinched in 2007-08 and no byes were clinched through this point in 2009-10, when the Flying Dutchmen were in a three-way tie for fourth and still technically in the midst of a six-way race for first.

—With an assist from Hofstra SID Stephen Gorchov, who was a manager on the 1993-94 Flying Dutchmen team that won overtime games in the ECC semifinals and championship, I was able to confirm Tuesday night was the first time in the Defiantly Dutch Era (which, of course, dates back to ’93-94) that the Dutchmen forced overtime with a last-second shot and won at the buzzer in overtime. Next up: Finding the time to dig even deeper into the archives! The older the games, the harder it is to find play-by-play and recaps, but the good news is there aren’t a whole lot of overtime wins to investigate: The Dutchmen had just seven overtime wins from 1980 through 1992-93. They’ve had 21 in the DD Era.

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

Bits and Bytes: Giving it to you good!

That's good 1990s cheese! Google it DC!

Have a whole bunch of nuggets I’ve been sitting on and/or waiting to research and finally some time to unearth them all, so I’m going to channel tournament week and just give it to you good (that’s for Loyal Reader Matt as well as Loyal Tweeps Mary Ellen and Angela, all of whom joined me this week in flooding YouTube for videos from the fall of 1990). Anyway:

—Joeg1 on the CAAZone boards beat me to the punch in comparing David Imes this year to Halil Kanacevic last year. My hunch (and his too, I imagine) was that Imes’ numbers would be a lot closer to Kanacevic’s than we might have imagined. And our hunch was right: Through 18 games this year Imes is averaging 8.1 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. Through the same span last year, Kanacevic was averaging 7.9 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. They both had four double-doubles.

Somewhat surprisingly, the two have put up those numbers in just about the same playing time, even though Imes (29.4 minutes) has started all 18 games while Kanacevic (26.6 minutes) started just five of the first 18 games last year. Imes has been much more efficient than Kanacevic: Imes has fouled out just once and has been whistled for only 36 fouls while Kanacevic fouled out three times and committed 56 fouls.

Imes’ performance is pretty impressive considering this is, for all intents and purposes, his freshman year. He battled a pair of high ankle sprains and a couple bouts with the flu last year, when he played a total of 128 minutes over 18 games. He's played 125 minutes in the last four games alone.

Now things are rarely as simple as invoking the transitive property—i.e. Kanacevic is gone so that’s why Imes is putting up these numbers. But, well, in this case, it’s pretty clear: If Kanacevic returned, he and Greg Washington would occupy the post and Imes would be a role player. As nice as it would be to have Kanacevic, the Dutchmen now know he was replaced internally by someone who will be a three-year starter—no small feat given the tumult of last spring and Imes’ inexperience.

—As you may or may not know, Hofstra was the last team to suffer a CAA loss. I wrote a little bit about it. Anyway, that got me wondering how the Dutchmen’s 5-0 start stacked up to other perfect starts since the CAA expanded in 2001-02, and more importantly, how the last unbeaten team eventually fared.

The answers: Only four squads in the previous nine years matched or bettered the Dutchmen’s start. But only three of the Last of the Unbeatens won the CAA Tournament and earned the automatic NCAA bid. Two others reached one of the consolation tournaments. The rundown:

2009-10: George Mason 3-0 (finished 12-6 and 4th, lost in the quarterfinals and advanced to the CIT)

2008-09: George Mason 7-0 (finished 13-5 and 2nd, lost in the championship game and advanced to the NIT)

2007-08: Delaware 5-0 (finished 9-9 and 7th, lost in the quarterfinals)

2006-07: VCU 11-0 (finished 16-2 and 1st, won the CAA Tournament and reached second round of the NCAAs

2005-06: Drexel 3-0 (finished 8-10 and 8^th, lost in the first round)

2004-05: Old Dominion 8-0 (finished 15-3 and 1st, won the CAA Tournament)

2003-04: Old Dominion 4-0 (finished 11-7 and 4th, lost in the semifinals)

2002-03: VCU/George Mason 2-0 (VCU finished 12-6 and 2nd, lost in the semifinals; Mason finished 11-7 and 4th, lost in the quarterfinals)

2001-02: UNC Wilmington 4-0 (finished 14-4 and 1st, won the CAA Tournament, reached the 2nd round of the NCAAs)

—The campaign to garner Charles Jenkins All-American consideration is justifiably well under way, and Jeremy Kniffin does his usual outstanding job in making the case for Jenkins. But here’s yet another measure of the remarkable season Jenkins is having and just how valuable he is to the Dutchmen: With 417 points and 86 assists thus far, he has accounted for 46.6 percent of the Dutchmen’s scoring.

That is by far the biggest chunk of scoring accounted for by one person over the last 11 years, and the only person to even reach the 40 percent mark in that span was, you guessed it, Jenkins in each of the last two years (42.4 percent as a sophomore, 40.7 percent as a junior). Jenkins’ leap this year is even more impressive considering he’s finally got the wingman he lacked the previous two seasons (Mike Moore, very quietly, has scored in double figures in nine straight games and is averaging 14.8 points per game).

You will not be surprised to know the last player to account for this much of the Dutchmen’s scoring was Speedy Claxton during his epic season in 1999-2000. You may be surprised to know how incredibly close Jenkins’ numbers thus far are to Claxton’s 11 years ago. Claxton had a hand in 46.7 percent of the Dutchmen’s scoring in ’99-00, when he averaged 22.8 points and six assists per game. Jenkins’ current averages: 23.2 points and 4.8 assists.

—In case you missed it: A very good piece from CBSSports.com on Jenkins and his relationship with Mo Cassara.

—Lastly, I couldn’t help but do a double-take when I read this New York Post story about Fordham’s loss to Saint Louis in front of 400 fans at the Izod Center. Oh sure, the attendance was noteworthy, and not in a good way. But what grabbed by attention was Tom Pecora calling the lack of home court advantage at the Izod—where Fordham will play four games this year—“a work in progress.” Oh my God Pecora and Cassara sharing slogans!!!!

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

Bits and Bytes: Saturday mornings are for cartoons—and Defiantly Dutch!

Procrastinating Smurf is not pictured. He'll be there later. (Hmm, that sinister-seeming balding black-haired guy in the bushes looks like someone who might coach in the CAA, though...)

Hey, it’s Saturday morning and I’m posting again. This is turning into a habit, one that I’m going to try and break next week by getting back into the regular season posting routine. (If you like how that sounds, good, you’ll probably hear it again a week from now!)

The dual day gigs are great—money is nice!—but striking a balance and doing everything in a cohesive manner remains a challenge. Apparently I am as good at time management now as I was in ninth grade, when my dear beloved late Mom sent me to a study skills seminar in hopes of saving my soul. Seriously. How bad off do you have to be to be sent to a study skill seminar in ninth grade? If only we knew that ADD existed back then I could have been doped up on all sorts of good stuff.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Short attention span. Hey look my cat is stretching!

Anyway, the basketball regular season is fast approaching and we’ve got a lot of preview material ready to roll, so stop back Monday for the beginning of the good stuff. No, really, Monday!

Before that, it’s a busy weekend at Hofstra as fall and winter sports collide. The men’s soccer team tries to clinch a CAA Tournament berth tonight when it visits James Madison. It’s simple for the Flying Dutchmen: Win and they’re in. A loss and they need to overcome some lottery-type odds to reach the four-team tournament.

The women’s soccer team, of course, is facing JMU for the CAA title Sunday. We’ll be at the men’s basketball scrimmage against Molloy, so if you’re looking for women’s soccer coverage, I recommend you check out the Hofstra Chronicle, which will have a story up shortly after the game. Back in my day I would cover the game on Sunday and waste the next 72 hours before writing the story in a frenzy and bitching about how rushed I was. And I liked it!

Where was I again? Oh right. You can also follow the Chronicle sports department on Twitter at @HUChronSports.

As for the men’s hoops scrimmage, stop back here during the game and watch me experiment with a feature that may or may not become a staple come the regular season. Intrigued? You should be!

See you then. In the meantime, a couple quick links for your weekend perusal.

—I’ll definitely offer my take on this next week, but your good friend and mine Mike Litos evaluated Hofstra’s CAA tenure as it prepares for its 10th season in the league. Very good stuff, as are Litos’ pieces on the rest of the America East four—Delaware, Drexel and Towson.

—ESPN.com’s Andy Katz slummed long enough with the mid-majors to write about Charles Jenkins earlier this week. See if you can find Katz’ erroneous “scoop!”

—Props to the Chronicle for being the first to report that guard Malik Nichols of Boys & Girls High School has decided to attend Hofstra. Adam Zagoria also reported Wednesday that Hofstra has also received a verbal from 6-11 center Tyrone Lyons of L.A. Trade Tech.

—Lastly, as if the 1-4 p.m. window Sunday wasn’t packed enough already, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—known worldwide as The Official NFL Team of Defiantly Dutch—are battling the Atlanta Falcons for first place in the NFC South. Hmm. Can we get that game aired on the scoreboard during the hoops scrimmage?

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

Bits and Bytes: Of Coach C, Stevie B, Ethan P and would could have been for football in the NEC

Thanks to Mo Cassara's Tweets, Stevie B. is bigger than ever 20 years after his biggest hit!

Time flies when things are blissfully, wonderfully, abnormally normal. Why, we’re a mere three days away from Hofstra going an entire month without changing men’s basketball coaches! Alas, when it comes to players officially leaving the program, we’ll have to wait until July for a fresh start there.

June has come and almost gone and I’ve taken advantage of the relative quiet the last few weeks to put in some work at the paying job and prepare some summertime features that I’ll debut in the middle of July, after the wife and I return from vacation next week. But we’ll catch up on the bits and bytes of the last few weeks today and hopefully have a couple other interesting features for you this week before heading for some tropical goodness.

—According to the Twitters, the incoming freshmen basketball players at Hofstra moved in yesterday, just in time for the start of Summer Session II. Welcome guys. And stay awhile. No seriously. Please. For the love of all that is holy, stay awhile.

—Speaking of Twitter, if you’re on it and not following Mo Cassara (@Coach_Cassara), you’re doing yourself a disservice. It’s not everyday you find a men’s basketball coach with impeccable knowledge of and taste in late ‘80s dance pop. Stevie B, if you’re Googling yourself and stumble across this, I think there’s a post-game concert in your future!

Plus, it’s always nice to see a coach mature enough to handle a Twitter account. No names, of course!

—Speaking of Cassara, here’s a nice article about his ascension to the top job from his local paper in Watertown, NY. Included in the story is the news that the Flying Dutchmen will open next season by playing North Carolina in the Puerto Rico Classic. Prepare for the full fury of Dutch Nation (snort), UNC!

—Belated congratulations to Ethan Paquette, the former Flying Dutchmen first baseman who was selected by the Seattle Mariners in the 35th round of this month’s draft and assigned to Pulaski (VA), the organization’s short-season affiliate in the Appalachian League. Paquette started five of the Mariners’ first six games at first base and went 2-for-2 off the bench Sunday. He’s hitting .263 (5-for-19) with three RBI, three runs scored and three errors.

Paquette is the third Hofstra player to be drafted in the last 25 years, following in the footsteps of Defiantly Dutch-era third baseman Mike Miller (Tigers in 1995) and third baseman Ricky Caputo (Nationals in 2006). Hofstra seemed to have a good shot at having two players drafted, but surprisingly, infielder Matt Prokopowicz—who finished his collegiate career with a .376 average and set the school record for hits in a season and a career—went undrafted and doesn’t appear to have signed as a free agent. Hopefully he gets a shot somewhere, even if it’s in an independent league.

—The last few days have been full of equal parts validation and frustration for those of us who think there were a billion better solutions to the football problem at Hofstra than executing a 75-year-old program. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Sunday that Rhode Island, which is now clearly the weak link in the CAA with Hofstra and Northeastern gone, may look to move to the Northeast Conference—where the maximum number of scholarships a program can offer is 40, down from the 63 in the CAA—for the 2012 season.

The NEC will have an automatic bid to the Division I-AA tournament beginning this season, so teams competing there can pursue the same prize as anyone else. Of course, that prize doesn’t matter, since there’s little press coverage of it. Shhh, don’t tell Villanova its championship doesn’t count.

—The Boston Globe also reported Sunday that UMass and New Hampshire will play two games—one this season and one in 2011—at the New England Patriots’ stadium (as usual, if the sponsor of the stadium wants its name mentioned, it can cut me a check). Whoa, what a concept. Division I-AA football programs getting exposure and publicity. Too bad there’s not a professional football stadium around here that could have hosted a Flying Dutchmen football game.

—Finally, Shuart Stadium last Tuesday night hosted the annual “Boomer Bowl”—the all-star football game between Long Island high school seniors and seniors from the five boroughs—and the New York Post’s Marc Raimondi wrote a good piece on how the Stadium won’t hear cheers for football this fall and how the disbanding of the program leaves a giant void in the prep football scene.

There was so much more that could have been done, first to preserve the program as it was and then to find a way to reduce the investment in the program yet continue competing. But, as Jim Munson—the head coach at Tottenville and the defensive coordinator for the New York City team—so eloquently put it, there’s not a damn thing anyone could have done to save a program that was doomed as far back as 2001.

“We can’t control the politics of this university and what this president wants to do,” he said.

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

CBI Bits and Bytes: Whose season gets Scrubbed tonight?

Denise the hot intern, above, smiles despite preparing to deliver bad news to her castmates as well as one of the two teams playing tonight at Hofstra Arena.

Tom Pecora couldn’t stop yawning in his office Monday afternoon, and for once it wasn’t I was boring him to tears.

Neither Pecora nor his staff got much sleep Sunday night as they awaited word on whether or not the Flying Dutchmen’s season would continue. The news that the Dutchmen were headed for the CBI and a home game tonight against IUPUI finally arrived around midnight, which set into motion a chain of events that had Pecora and his assistants and his staff spending all day Monday embarking on a crash course of all things IUPUI (well, not all things, we took care of that this morning!).

“What we did last night was we had two guys waiting at Hoop One Video [in New Jersey]—they were sitting in the car, two of our managers,” Pecora said. “As soon as we knew it was IUPUI, we called them at midnight. They got us three tapes and they drove back, got back here about two o’clock.

“Coach [David] Duke was sleeping here. He got up and started watching tape at six. And then I got here at eight and I started watching.”

Pecora said the plan was to produce a scouting report for the Dutchmen in time for practice Tuesday. “So for the kids, it’s business as usual,” Pecora said. “We’re usually ahead of the curve a little bit more.”

—Hofstra and IUPUI have never played each other and IUPUI has played just two CAA opponents in its 13 seasons as a Division I program. The closest connection Hofstra has to IUPUI is a thin one indeed: IUPUI plays in the Summit League, which used to be known as the Mid-Continent Conference, which in turn took in the rest of the old East Coast Conference (Buffalo, Central Connecticut, Chicago State, Northeastern Illinois and Troy State) after the ECC finally broke apart for good in 1994.

Yet is anyone surprised that Pecora, who seems to know and get along with everyone in Division I (well, except this guy), is friends with IUPUI coach Ron Hunter and exchanged texts with him late Sunday night?

Pecora and Hunter have worked together on CBS College Sports’ coverage of the NCAA Tournament and will do so again this weekend. “He texted me ‘Wow, what are the chances of us playing? Now I’ll have to buy you dinner,’” Pecora said, “Because I usually buy him dinner when he comes in to do the TV work. My response was ‘Laughed when I heard. I’ll pick you up Friday morning.’”

Judging by Hunter’s biography on the IUPUI website—which states, in part, “…Hunter has made strong defense, excellent guard play and local recruiting three of his fortes”—he and Pecora have plenty in common on the court, as well.

“I think it’s the same mid-major philosophy that you can get better guards than you can get forwards, so go out and try to play a three guard offense and you’re going to have better players on the floor,” Pecora said.

—Maybe the NCAA Tournament doesn’t take into account how a team fares in its last five or 10 games (snort), but the CBI does.

“It obviously played a role, there’s no doubt about that,” CBI spokesman Ray Cella said Monday of the impact of the Flying Dutchmen’s 8-2 finish. “That’s one of the things that everybody looks at, is the last five or last 10. They don’t admit it anymore, but they still do.”

Like with the CIT, Cella said the CBI is particularly interested in teams such as the Dutchmen, who have a young core returning next year and are eager to continue their season. “Obviously, the fact that they are a young team—even getting in two or three more practices can be helpful,” Cella said. “If they win their game on Wednesday and they continue to play, obviously, not only does it give you more opportunities to be with the kids and [work on] what you need to work on, it also gives you a sense of what the postseason is about and to try to use that to leapfrog into the following season.

“Tulsa won the first year and then was able to parlay that into the last two years [an NCAA Tournament berth last year and an NIT appearance this year]. UTEP last year, look at the year they had. Any chance you get to keep playing, keep practicing and get a game environment is going to help you, especially if you’re a young team.”

—I’m probably the only person who finds the CBI and CIT analogous to Scrubs (yes, I can in fact tie anything at all into the show created by William & Mary graduate Bill Lawrence). Allow me to explain: Scrubs has been revived from the edge of cancellation numerous times. The CBI and CIT allow teams to extend a season that seemed finished after a loss in their conference tournaments. Not bad, right?

Anyway, Scrubs is probably airing its last LAST episode tonight, right in the middle of the Dutchmen’s game against IUPUI. Someone’s season will finally be cancelled tonight as well in an enticing matchup of strengths.

Hofstra ranks among the nation’s leaders in 3-point field goal percentage defense, IUPUI shoots almost 40 percent (39.2 percent) from beyond the arc. The Dutchmen pride (booooo) themselves on limiting teams to less than 40 percent shooting, the Jaguars shoot 51.1 percent, second-best in the country behind Syracuse. It took Tom Pecora until almost February to find a starting five that gelled, IUPUI has used the same starting five in every game this season.

The Jaguars’ three double-digit scorers (Robert Glenn, Alex Young and Leroy Nobles) are all 6-foot-5 or taller, which could present some matchup problems for the Dutchmen. Greg Washington and Miklos Szabo must stay out of foul trouble, particularly early in the first half, and Nathaniel Lester will have to emerge from the doghouse to put in some time at power forward.

If one of the Jags’ trio is held under 10 points, the Dutchmen should win. If not, the race to see whose season gets Scrubbed will go right to the wire and be too close to call. Either way, see you there. I’ll be the guy screaming how the Fordham, Seton Hall and St. John’s jobs are career suicide.

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

Bits and Bytes: Number-crunching the tournament

"This one goes out to the dumbass who skipped the ECC tournament to see me perform here tonight!"

Meant to have this collection of fun and funky stats from the weekend up earlier, but Operation Catch Up On Sleep took precedence. So belated congrats to Old Dominion, a worthy CAA champion, and thanks to the Monarchs and William & Mary for allowing me to watch the CAA championship game without wishing horrible, vengeful stuff on one of the finalists for the first time in three years!

—The Flying Dutchmen’s 74-71 double overtime loss to Northeastern was the program’s first double overtime conference tournament game in exactly 16 years. The Dutchmen beat Northeastern Illinois, 88-86, in double overtime in the East Coast Conference championship game March 6, 1994. Meanwhile, eight hours to the south, yours truly prepared to see this guy in concert at Madison Square Garden. Idiot! That said, I’ll fight anyone who doesn’t think that is one of the five best songs ever. EVER!!!

—The 74 field goal attempts by the Dutchmen were a season-high (the previous high was 73 against UConn in the preseason NIT Nov. 17) and the most since Dec. 20, 2008, when the Dutchmen hoisted 85 shots in a 97-81 loss to UMass. The last time the Dutchmen took as many shots in a conference game was Jan. 21, 2006 against—irony that is actually coincidence alert!—Northeastern, when the Dutchmen had 76 attempts in an 89-73 loss. The Dutchmen took 73 shots in the rematch, an 89-78 win Feb. 11.

—Five of the 11 CAA Tournament games were decided by five points or less and/or in overtime, the most since the league expanded to 12 teams in 2005-06. The last time at least half of the CAA Tournament games were decided by five points or less and/or in overtime was 2001 (three of six games). The last time it happened when the CAA had more than six teams participating in the tournament was 1994 (four of seven games).

—The Dutchmen were the fifth team to win a Friday first round game by three points or less in the 12-team era—and the fourth to lose on Saturday. Only the 2008 William & Mary Cinderella squad—which beat Georgia State 58-57 in the first round, Old Dominion 63-60 in the quarterfinals and VCU 56-54 in the semifinals before finally falling to George Mason in the title game—advanced beyond the quarterfinals.

—Key to winning the conference title next season for the Dutchmen: Earn a no. 1 or no. 2 seed. Old Dominion’s victory last night marks the 15th time in the last 16 seasons—since Hofstra’s first year in the North Atlantic Conference in 1994-95—that a team seeded first or second has won the automatic bid in the conference in which Hofstra plays. The only exception was Mason, a no. 3 seed in 2008.

—In addition, the top seeds have remained incredibly fortuitous in the America East, where a one or two seed has won the title every year since Hofstra, Delaware, Drexel and Towson left following the 2000-01 season. Boston University will attempt to become the lowest seed ever to win it all when the fourth-seeded Terriers visit second-seeded Vermont Saturday.

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

Bits and Bytes: It's dumb and dumber to doubt Hofstra!

You'd be surprised how many Lauren Holly photos were unsuitable for work.

The Flying Dutchmen are less than 72 hours away from tipping off against Georgia State in the first round of the CAA Tournament and Tom Pecora surely is not lacking for motivational material. Never mind all that jazz about becoming the first northern-based team to win the CAA by becoming the first team to win four games in four days, or the talk about crafting legacy and making history.

All Pecora needs to say is this: Everyone hates Hofstra.

It’s true. The week is just two days old and already the doubters and the doomsayers are crawling out of the woodwork. Like our so-called friend Mike Litos, who has managed to carve out a niche for himself by blogging about a league in which he hates all 12 teams.

Litos was the first to disrespect the Dutchmen yesterday when he named Charles Jenkins the CAA player of the year but completely ignored the rest of the Dutchmen in his first, second and third team selections, ignored Pecora in the coach of the year balloting and failed to name a Hofstra player as his rookie of the year.

Hey Mike here are the actual All-CAA teams you would have named if not for your terrible anti-Hofstra bias!

FIRST TEAM ALL-CAA

Charles Jenkins

Cornelius Vines

Chaz Williams

Miklos Szabo

Greg Washington

SECOND TEAM ALL-CAA

Halil Kanacevic

Nathaniel Lester

Yves Jules

David Imes

Matt Grogan

THIRD TEAM ALL-CAA

None because Hofstra only has a 10-man rotation

CAA ROOKIE OF THE YEAR

Chaz Williams AND Halil Kanacevic

CAA ALL-ROOKIE TEAM

Chaz Williams

Halil Kanacevic

Yves Jules

David Imes

Matt Grogan

Brad Kelleher

Yeah, we’re going with six on the all-rookie team, because anyone who doesn’t hate Hofstra knows how Kelleher’s tale of woe has inspired the Dutchmen in the second half of the season.

CAA COACH OF THE YEAR

Tom Pecora

I will get you back for this Litos. Two words for you: Fake Twitter.

Once I’m done dogging Litos and his employability and upbringing on the fake @caabasketball Twitter, I’ll turn my attention towards Ken Pomeroy, who ran the numbers today and deduced that Hofstra has a 2.8 percent chance of winning the tournament. Obviously, he majored in algebra with a southern bias.

This of course reminds me of Dumb and Dumber:

Me: What do you think the chances are of a team like Hofstra winning a conference like the CAA?

Ken: Well, Jerry, that’s difficult to say. I mean, we don’t really…

Me: Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! I may be driving a long way just to see this tournament, Ken. The least you can do is level with me. What are Hofstra’s chances?

Ken: Not good.

Me: You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?

Ken: I’d say more like barely two out of a hundred.

Me: SO YOU’RE TELLING ME THERE’S A CHANCE! YEAH!

Oh well, we’re better off than Delaware (a 0.07 chance), anyway.

But seriously, folks, I’ll have my real All-CAA picks by Thursday. My guess is the Dutchmen will be well-represented at the awards banquet, with Jenkins sure to earn All-CAA honors, Williams and Kanacevic sure to make the all-rookie team and a pretty decent shot of Jenkins and one of the freshmen winning the player of the year and rookie of the year awards. Pecora won’t win coach of the year, but that’s because everyone hates New York.

A couple other things before diving back into some of the features I’ve been working on the last few days:

—Make sure to tune into WRHU tonight for their two-hour CAA Tournament preview show. The guys there have lined up interviews with the coaches of the top seven teams. If only it was a live call-in format so I could chat with Jim Larranaga! It should be another top-notch effort by the insanely talented and hard-working crew over there, so give them a listen.

—Got in the mail the other day an invite to the men’s basketball banquet, scheduled for March 24. Two thoughts: One, my wife and I are calling dibs on sponsoring Corny. Two, oh Hofstra, ye of little faith! Don’t you know the Dutchmen will be preparing for the Sweet 16 that night?

—Finally, you may not be able to click this link because of Newsday’s new and wildly successful pay wall, but Steve Marcus has penned his annual “The CAA sucks for Hofstra” column. All true and I don’t even mind it being mentioned this week—I’ll author my own “GET HOFSTRA TO THE A-10!!!” column whenever this season ends—but there has got to be a better and different way to tread the same territory as well as a better time to declare the Dutchmen cannot win in Richmond. Like, oh, I don’t know, when they haven’t won nine out of 10.

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

Bits and Bytes: Of tiebreakers, top six losses to bottom six and tough schedules

Rob Washburn, above, realizes he forgot to carry the 1.

Sorry for the lack of a post thus far today, been a crazy week with some paying work (that’s not a misprint, Fairfax fans!) taking precedence and then some medication-induced insomnia throwing me for a loop. Slept about six hours combined Monday and Tuesday night thanks to some IV steroids (there goes my dream of playing third base for the Yankees) I’ve been taking for a Bell’s Palsy diagnosis and it finally caught up to me late last night.

So apologies again. I did speak earlier in the afternoon to Tom Pecora and I’ll have that Northeastern-themed Q&A up late tonight. And stop back for a Senior Day feature at some point tomorrow as well as a couple other things that I hope I can brew up by then.

In the meantime, I once again humbly offer fine work produced by others, most notably CAA publicist Rob Washburn, who broke out his abacus and his protractor and his slide rule and his Texas Instruments calculator circa 1982 to figure out all the tiebreaker scenarios heading into the final game of the regular season. As Litos says in presenting the facts as found by Washburn: Read this four times…and then read it another four. How Rob maintained his sanity figuring this out is beyond me. Excellent work.

—We’ll tackle tomorrow the regular season finales involving all potential opening round opponents for the Dutchmen, but rest assured I was right last night when I wrote that eight through 12 would look the same today as yesterday. It wasn’t because I know what I’m talking about, though.

Last night was Exhibit 1-A of why I do not gamble on sports, because if I did, I would have thrown away money I don’t have on Drexel drubbing undermanned UNC Wilmington and William & Mary keeping alive its hopes for the two seed by trouncing Towson.

Of course, precisely the opposite is what happened, which is why we love this time of year. Everything went pretty much according to form during the first two-thirds of the CAA season, during which, as Gary Moore puts it, the haves and have-nots were clearly separated. But with more upsets the last two days than in the entire first half of the conference schedule combined, all hell is breaking loose at just the right time, and I suspect Flying Dutchmen fans aren’t the only ones thinking four in four is possible.

Here’s the list of lower six upsets over upper six, by order in which they took place. Each team’s record prior to the tipoff of the upset in parentheses.

Jan. 2: Delaware (0-1 CAA) 62, Drexel (1-0 CAA) 58

Jan. 4: UNCW (0-2) 62, William & Mary (2-0) 61

Jan. 27: James Madison (2-7) 65, William & Mary (6-3) 63

Feb. 3: Georgia State (3-8) 61, George Mason (10-1) 57

Feb. 10: Hofstra (5-8) 75, Drexel (9-4) 64

Feb. 13: James Madison (3-11) 76, VCU (9-5) 71

Feb. 23: Hofstra (8-8) 73, Northeastern (13-3) 62

Feb. 24: UNCW (4-12) 75, Drexel (10-6) 69

Feb. 24: Towson (4-12) 83, William & Mary (11-5) 77

While our minor blog bias has us believing there’s not a bigger upset than the Dutchmen’s win over Northeastern, I think the real shocker of the year is Towson over William & Mary. Georgia State and George Mason were also separated by seven games in the standings prior to the Panthers’ win, but that game was in Atlanta while Towson knocked off the Tribe in Virginia.

—As if I didn’t have enough reason to be jealous of WRHU’s Mike Leslie, who not only has youth and talent on his side but is also a dead ringer for Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz, who is more famous for dating a Penthouse model and marrying one of the Deal or No Deal ladies than for throwing a no-hitter in his second career start.

Now the damn kid is trumping my statistical geekdom by trying to determine if the Dutchmen have indeed played the toughest schedule in the CAA, as so many of us have theorized this season. Damn you Buchholz. I will get you!

Not surprisingly, Mike’s findings—for each school, he added up the conference wins of its opponents—indicate that the CAA’s lesser teams have played tougher schedules while the better ones have faced an easier road: Last-place Delaware has faced teams that have compiled a CAA-high 168 wins while first-place Old Dominion has faced a CAA-low 128 wins.

But no over-.500 team has faced as many wins as the Dutchmen, whose January schedule was indeed as brutal as we remembered: Seven of the eight teams they faced from Jan. 2 through Jan. 23 have at least 10 conference wins.

Here’s Mike’s raw data:

Delaware 168

James Madison 156

UNCW 152

Georgia State 152

HOFSTRA 147

Drexel 144

Towson 144

William & Mary 142

VCU 139

Northeastern 132

George Mason 130

Old Dominion 128

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

Bits and Bytes: Eight is enough for Szabo?

Life With Corny is playing with a yellow light, but is Tom Pecora about to flash a red light at Miklos Szabo?

The Flying Dutchmen have fielded (is the right term courted, since basketball is not played on a field? Hmmm) the same starting lineup in each of their first seven games, the longest such stretch to open a season since the quintet of Aurimas Kieza, Adrian Uter, Loren Stokes, Antoine Agudio and Carlos Rivera started the first nine games in 2005-06.

But after consecutive games in which the Dutchmen were dominated down low by Charlotte and Fairfield, Tom Pecora said there could be a change for the CAA opener at Towson Saturday. Miklos Szabo will have to work his way out of the doghouse in practice this week after recording just four rebounds in 45 minutes in his last two games. Szabo is averaging just 6.5 points and 3.7 rebounds per game in six contests against Division I competition this year.

“If he doesn’t rebound in practice this week, he won’t start on Saturday and I’ll take away his minutes,” Pecora said Monday. “We compete every day in practice for minutes, and these guys will tell you: Around here, you get what you deserve. And if he’s not rebounding the basketball, he doesn’t deserve to start and he doesn’t deserve to get minutes. We all have our jobs to do and his is to defend the post and rebound the ball, and he’s not doing either right now.”

The Dutchmen unveiled three different starting lineups in their first seven games last year and five different lineups over the same span in 2007-08.

—One player who will surely push Szabo for playing time is freshman David Imes who made his collegiate debut Monday after missing the first six games with a high ankle sprain and scored a basket in six minutes. “He’s a tough kid, he’s been great in practice,” Pecora said. “He’s a rebounder by nature. This was a good matchup, these kinds of teams, for him, because you can play small.”

—The Dutchmen’s other senior, Life With Corny, has also been the target of some Pecora criticism, but his lean line Monday (two points and no field goals in 23 minutes) was better and more pivotal than it looks. Vines shared the team lead in rebounds with five and also had four assists for the second straight game. He had as many as four assists in a game just once in 31 contests last season.

Vines also continued his season-long hustle on both ends of the floor, particularly in scrambling for the rebound of his missed 3-pointer midway through the second half. Vines took quite a shot from Yorel Hawkins but hit the subsequent two free throws to give the Dutchmen a 61-60 lead. They’d never trail again.

The most amazing thing: He took just two shots, which, you should not be surprised to read, is a career low. Life With Corny taking two shots in 23 minutes is like me taking one trip to the all-you-can-eat buffet.

I don’t think Vines has morphed into a point guard, but he’ll have a vital role—and Pecora will have done a helluva job coaching—if a player who prefers to shoot first, second, third and 27th can contribute by playing with the yellow light Pecora has often spoke about.

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

Bits and Bytes: JAY WRIGHT IS A GOD AMONG MEN!!!!

Fifteen years later, Jay Wright is still defending Hofstra's honor!

I’ve said it for a while, and I’ve never been as determined to see it happen as I am right now. Hofstra must raise a “122” banner at the Arena in honor of Jay Wright and the number of wins he recorded as Flying Dutchmen head coach.

Actually, make it 123, because none of the victories he recorded from 1994 through 2001 were as pivotal or meaningful as the one he recorded yesterday, when Wright scored a win for Hofstra fans everywhere as Villanova beat George Mason, 69-68.

No, you know what, check that. Name the whole damn Arena after him. Someday, the Flying Dutchmen can play on Tom Pecora Floor at Jay’s Gym.

I was implored by someone more mature than me (long list, that) to root for Mason for the betterment of the league. And now that there are no players left from the 2006 team, I’ll be the first to admit I shouldn’t punish these Patriots players for the transgressions of their predecessors. Plus, I’ve exchanged Tweets with Mason blogger Ryan Kish, who seems like a great guy. And he’s just hammering George Washington fans for trying to turn the Mason-GW game next month into some kind of blood feud, so I’m not sure I want to end up on his bad side.

But still…no. I can’t do it. Not as long as those two are still there. Speaking of them, it seems like Jim Larranaga didn’t cover himself in glory during the final minute yesterday as Mason blew a four-point lead. Can you smell the Schadenfreude from here?

Anyway, it’s very, very early, but both Hofstra and Mason have acquitted themselves quite well against Big East powers. So let me be the first to ponder it: Can you imagine if they’re the last two teams standing on the first Monday in March? I’m honestly not sure I can handle the stress of that—the payoff/punishment gap is too great to ponder. Oh but the payoff…

Still 107 days until we get there. In the meantime, here are a few Bits and Bytes you prepare for tonight’s home opener against Farmingdale:

—Kansas-Yale-UConn-Farmingdale. I don’t think anyone’s ever opened the season with that kind of RPI yo-yo. I’m sure Tom Pecora spent the last few days warning the Dutchmen not to overlook Farmingdale, which reached the Division III Elite Eight last year. The young Dutchmen looked pretty mature Tuesday, but today is a similarly pivotal test of where they are in their development. Beat Farmingdale soundly and it’ll be a good sign this squad has a finely honed focus. I’ll predict that things go well enough so that Matt Grogan becomes the first Dutchmen walk-on to score in almost four years.

—More on the uniqueness of the Dutchmen’s early season schedule: They are the only team in the country to have played two Top 25 teams…at least until this afternoon, when those bums from Mason play Georgia Tech. Damn you for stealing Hofstra’s thunder!

—Returning from a road trip to Kansas and UConn to host Farmingdale might make the home opener feel a bit anticlimactic, but I’m looking forward to it as much as ever. The home opener is kind of like the first day of school: You become re-acquainted with your surroundings, get to see the summertime improvements that were made, see who looks different in the fall than in the spring (where oh where have the cornrows gone, Life With Corny and Nathaniel Lester?), reconnect with your good friends and settle into a fun and familiar routine.

You also get to, if you’re me, beat up Sully Ray in the scrum for a free T-shirt. I don’t think I ever officially revealed last year’s standings, so let’s do it here, shall we:

Me 2

Sully Ray 1

Score one for the doughy over the athletic!!

—Tonight’s game is free, a concept that still blows my freaking mind, so the perfect price coupled with the buzz surrounding the Dutchmen means there’s no excuse for the crowd to number less than 3,000. Doesn’t mean I expect the crowd to exceed 3,000, of course.

—Fun fact: Tonight is the Dutchmen’s first Friday home game of the Tom Pecora/CAA era. The America East used to regularly play a Friday-Sunday schedule and the 2000-01 Dutchmen recorded Friday home victories over New Hampshire, Northeastern and Vermont during the 18-game winning streak that finally ended against UCLA in the NCAA Tournament.

—I’ll once again be live Tweeting tonight’s game, so if you’re not following me yet, what are you waiting for?! Check out all the instant analysis at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch. My guess is the recap will wait until Monday, because it’s been a long and hectic week here—I actually spent a day in Connecticut dealing with car trouble, hence the lack of a post Thursday—but who knows, I might bang something out late tonight. Regardless, be back here all next week for coverage of the Preseason NIT consolation games Monday and Tuesday.

—And next week, I swear, I’ll explain the 3 Stars concept…but in the meantime, I realize I forgot to unveil the 3 Stars Tuesday. So without further ado…

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. UConn 11/17)

3: Charles Jenkins

2: Cornelius Vines

1: Nathaniel Lester

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 6

Nathaniel Lester 4

Halil Kanacevic 4

Cornelius Vines 2

Chaz Williams 2

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

Bits and Bytes: Panic time for the Bucs!

Send the Bucs to the UFL!!

As noted Wednesday, most of us need to do a better job of realizing the inherent peaks and valleys of a sports season and reacting accordingly instead of alternately running to avoid the falling sky and planning the route for the celebratory championship parade.

Except, well, I tried that last week and our beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers—known worldwide as The Official NFL Team of Defiantly Dutch—blew a 10-point lead against the Washington Redskins, otherwise known as the most dysfunctional organization in sports outside of the team that plays near the parking lot that used to be Shea Stadium, and lost 16-13.

The Bucs are now 0-4 and already four games behind the Super-looking New Orleans Saints in the NFC South, so I think it’s time to pull out the heavy weaponry that worked last week on the Dutchmen.

That’s right: It’s time for Flying Dutchman alum Raheem Morris to change quarterbacks (never mind that I’m not really sure where he can go since the backup to unfinished product Josh Johnson is the even rawer Josh Freeman) and for the Buccaneers to ponder downgrading the program to the UFL, which is supposed to start next week and will surely scare the bejeezus out of the NFL by capturing the imagination of the professional football fan who just finds his Sunday a little lacking.

There. That oughta do it. The Bucs will be 12-4 before you know it. Some other bits and bytes to ponder as you scrounge enough money together to buy tickets to the Bucs’ first playoff game:

—It’s not like I’ve got anybody else to award the trophy for “Most Hilarious Opposing Football Coach,” since post-game press conference Saturday was the first one I’d attended since 1995, way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But James Madison’s Mickey Matthews apparently decided laughter was the best medicine following the Dukes’ 24-17 loss to the Dutchmen.

For instance, here’s Matthews on the Dutchmen going 4-for-5 on fourth down conversions: “The missed one must have been somewhere in pregame warm-ups.”

On the possibility that the officials missed a pass interference call on the Dukes’ final play from scrimmage: “I thought the last play of the game was a bad call. But I’m not going to say nothing. I would have told them they reffed better than we coached.”

On the Dukes’ sluggish play, particularly on defense, in the first half: “I think we decided to play. We [were] really enjoying the sights of Long Island. And it sure is pretty up here. Nice hotel. Nice mills. Nice looking girls. Nice people and nice stadium.”

Maybe he can pen the “About Long Island” section of next year’s media guide.

—The Dutchmen aren’t the offensive juggernaut of the Joe Gardi era, but you’ve got to figure Gardi would have loved coaching quarterback Steve Probst, who chimed in at the post-game press conference after Cohen talked about the Dutchmen’s aggressiveness on fourth down.

“Nobody likes to punt,” Probst said.

—You, too, can help the Binghamton men’s basketball team defend its America East championship! (Of course, Binghamton couldn’t even hold an open tryout without ticking off the authorities) As long as, one assumes, you pass a thorough background check.

—Loren Stokes and Antoine Agudio were among the 25 players named to the CAA’s 25th anniversary team this week, a pretty impressive feat considering the five other teams to join the CAA since the turn of the century combined to place just one player on the team (Northeastern’s Jose Juan Barea). Clearly, Tom O’Connor had nothing to do with the selection process.

—You might see the calendar, realize yesterday was the 15^th anniversary of the Dutchmen’s 62-7 thrashing of Central Connecticut State—a win that finally vaulted Hofstra into the top 25—and wonder where in the hell is the recap of that game. More than likely, this is the first you’ve thought of it. That’s OK, I forgive you.

Anyway, we went away for a few days and taking a giant Chronicle blue book on the trip seemed like a bad idea of ginormous proportions, so that recap will appear upon our return late tonight or first thing Friday. Stop back for that as well as a more in-depth look at the 28-6 win over New Hampshire, otherwise known as The Game That Changed Everything.

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

Bits and Bytes: Meanwhile, Luke Bonus and Charles Jenkins are probably having lunch in the Ratt

An unidentified Kansas basketball player, left, and football player get serious about their brawling in this file photo.

Fifty-one days until the opening tip at Allen Fieldhouse and the pressure of having to play the Flying Dutchmen as the no. 1 team in the country is getting to the Kansas Jayhawks. Twice in the last 48 hours, members of the Jayhawks’ basketball team have fought members of the football team on campus.

One of the brawls left Tyshawn Taylor, a starter on the basketball team, with a broken finger that could sideline him until after the start of practice. Taylor didn’t exactly cover himself in glory before the incident, either, with a Facebook posting in which he used a racial term and promised to “mug back” anyone who mugged him.

With the Jayhawks football program beginning to experience the type of success enjoyed annually by the men’s basketball team, I imagine this is a more violent version of the Alpha Male ding-a-ling swinging that goes on at places like UConn, where Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma went years without talking because each feels threatened by the other’s success.

In other words, it’s something inconceivable here, where the baseball and football teams usually fill in the student section at basketball games to make it look like people are actually showing up. The closest thing we’ve had to a skirmish between programs is Joe Gardi hilariously telling Jay Wright that he might be the man on campus after a winning season but that Joe was still “The Show.” Ahh Joe.

Anyway, add the fighting nature of the Jayhawks’ basketball team to the chemistry-busting potential of the Henry brothers and I’m really beginning to like the Dutchmen’s chances of knocking off the distracted Jayhawks come Nov. 13.

Of course, let’s give Kansas some credit. There are worse ways for the members of its student body to get into trouble and end up in the national spotlight. And I guess we’ll just leave it at that, won’t we?

Some other bits and bytes:

—Your good friend and mine Mike Litos decided it was a good idea to taunt me—and by extension, all of Dutch Nation, snort—by not only debuting his Hofstra preview at the same time as his Mason preview but also by picking Mason ahead of the Dutchmen. (Click the link to see how little Litos thinks of the Dutchmen!) Clearly Mike has missed the “Do Not Taunt” signs strung up all around this here blog.

Amazingly, Litos is not the only one underrating the Dutchmen. The annual previews from Lindy’s and Athlon also have Hofstra ranked below first (I’ll debut my now-annual running tally on the preseason predictions soon…amazingly, I didn’t begin doing that last year until late October). That’s OK. Those of us in Dutch Nation (where there is always plenty of room on the bandwagon!) are used to the damn liberal media being against us.

In all seriousness, if you haven’t checked out Litos’ previews, do so. His obvious hatred for Hofstra aside, nobody is better-informed, more plugged in or, quite frankly, more excited about the upcoming CAA season than Litos. Even if he doesn’t like us.

—I’ve spent the last couple days pondering and fine-tuning a football post that has required a good bit of massaging. Hopefully you’ll see why tomorrow. But in the meantime, I’ll say, no matter how bad things may seem for the Dutchmen, they’re still in better shape than Indiana State. Hmm. Is it too late to schedule Larry Bird U. for Homecoming?

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