Drexel 78, Hofstra 67 (Or: Who would have thought they’d end up this way, getting so close, so far away)

Philadelphia's finest musical export summed up the 2011-12 Flying Dutchmen way back during my senior year of high school, when me and Nathaniel Lester formed a dynamic duo in pickup basketball!

Mike Moore did a fine job of spelling out the absurdity of a double-digit loss to Georgia State nine days ago, when the Panthers routed the Flying Dutchmen even tough the Dutchmen had as many assists and steals, two fewer rebounds and seven fewer turnovers than the victors.

Even in this ridiculous Dutchmen season, that seemed to be bottom, at least in terms of head-scratching losses that simply don’t add up on paper. But as usual, we were wrong. Very, very wrong.

The Dutchmen managed to never lead in a 78-67 loss to Drexel at the cozy DAC in Philadelphia Saturday even though they forced 11 more turnovers (18) than they committed (seven). It was just the sixth time since joining the CAA that Hofstra has had a turnover ratio of plus-10 and the first time the Dutchmen have lost such a game. Their average margin of victory in the first five such instances: 15 points.

“If I could cover the numbers up and say, hey, we got 19 offensive rebounds and only turned it over seven times and they turned it over 18 times, I’d probably sit here and tell you we probably would have won the game,” Cassara said.

So how did THIS—so close, so far away—happen again? Well, for one thing, the Dutchmen had so many offensive rebounds because they missed 43 of their 64 shots. And while Moore, Nathaniel Lester, Stephen Nwaukoni and Shemiye McLendon combined to shoot a respectable 20-of-46 from the field, the rest of the team was a gasp-worthy 1-of-18.

“Our issue just continues to be we weren’t able to make enough baskets to win,” Cassara said. “We had a lot of great opportunities around the basket tonight and we weren’t able to execute.”

Drexel, on the other hand, executed. Over and over and over again. The Dragons shot a blistering 59.6 percent, the highest a CAA opponent has ever shot against the Dutchmen, per EvanJ at the CAA Zone. Drexel’s three double-digit scorers—Chris Fouch, Frantz Massenat and Damian Lee—were a silly 22-of-29 from the field. Fouch lived up to his “F-Bomb” nickname by hitting three free throws less than three minutes into the second half to start the Dragons’ decisive 25-8 run and by draining his first six 3-point attempts of the second half.

Only these Dutchmen—who have as many non-conference wins over opponents in the top 100 as they do CAA wins—could produce such diametrically opposite historic efforts in the same game.

“I told the team: It’s a mental mistake every game,” Cassara said. “It’s a little mental breakdown. And I think that just comes from fatigue and just comes from we don’t have enough mental toughness to say ‘Hey, I’m not going to foul a jump shooter’ [or] ‘Hey, I’m not going to go underneath the screen’ or ‘Hey, I’m going to cut a little harder on offense.’ And part of that, to me, is from fatigue.”

Yet despite the almost uninterrupted spate of losing and an undermanned roster (which got even lighter when David Imes sat out the second half with a groin injury that has him very questionable at best for this week), the Dutchmen continued to exhibit an admirable amount of hustle and effort. They forced a seemingly unprecedented seven held balls in the first half, during which they fell behind by 10 less than six minutes in yet closed the gap to two at the under-4 timeout.

The Dutchmen opened the second half by outscoring the Dragons 10-4 to pull within two points—and missed two chances to tie the game a bit more than two minutes into the half—and went on a 20-9 run to pull within eight points at the final media timeout.

“I thought our effort and our intensity was really, really solid,” Cassara said. “Proud of our guys. We continue to play hard. We just haven’t been able to make enough winning plays to beat a team like Drexel, especially down here at Drexel.”

Nobody played harder than Lester, who continued to produce a sensational finish to what was already a very solid senior season by scoring a game-high 27 points—including 22 in the second half—to go along with a team-high eight rebounds, including seven on the offensive end. Effort has never been an issue for Lester, but he is embodying the senior playing with more passion than ever in February, putting teammates on his back and doing all he can to will a flawed team to extend his career just a little bit longer.

“Nat plays hard—he plays hard,” Cassara said. “He plays hard and he’s given us all he’s got. He continues to play really hard and give us a lot of energy.”

There were some other notable individual efforts by Dutchmen, many of which were alternately—and appropriately—impressive and cringe-worthy. The best overall performance, other than Lester, came from Nwaukoni, who was 4-of-6 from the field in scoring eight points for the second straight game. The Dutchmen will need him to continue finding his early January form with Imes banged up.

Dwan McMillan fashioned a magnificent assist-to-turnover ratio of 6:1, but was 0-for-4 from the field. Moore had 18 points and became only the second player in school history to score 1,000 points in two seasons after transferring to Hofstra, but lapsed into inconsistency and sat for almost five minutes during Drexel’s big second half run.

And Stevie Mejia had five steals, and nearly had a couple more that he couldn’t quite corral, but was 0-for-8 from the field three days after he was 5-of-11 against George Mason.

“Wayne Morgan said to me walking down the tunnel at halftime ‘That’s the guy that you told me could really guard the ball that we’ve been waiting to see,’” Cassara said. “He’s starting to come along. That’s a positive note. Got to keep trying to build on the positives. We’ve got three of our next four games at home.”

There aren’t too many of those on the scoreboard or in the standings—the last time the Dutchmen were 2-13 in conference play, the 13th loss was a season-ender in the 1988 East Coast Conference tournament—and even the schedule that once seemed to lighten up in mid-February has turned difficult.

Delaware, which started this Dutchmen funk with a one-point win in New-ARK Jan. 4, visits Wednesday in the midst of a four-game winning streak that has made the Blue Hens the hottest team outside of the top four. Then there’s the too-meaningless-for-words “Bracket Buster” against Siena Saturday, followed by a trip to William & Mary—which scorched Northeastern Saturday to break a 10th-place tie with the Dutchmen—and the Senior Day finale against UNC Wilmington.

But Cassara will work as hard leading into games as the Dutchmen work during them, hoping to fix whatever ails the Dutchmen and get to the point where luck finally turns their way, the shots start falling, the math finally works in their favor and so close is no longer so far away.

“I’ve been on some teams that [didn’t] have winning records and some of those teams didn’t play hard this time of year,” Cassara said. “That team out there played hard today. We played hard. We just aren’t able to make enough winning plays to win a game like that on the road yet. So we have to keep trying to look at some of the things that [are] prohibiting us from doing that and stay positive. We head home for three of our next four and we’re going to go back to practice [Sunday] and try to get better Sunday and Monday and play Delaware on Tuesday.”

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Drexel, 2/11)

3: Nathaniel Lester

2: Stephen Nwaukoni

1: Mike Moore

SEASON STANDINGS

Mike Moore 56

Nathaniel Lester 41

Dwan McMillan 17

David Imes 14

Stephen Nwaukoni 10

Stevie Mejia 9

Shemiye McLendon 9

Moussa Kone 3

Bryant Crowder 2

Matt Grogan 1

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

Old Dominion 75, Hofstra 64 (Or: So close)

Yeah, Old Dominion isn't in Philadelphia and Hall and Oates' last chart hit So Close has absolutely nothing to do with basketball, but I'm way late with this so just forgive the obvious cliches.

I’ve got a head cold that is utterly kicking my ass the last couple days, so my apologies for the tardy recap—and for the re-return of five postgame thoughts! FPT has more lives than a horror movie villain! I’ll be better tomorrow night. Probably. Hopefully. Anyway, on with the recap:

1.) Turns out there was no need to worry about how to handle a win over the preseason favorites at the Arena. Storm the court? Don’t storm the court? Wasn’t an issue, though I will neither confirm nor deny I was plotting the fastest route to the floor once the Flying Dutchmen took a 12-0 lead.

That said, despite the seemingly lopsided final margin of defeat—and the fact Old Dominion, which would have a tough time racking up 70 points if it were shooting at the old Nerf basketball hoop I had set up over the kitchen pantry as a kid, outscored the Dutchmen 75-52 over the final 33:30—the Dutchmen could take solace, if not satisfaction, in how close they came to toppling the premier program in the CAA.

Old Dominion won by only 11—and led by just four with 2:43 to play and five with 32 seconds left before the Monarchs tacked on four free throws and a dunk—even though the Dutchmen endured their second-worst shooting performance of the season, had one of their toughest nights of the year beyond the arc and were destroyed on the boards. The Dutchmen shot 37.3 percent (22-of-59), ahead only of their 30.7 percent effort against Nebraska in the Puerto Rico finale, and were only 5-of-20 from 3-point land, which was what they shot in losing to Florida Atlantic.

ODU outrebounded the Dutchmen 52-28, the biggest deficit this season for Hofstra, and had a remarkable 33 defensive rebounds to just eight offensive boards for the Dutchmen. The Monarchs also had 27 second-chance points compared to just eight for the Dutchmen.

“We came out, we showed we could compete for the title in the conference,” said Mike Moore, who shared the team lead with 19 points and six assists. “We’re going to take some positives from this game. Basically, we outplayed them outside of the rebounding. If we could just get some extra defensive rebounds, I think we win this game.”

In addition, Charles Jenkins (19 points, six assists, two rebounds, three turnovers) had perhaps his worst game of the year as well in going just 6-of-16 from the field and 0-for-4 from 3-point land. It was only the third time this season he’s shot less than 40 percent and the first time he failed to hit a 3-pointer in a game in which he had more than two attempts.

2.) The Dutchmen probably can’t hope to outrebound Old Dominion, which entered the game among the top three teams in the country in rebounding. But they could have at least minimized the damage Frank Hassell and Chris Cooper did down low in combining for 26 points and 22 rebounds if Greg Washington wasn’t limited to 27 minutes by foul trouble.

Washington opened the game with an incredible four blocks in the first 104 seconds and ended up leading the Dutchmen with five blocks and two steals while altering numerous other shots. But Old Dominion took control of the game once Washington went to the bench with his third foul—and it was a ticky tack SOUTHERN BIAS!!!! call if we ever saw one—with 3:36 to play in the first half. At the time of the foul, the Dutchmen led 25-19, but beginning with Keyon Carter’s two free throws, the Monarchs went on a 10-2 run to end the half and take the lead for good.

With Washington in the lineup, the Dutchmen outscored Old Dominion 50-47. With him on the bench, they were outscored 27-14.

“His third foul was a tough one and took him out of the game a little bit,” Mo Cassara said. “We had to go small so it was clearly a big play for us.”

3.) The rebounding deficit, Jenkins’ atypical quietness and Washington’s extended absence can all be corrected between now and what we hope will be a rematch for all the marbles on the first Monday of March. But the Dutchmen aren’t beating Old Dominion if they don’t take advantage of the few mistakes the Monarchs make. The most interesting stat from Saturday: Old Dominion committed 15 turnovers, but the Dutchmen turned those into just 15 points. The Dutchmen committed only eight turnovers, but the Monarchs turned those into 14 points. That’s right: Old Dominion turned every turnover but one into a basket while the Dutchmen, for all intents and purposes, got a basket once every two turnovers.

Some of that is a byproduct of how those turnovers took place: The Dutchmen had just four steals and most of Old Dominion’s turnovers were caused by travels while the Monarchs had six steals, so ODU was able to take advantage of fast break opportunities far more than the Dutchmen. Still, against a perennial power with a talent and depth advantage, it’s imperative to take advantage of turnovers, no matter how they’re created.

4.) The loss was a reminder of just how thin the Dutchmen are in terms of depth. We’d all gotten used to someone stepping up and complementing Jenkins and Moore during the four-game winning streak—David Imes one night, Greg Washington another, Shemiye McLendon another—but there was nobody to pick up the slack Saturday. McLendon had a solid game and continued to evolve into something much more than a 3-point shooter with nine points on 4-of-10 shooting (including 1-of-3 from 3-point land), but Imes and Washington were a combined 4-of-14 and Brad Kelleher was just 1-of-4. Overall, the Dutchmen had just seven players play as many as 11 minutes while the Monarchs had eight players with at least 13 minutes.

5.) Still: If someone told you before the season—or, particularly, after the Iona game—that the Dutchmen would be 5-1 one-third of the way through the CAA season, you’d probably laugh him out of the room. Sure, there’s a long way to go, but the Dutchmen have already come a long way.

“We have five wins, we’re certainly still in the top of the conference as far as record and honestly, we could play a lot better,” Cassara said. “I think even some of the games we’ve won we have a lot of things that we can continue to build on and tonight was certainly not our best game. But I think we have a lot of good basketball in us still.

“I think, like Mike said, we showed to start this game that we have enough to compete with those guys. It was just a couple little plays here and there, the game got a little out of hand in the last minute or so, but it was really just a couple key plays here or there, a couple key rebounds, a couple stops, maybe a couple calls that might have gone our way and we were right there,” Cassara said. “All that being said, yeah, I’m impressed with [Old Dominion], but I also think that we can continue to stay at the top of this league.”

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Old Dominion, 1/15)

3: Mike Moore

2: Greg Washington

1: Charles Jenkins

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 42

Mike Moore 22

Greg Washington 14

David Imes 12

Dwan McMillan 5

Brad Kelleher 3

Shemiye McLendon 2

Yves Jules 1

Stephen Nwaukoni 1

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

Hofstra 75, Drexel 69 (Or: Some things stay the same and some are due for change)

I was happy to learn it's tougher to find Hall & Oates songs about wins than it is about losses.

As is often the case, the “lede” to the Iona recap last week was not the one I had in mind originally. In fact, I’d written most of a blog about how the Iona game could define the Dutchmen’s season, and how most coaches hate to read and hear such declarations from writers so early in a season, until I realized the actual story was Charles Jenkins declaring he would never again display a lack of aggression in the first half.

Anyway, good thing I shelved that entry, because now I can say that LAST night is the type of game that could not only define a season but an era, and how Mo Cassara would probably cringe upon reading and hearing this tripe spill from my fingers and my mouth.

But the Flying Dutchmen’s 75-69 upset win over Drexel is huge, and not just because it improved the Dutchmen to 3-0 in the ECC (you didn’t think I’d forget that silly little meme did you?), put them into a three-way tie for first place in the CAA and assured they would receive a bye in the CAA Tournament, if only the CAA regular season lasted two games and the tournament began, say, Wednesday.

The win, of course, doesn’t guarantee much, especially with the most talented team in the league, George Mason, coming to town tomorrow night (that’s me playing nice, Mason Nation, don’t get used to it!) and a roadie at always-tough Northeastern awaiting the Dutchmen Saturday. All last night does is assure the Dutchmen will leave the weekend no worse than .500 in the CAA, which, let’s face it, we all would have taken a month or a week or a day ago.

But this win is a pivotal one because of what it signified in the short- and long-term. Beating the hottest and most surprising team in the league—on the road—to resume CAA play is the Signature Win this team has lacked since the departure of Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera and the Signature Win that eluded the Dutchmen in such demoralizing fashion last Jan. 2, when William & Mary—which, like Drexel, was predicted to finish at or near the bottom of the league before it threatened to climb into the Top 25 during the non-conference season—took its only lead of the game on its last basket to edge the Dutchmen 48-47 at the Arena.

There were many reasons why that loss began a 1-7 stretch for the Dutchmen that nearly derailed their season, but a win there would have likely done a lot more than merely made the Dutchmen 3-6 at the halfway point of the CAA schedule. The Dutchmen were, to invoke a cliché that I will use because it allows me to post another Hall and Oates video, so close yet so far away to that Signature Win, having squandered second half leads against UConn, Charlotte and St. John’s, that it began wearing on them and contributed to a brutal January.

This victory, and particularly the way it was recorded, allows the Dutchmen to clear a hurdle that had been in their path for the last four seasons. The best-case scenario for a victory didn’t come close to actually happening, but the Dutchmen won anyway.

The Dutchmen, one of the nation’s best 3-point shooting teams, were just 2-of-11 from beyond the arc, by far their worst performance of the season, yet were 24-of-43 from everywhere else. They were outrebounded 44-31 and allowed 18 offensive rebounds, but that was a result of the Dutchmen throwing a variety of defenses at Drexel and forcing the Dragons to shoot a season-worst 37.3 percent from the field.

Everyone shy of Demetrius Dudley was in serious foul trouble for the Dutchmen in the second half, when they got into the bonus within the first five minutes and saw Charles Jenkins and Greg Washington both head to the bench with four fouls within the first six minutes. Jenkins and Washington hit the pine with the Dutchmen down 44-40 and Drexel in the midst of a 15-4 run, yet the Dutchmen and their piecemeal lineup (at one point in the second half, the five players on the court for Hofstra were Mike Moore, Shemiye McLendon, Brad Kelleher, Yves Jules and David Imes—three newcomers and two sophomores who barely saw the court as freshmen) hung on thanks to Imes, who outscored Drexel 6-4 with Jenkins on the bench.

Imes had the best game of his career, shooting a perfect 8-for-8 from the floor and scoring 14 of his 20 points in the second half. Imes, who grabbed eight rebounds as well, also hit the most pivotal basket of the final seven minutes, a reverse layup immediately shortly after Washington fouled out and Drexel took its biggest lead (55-50) with 7:10 left.

By that point, Jenkins was back. Utilized to perfection by Cassara, who pulled Jenkins in defensive situations and just before media timeouts whenever possible, Jenkins—who displayed his newfound aggression in leading the Dutchmen to a seven-point halftime lead—scored 11 of his game-high 23 points in the final eight minutes.

Mike Moore, who had another game in which he managed to make multiple contributions despite a quiet night offensively (11 points, a team-high nine rebounds and a game-high three steals) scored eight of his 11 points after Jenkins picked up his fourth foul. Jenkins and Moore had the most pivotal baskets of the game, back-to-back coast-to-coast layups that extended the Dutchmen’s lead to six with a minute left.

The Dutchmen got valuable contributions from the rest of their lean roster. Brad Kelleher, five nights removed from an ugly 0-for-8 performance from the field, ran the point again with Dwan McMillan still out sick and had seven points, five assists and one turnover in 33 minutes. Shemiye McLendon, who was 0-for-7 against Iona, was 0-for-3 from the field but hit the two free throws that gave the Dutchmen the lead for good at 63-62.

Yves Jules, who missed two of the last four games due to injury and illness, played a season-high 21 minutes and blanketed hot-shooting Chris Fouch, who was just 3-of-10 from the field and 1-of-5 from 3-point land. The five attempts from beyond the arc were a season low for Fouch. Even Paul Bilbo, forced into action due to the early foul trouble for Washington and Stephan Nwaukoni, scored his first career basket on a gorgeous sky hook to end the first half.

Again: One win doesn’t ensure anything for this season, but this victory is more proof the Dutchmen have a keeper in Cassara. We all wondered how easily Cassara could shift from buddy mode in the spring to hard-ass mode in the fall and winter. Pretty easily and pretty convincingly, as it turns out, because he put the Dutchmen through what he called “boot camp” over New Year’s weekend after the Iona debacle and promised no Hofstra team would ever play like that under him ever again.

And the Dutchmen responded by producing a long-awaited Signature Win. Imagine what we’ll be saying about Cassara and the possibilities of this season if they do it again tomorrow night.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Drexel, 1/3)

3: David Imes

2: Charles Jenkins

1: Mike Moore

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 34

Mike Moore 17

David Imes 10

Greg Washington 7

Dwan McMillan 5

Shemiye McClendon 2

Brad Kelleher 1

Yves Jules 1

Stephen Nwaukoni 1

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

In which we welcome back Woody, and wonder if he ever really wanted to leave

At and around Hofstra, everybody knew the Jets' names.

Even by the “standards” set by those who run professional sports teams, Woody Johnson is not an easy guy with whom to side. If he’s not clumsily putting his fingerprints all over the Jets—four years after he wanted to mimic Bill Belichick, he’s turned the Jets into the biggest bunch of publicity, err, magnets this side of the cast of Jersey Shore; does anyone REALLY think “Hard Knocks” will end with Darrelle Revis still unsigned?—then he’s proving how out of touch he is with the common man as the Jets prepare to move into Meadowlands Stadium next month.

Johnson finally reduced the prices of the Jets’ remaining personal seat licenses in June, a mere month after he said he absolutely would not do so. To be so completely tone deaf to the realities of life in 2010 is the kind of hubris displayed only by those who were born on third base but think they raced 270 feet to get there.

Anyway, contrary to those first two graphs, I come here today—the day the Jets return to their one-time home at Hofstra for the annual open practice—not to bury Johnson but to…umm, not hug him, but maybe give him a fist bump as I apologize for solely blaming him for the Jets’ exit following training camp in 2008.

Don’t get me wrong: Leaving Hofstra behind to build a $75 million training facility for the Jets—and then realizing it wasn’t suitable for training camp and brokering a deal to hold camp at SUNY-Cortland—is still a hilarious head-scratcher, the type of mistake only the insanely rich can make. But I am beginning to wonder if Johnson and the Jets didn’t have a choice but to leave Hofstra.

This is all just conjecture, of course, and will remain that way, since the odds of anybody exiting the ivory tower to discuss that “two-year study” long enough to disprove any coincidences were just that—and that the study really did take two years and involved anything more than personal vendettas—are slimmer than my odds of landing a public relations job at George Mason.

But remember this: When the Jets announced their plans to move the team’s facilities to New Jersey, they were still not sure where to hold camp every summer. It was entirely possible the Jets could be based in Jersey yet still prepare for the season at Hofstra.

And while I didn’t want to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt last year, isn’t it reasonable to wonder—now that our once-quiet fears about the future of Hofstra football have turned into reality—that the powers that be at Hofstra made it clear the Jets weren’t welcome because their presence every summer would soon be a reminder that football is no longer played here in the fall?

How much negative publicity would that bring to Hofstra on an annual basis? Might nudging the Jets off campus so that their land could be used to build the medical school be the first step in systematically removing all football from Hofstra? And wouldn’t ridding the campus of the Jets go a long way towards ensuring the school is known as a bastion of academic excellence instead of for football success?

(Note: While I often snort at Hofstra’s attempts to fashion itself the Ivy League of Long Island, I must note that U.S. News and World Report just ranked Hofstra 139th on its list of best American colleges while George Mason is no. 143. YEAH!! SUCK IT MASON!!!! I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming)

Whatever the real reason is for the Jets’ departure, it’s too bad, because both sides could have had it both ways. Hofstra could have continued bolstering its reputation as a university and built a medical school while also continuing to enjoy the free publicity generated by its partnership with the Jets. And the Jets could have maintained their ties to New York and their tradition at Hofstra, which was the closest thing the nomadic franchise had to a real home base.

As this New York Times article from September 2001—note the dateline, it was the last normal Sunday ever—makes clear, the Jets were a source of—wait for it!—pride for Hofstra and Long Island alike. From realtors to deli owners and everywhere in between, the Jets provided a nice boost to the local economy. And as this Times article from earlier this year indicates, I wasn’t the only student who felt I’d hit the big time upon realizing I was sharing a campus with a professional football team.

That’s no longer the case, except for one night a year, and it’s a shame. We’ll probably never know for sure who is truly to blame for the Jets’ departure. But all I know is it took Johnson a little less than a year after the Jets’ exit to realize he wanted to go back to school—and Hofstra a little more than a year after the Jets' exit to execute football.

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