Drexel 63, Hofstra 56 (Or: Yogi was right)

This photo serves two purposes: It summarizes the last couple weeks for the Flying Dutchmen while also paying homage to the Icepick, who was always nice to me for liking remnants of the hair metal era.

In macro terms, I’m pretty sure the entire state of the CAA was summed up in the final few minutes of Drexel’s 63-56 win over the Flying Dutchmen Saturday.

Two games into the conference season was all it took to prove that trying to predict or project the CAA is a job for the sadistic. Drexel, picked to finish at or near the bottom of the CAA, became the only road team Saturday to win by beating the early-season darlings and a program that is 81-28 at the Arena since it opened nine years ago. The Dragons rank last in the CAA in just about every key offensive category, yet they salted away the victory Saturday by mimicking another Philadelphia-based men’s basketball team and shooting 5-of-7 from the field over the final 8:04.

And with eight seconds to play and Hofstra down five, Greg Washington—who was 3-of-17 from the free throw line last season—heaved a free throw attempt at the backboard, hoping he or a teammate would grab the carom to maintain a snowball’s-chance-in-hell of victory.

But he made the damn shot. Imagine that. The guy who couldn’t hit a free throw if his scholarship was on the line last year now CAN’T EVEN MISS WHEN HE TRIES.

(And how about Georgia State, which hasn’t beaten a Division I team since 1983, shocking red-hot Old Dominion?)

Those conference-wide observations are all well and good, of course, but we deal mostly with the micro here at Defiantly Dutch. And what the unpredictability of Saturday taught us is that the Flying Dutchmen are already in big, big trouble.

(This is as good a time as any to mention I took the game in from a barstool at P-Sam’s in Torrington, CT and that I was quite obviously the only person in the entire state not partaking in a day of dominance by the UConn Huskies. For having MSG-Plus—which is apparently on the Are You Crazy Nobody Wants This Station tier of cable back home; I guess that’s payback for mocking its very existence a few months ago—and airing the Hofstra game during UConn’s bowl game, P-Sam’s, a favorite hangout during my imbibing days, is now the official out-of-state bar of Defiantly Dutch. I’m sure management is thrilled. Back to our regularly scheduled pessimism)

The result Saturday was inconceivable to anyone who listened, attended or even scoured the box score from the Flying Dutchmen’s 90-79 victory over Towson in the CAA opener Dec. 6. In that contest, the Dutchmen came back from an early 10-point deficit, received at least nine points from five players, racked up 19 assists and committed just 11 turnovers.

Twenty-eight days later (well, now it’s 30, but you know what I mean), that team is nowhere to be found. The Dutchmen never led Saturday, and it never felt as if they had a game-changing run in them. Charles Jenkins and Cornelius Vines, who combined for 45 points against Towson, had none in the first half. Hofstra had nearly three times as many turnovers (20) as assists (seven).

Jenkins had a team-high five turnovers and fouled out for the first time this season, a pair of telling statistics for a player who so often displayed a natural and seemingly effortless touch for taking over games yet lately can’t seem to make anything happen, no matter how hard he tries.

With the Dutchmen down 42-34 and just under eight minutes left, Jenkins took the inbounds pass and raced up the right sideline…and dribbled the ball off his leg in front of the Hofstra bench. Jenkins had four turnovers or more in two of his first seven games but has committed at least four turnovers four times in the last six contests. He hit 50 percent of his shots Saturday, but in a season-low 10 attempts.

Two of the three fouls Jenkins picked up in the second half also symbolized the Charlie Brown-like black cloud that’s followed him around for weeks. Evan Niesler stole the ball from Jenkins, who raced down the court and raised his arm—seemingly just enough to contest the shot but not enough to earn the foul—as Scott Rodgers went to the basket. But Jenkins was a split-second late and caught Rodgers’ arm. And Jenkins fouled out with 3:53 left, when he was called for a charge on a drive to the basket.

(This provides a convenient excuse to mention that the refs, in my completely unbiased and nuanced opinion formed from the aforementioned barstool, stunk like a Staten Island landfill in August. I mean, seriously, Hofstra had 24 fouls compared to just 16 for Drexel? Some of those flops from Drexel that resulted in offensive foul calls on the Dutchmen were Razzie-worthy. But, again, just my opinion)

Vines did a decent Jenkins impersonation following the latter’s disqualification as he scored Hofstra’s next nine points. But it was an exasperating 14-point performance for Vines, one Tom Pecora—albeit unwittingly—best summarized with his expression in this photo from the game story on the Hofstra site. Vines missed his first five shots and chucked up a couple painful-looking desperation shots in the final minute.

Pecora displayed his exasperation multiple ways Saturday. He started Mike Davis-Saab, who had more DNPs (seven) than DPs (five) in the first 12 games. Davis-Saab played just two minutes, but Greg Johnson, whose senior season began with a pair of DNP-CDs in the Charleston Classic, took over point guard duties and led the Dutchmen with 34 minutes—including the entire second half—off the bench.

Tony Dennison, Miklos Szabo and Darren Townes—who were in the starting lineup in six straight games from Fordham through Iona—played a combined 17 minutes, including just one in the second half. Pecora even picked up one of those trying-to-rile-the-team up Ts in the second half. Didn’t work.

Little seems to work lately, and it’s as puzzling as it is frustrating. Maybe it’s just blog bias talking, but I refuse to believe the Towson game was a fluke. The Dutchmen were playing good, gritty ball for weeks before that. They weren’t a perfect team—even back then the point guard quandary lurked—but they were a lot better than this.

Where did that team go? It better show up tonight in Boston, where the Dutchmen are faced with one of their most pivotal early-season conference games in memory. Facing Northeastern, another fierce defensive team and a squad that’s beginning to play like the team that was a pre-season favorite, doesn’t seem to be the medicine for whatever ails the Dutchmen.

But if the Dutchmen don’t get on track now, when will they? With Delaware, VCU, Drexel again and Northeastern again awaiting following tonight, a season that once seemed to promise magic in March is threatening to turn very late very early.

Maybe a DD road trip will cure whatever ails the Dutchmen (hey, they’re 2-0 in road games I’ve attended this year). I’m planning to make my first visit to Northeastern tonight. If you’re there, I’ll be the guy yelling about Carlos Pena.

(Pre-road trip edit: Pick to click is Jenkins. Just has to be, right?)

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

See? I told you so. The trends were in favor of Hofstra limiting Stony Brook to a field goal.

Nobody's umbrella ended up two miles away inside out Friday. Thanks, local weathermen!

Before we get chatting about what will almost surely be the most lopsided victory of the year for the Flying Dutchmen football team, I’d like to give a big shout out to the weathermen who scared the wife and I into sitting home Friday instead of actually seeing the 43-3 win in person.

As a member of the media, I’ve always hated it when the public uses a negative experience—or a negative perception—to broadly and unfavorably paint the rest of us with the same stroke. But, you know, I’m already over blasting all weathermen.

I know, I know: You can’t predict the weather and its various quirks and hiccups. Well, if it’s unpredictable, then stop gushing over your super duper new awesome Doppler 92,000,000 and how it’s going to make my life so much more awesome. You never hear media members prattle on about how the newest digital recorder is going to bring you your news in a more accurate and timely fashion, do you?

Plus, I don’t mind criticizing weathermen because they’re not like cops. You’re not going to be sitting there during a downpour or a blizzard going “Damnit! Where is a weatherman when I need one?” and wishing you’d never said anything negative about their entire species.

Where was I? Oh yeah. My wife and I sitting home and watching MSG-Plus (how can MSG have a Plus when they’re so bereft of programming they aired MSG, NY or MSG Vault for 13 hours on the flagship between 8 am Sunday and 4 am Monday?) because we feared we’d end up watching the game in a Charleston Southern-type end-of-the-world monsoon. Instead, LaValle Stadium was blanketed in a gentle mist.

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones scared off by lousy weather reports. The listed attendance of 2,105 seemed quite generous judging by the acres of empty space.

What we missed was a final score that did indeed evoke nostalgia, though not the type I was imagining last week. One trend I forgot to mention Friday was Hofstra’s 3-1 mark and razor-thin average margin of victory (6.5 points) in its last four games against non-scholarship programs.

But instead of providing a reminder of the days when Hofstra was the non-scholarship team scaring the bejeezus out of the Big Dogs, the Flying Dutchmen harkened back to the old-fashioned beatings they would administer to undermanned opponents—like in 2005, when they beat Albany and Stony Brook by a combined score of 91-7. Or, if you’re like me, it was reminiscent of 1995 and that 56-6 Homecoming thrashing of Charleston Southern that felt as if it easily could have been 156-0.

It was a victory whose dominance was not in the stats but in the details. Hofstra had only two more first downs than Stony Brook (18-16), outgained the Seawolves by just 105 yards (316-211) and held a narrow advantage in time of possession (32:03-27:57).

But the Flying Dutchmen did what a scholarship program is supposed to do against a Stony Brook-type program: Take advantage of mistakes, put the proverbial foot on the proverbial throat (as opposed to the Mets, who put their actual hands on their actual throats—two years running!) and don’t give the non-scholarship opponent a chance to believe it can pull off a miracle.

Stony Brook’s one chance to create some momentum on its first possession evaporated when a wide-open Dwayne Eley dropped a sure touchdown pass on second down. The Seawolves turned the ball over on downs and didn’t move back into Hofstra territory until they were down 31-0.

Leslie Jackman made the play of the night—and, according to ESPN, the 10th-best play in America; he’s still no Chris Parsons—when he stripped Edwin Gowins of the ball near the sideline and raced 60 yards for the touchdown. Two other interceptions led to touchdowns.

There was no need to fill up the stat sheet up 17-0 a minute into the second quarter, 24-0 midway thru the period and 31-3 at halftime. By that point, the only objective was to get out healthy heading into this weekend’s game against a far more formidable foe: James Madison, which is ranked no. 1 in the I-AA coaches’ poll and no. 2 in the writers’ poll.

The only remaining suspense Friday was provided by the Dutchmen’s quest to keep the Seawolves out of the end zone and an impressive third quarter punt by Roger Williams, who ran 20 yards to chase down an errant snap, turned around and managed to boot the ball inside the Seawolves’ five-yard-line.

Good thing he didn’t pay any attention to the weathermen. Otherwise he probably would have fallen to the ground and conceded the lost yardage, because who could possibly punt in that monsoon?

(Note: Posts may be sporadic as I finish another writing project over the next couple days)

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.