Bits and Bytes: Previewing ODU…and chewing over some stats, suspensions & stupid network tricks

Conan O'Brien only LOOKS as tall as Gerald Lee.

Quick apology for the sporadic posting this week. Just have not been able to get back into the usual Monday-Friday flow after the super duper car crash and the subsequent weirdness, which I will do my very best to put into words over the weekend because there needs to be a written account of the sheer lunacy of it all.

In the meantime, let’s get back into the flow of things by breaking down today’s big game at pre-season favorite Old Dominion. Unfortunately, this marks the third straight season in which the Dutchmen and Monarchs play just once, which is too bad since ODU has earned Favored Rival status here at Defiantly Dutch.

Since Hofstra joined the CAA, seven of the 18 games between the two teams have been decided by a basket or less—including perhaps the most exciting regular season game ever played at the Arena, the 65-63 win over Old Dominion in 2006 in which Aurimas Kieza drained a 3-pointer as the buzzer—while another was decided by four points and another was decided by five points.

The Dutchmen handed Old Dominion its only home loss in both 2004-05 and 2005-06, but the Monarchs have eliminated the Dutchmen from the CAA Tournament three times in the previous six seasons—including last year, when Gerald Lee scored 30 points and pulled down 10 rebounds and Charles Jenkins’ 3-pointer at the buzzer fell shy as the Dutchmen lost to the future CIT champions 52-51, and yes, that was a passive-aggressive swipe at Hofstra for being too good to play in the CIT—and knocked Hofstra out of the NIT with a quarterfinal win at Hofstra (arrrrrrgh) in 2006.

This may be the most challenging game of the taxing early January schedule for the Dutchmen, who took a bus down to Norfolk yesterday—their second bus ride to Virginia in five days—and will return tonight in order to get two practices in before VCU visits Tuesday to cap the 5-in-10 stretch.

“I don’t ever remember, in all my years of coaching, having a stretch like this—we’re playing five games in 10 days and trips back and forth to Virginia in the course of it,” Pecora said after the Dutchmen’s 77-61 win over Towson Wednesday.

And in between bus rides the Dutchmen have the task of playing at one of the CAA’s toughest venues. “I said to the guys ‘Hey, Old Dominion is why you came to play in college, Hofstra at Old Dominion,’” Pecora said. “It’s going to be 8,500 people, the place is going to be rocking, they’ll all hate us. It’s awesome. And there’s nothing better than going there and winning. And we’ve had the opportunity to do that.”

The key is seizing the opportunity today is very, very simple: The 3 Stars of the Game must—MUST—include someone other than Jenkins, Chaz Williams, Nathaniel Lester and Halil Kanacevic. More specifically, that someone has to be Greg Washington and/or Miklos Szabo. The Dutchmen cannot win if Lee is a one-man wrecking crew again.

As good as Kanacevic has been thus far—and as timely as his ascension to the starting lineup appears to be, right before back-to-back games against teams with dominant big men—it’s not fair to expect him to single-handedly contain Lee, who has three years of experience and at least two inches on Kanacevic. Washington and Szabo don’t have to shut Lee down, either, just minimize the damage he wrecks down low. That said, it would be a huge help if one of them could channel Darren Townes, who had the best game of his oddly quiet senior season in collecting 10 points and seven rebounds against ODU in the Dutchmen’s wire-to-wire 60-51 win Feb. 10.

At the least, Washington and Szabo have to carefully distribute the 10 fouls at their disposal. The Dutchmen are in trouble if one (or both) of those players picks up two fouls in their first couple minutes.

Limit Lee to a merely human effort and the Dutchmen have quite a shot at pulling off the upset and recording the get-over-the-hump win they have not recorded since, let’s be honest, 2005-06. Either way, it’ll be a sludgefest determined in the last minute again.

And regardless of the result, enjoy the game, because we must appreciate the opportunity to watch Hofstra against Old Dominion on MSG while we can, since Hofstra is leaving the CAA as soon as humanly possible and leaving both Old Dominion and DD-era Favored Rival Delaware behind in The Land Where They Still Play Football and since MSG is no longer the network most likely to televise a Hofstra game.

This is the second of the Dutchmen’s three schedule appearances on MSG. The Dutchmen have appeared twice already on FIOS, which about 17 people get here on Long Island, and their next two television appearances will be on ESPNU, which Cablevision doesn’t carry. You know, like HGTV and the Food Network.

A couple other quick bits and bytes for the weekend:

—A real interesting stat courtesy of some detective work by Loyal Reader John K., who read Jeremy Kniffin’s typically outstanding game notes and did the math to figure out that the Dutchmen’s leader in assist-to-turnover ratio is…we kid you not, Cornelius Vines, whose 1.54 mark is just ahead of Williams (1.43) and Jenkins (1.39).

Now, granted, Vines’ place atop that category is largely a result of his work in the non-conference schedule as well as Williams’ recent sloppiness. The last time Vines had at least two more assists than turnovers was Dec. 20 against St. John’s. Still, it’s proof Vines—much-maligned among Dutch Nation (snort) for his errant long-distance shooting—is deserving, on both sides of the ball, of the pivotal role he’s playing even after being benched for Williams.

—Speaking of Williams and stats, the freshman has hit his last seven 3-point attempts, just two shy of the school record set by Mike Radziejewski in 2002-03. Neither Williams nor Pecora were aware of the streak when informed of it Wednesday night.

“I wish you hadn’t told him that,” Pecora said, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

—And speaking of behemoth big men, VCU star center Larry Sanders was suspended for the Rams’ game today against Delaware for committing a flagrant foul against Drexel Wednesday. Oh sure. He couldn’t have waited until TODAY to earn a one-game suspension, could he?

Interesting only to me was that VCU coach Shaka Smart declined comment beyond a canned quote and had his players off-limits yesterday. Booo. That’s BCS stuff out of a guy who is supposed to be different than the typically controlling head coach. Or maybe I’m just a grump, I don’t know.

—Lastly, and only tangentially related to Hofstra: I’ve been a big fan of Conan O’Brien since I caught his debut show on NBC during my first month at Hofstra in 1993, so I’ve been following with a good deal of interest the eminently predictable shenanigans at NBC, which is apparently trying to correct the mistake it made in giving Jay Leno the 10 p.m. hour five nights a week by returning him to 11:35 and pushing O’Brien—who took over The Tonight Show last June—to 12:05.

TV critic David Bianculli—who, in a bit of irony that is not really irony, has also been my favorite TV critic since I discovered him upon his debut with the New York Daily News in the fall of 1993—nails the insanity taking place at NBC in writing that the network is “…shattering a TV tradition older than any of the executives making this bone-headed decision.

“NBC is strangling The Tonight Show, and burying its own history and heritage.”

Hmm. Sounds familiar.

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

Hofstra 79, UNC-Wilmington 66 (Or: Deep Impact)

Tea Leoni is going to break the story of the giant comet on its way to destroy Earth, but not before she watches the Flying Dutchmen beat UNC-Wilmington Friday.

The Flying Dutchmen opened the season in mid-November with what looked like the deepest roster of the Tom Pecora Era. But nobody could have imagined just how correct that assumption would prove to be at the most opportune time possible.

Four Dutchmen starters played 13 minutes or less, but reserves Greg Washington, Dane Johnson, Cornelius Vines and Zygis Sestokas combined for 37 points and 29 rebounds and Charles Jenkins had another monster game as the Dutchmen never trailed in beating UNC-Wilmington, 79-66, to advance to the CAA quarterfinals today against Old Dominion.

The Dutchmen managed to record their most lopsided win of the conference season—and their most lopsided victory since a 68-52 win over St. Francis on Dec. 13—on an afternoon in which Pecora was forced to juggle his rotation before the first media timeout. Nathaniel Lester and Darren Townes each picked up two fouls in the first three minutes and played just seven and 10 minutes, respectively, while Greg Johnson (nine minutes) and Arminas Urbutis (13 minutes) were also limited.

Lester, who still managed to score 10 points, made by far his briefest appearance in his 13 games as a starter while Townes tied his low mark in minutes in the 13 starts since returning to the lineup Jan. 17. Johnson played his fewest minutes, disregarding the game against James Madison in which he hurt his shoulder, during his streak of 17 straight starts while Urbutis, who was making his 13th straight start, played his second-fewest minutes in that span.

The four starters with 13 or fewer minutes is easily the most since at least the 2004-05 season (more research today). The Dutchmen have had as many as two starters play 13 minutes or fewer only five times in that span (all since the start of last season).

Yet the work of the four reserves helped the Dutchmen produce perhaps their most complete game of the season. Washington and Dane Johnson enjoyed particularly revelatory performances off the bench. Washington recorded his third double-double of the year by scoring a career-high 14 points on 7-of-9 shooting—most of his 15-foot jumpers hit nothing but net—and tying a career high with 12 rebounds in a career-high 33 minutes

Johnson, whose indecision with the ball down low has led to an increasingly marginal role, played the type of game that no doubt had fans and his coaches alike wondering just where the hell this has been all year. All three of Johnson’s baskets were ferocious dunks and he pulled down seven rebounds in 23 minutes, his highest totals in both categories since Jan. 10.

Vines and Sestokas combined to shoot just 4-of-16 from beyond the arc, yet Life of Corny played 33 minutes, his most since he was demoted to the bench following the loss to Drexel Jan. 14, and his suffocating defense on Chad Tomko resulted in a miserable shooting night (2-for-14) for the Wilmington star. Sestokas tied a season-high with five rebounds in 33 minutes the fourth tie in the last five games he’s exceeded 30 minutes—a mark he didn’t reach at all in 44 consecutive games between last Jan. 5 and Feb. 14.

Jenkins, meanwhile, got plenty of work, in playing 40 minutes for the fifth time and scoring 27 points—on 9-of-16 shooting from the field and 8-of-8 shooting from the free throw line—to go along with nine assists and four rebounds. That Jenkins didn’t sit once in a game the Dutchmen led by at least two possessions over the last 32 minutes was the source of some concern at the CAA Zone boards.

But while the Dutchmen were never threatened after a 17-4 run gave them a 16-point lead a little more than 12 minutes into the game, they could never really put away a pesky Wilmington squad Pecora called the best 12 seed he’s ever seen. The Seahawks didn’t get within single digits over the final 16:11, yet they made six of 10 3-pointers in the second half to keep things just interesting enough that Pecora could not empty the bench.

Plus, why mess with what was just about the perfect momentum builder going into what could be the game of the tournament? The Dutchmen returned to their usual defensive tenacity (they out-rebounded Wilmington 43-30 and limited the Seahawks to just 31.6 percent shooting form the field) while shooting 52.7 percent, their second-best effort of the season. Multiple players supported Jenkins on offense and fellow sophomores Lester and Washington played like future anchors of the program.

A similar performance will be needed today in what could be the game of the tournament against a red-hot Old Dominion team that is, in many ways, a mirror image of the Dutchmen. Washington and Dane Johnson, in particular, will need to be as effective in limiting the impact of ODU’s 6-foot-10 star Gerald Lee and the experienced. And another good start is essential. It says here that the Dutchmen will be playing Sunday as long as they’re within a couple baskets by midway through the first half today.

The collective effort Friday was reminiscent of the one generated in a home victory over Towson Feb. 7, when the Dutchmen eked out a 71-68 win despite nobody getting as many as 30 minutes of playing time. That win marked the start of a four-game conference winning streak. The Dutchmen would be quite content if history began repeating itself Friday.

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

Bits and Bytes: ODU preview edition

Neither one of these dorks will host Life of Corny.

My original plan Monday was to write about how reality shows are neither unscripted nor all that entertaining, especially compared to live sporting events in general and the Flying Dutchmen in particular. But it was rambling and non-sensical, even by my standards, so I scrapped it in favor of something centered around Tom Pecora’s new favorite term: Bipolar basketball.

And as it turned out, Litos had a much better analogy for the unpredictability of CAA teams anyway. Plinko! Did you sit home during snow and sick days as a kid, trying to will the plinko chip into the winning slot? Me too.

Plus, the concept of the Flying Dutchmen as a reality show was centered around a player who didn’t score a point Saturday. That said, though, the wife and I spent too much time marveling over the idea to let it go to waste. So whether it’s called Life of Corny or Rock of Vines or something else entirely, someone somewhere has to create a reality TV show around Cornelius Vines.

Never mind the interesting back story (Vines was born and raised in upstate New York and went to junior college in Iowa), the edgy, emotional nature that coaches alternately love and loathe and the all-or-nothing shooting touch, all of which lend themselves well to the reality format. Vines needs a reality show for Saturday alone, when he provided 13 episodes worth of drama in 13 minutes.

In the first half, he sprained his ankle, committed a foolish-looking foul that got him yanked, got tended to by the training staff, re-entered the game and committed turnovers on consecutive possessions in the final two minutes to get yanked and earn himself from Tom Pecora a withering looks that kill glare that seemed to indicate he wouldn’t see the court again until tonight at the earliest.

But the MSG cameras captured Pecora encouraging Vines in the locker room at halftime and imploring him to shoot the ball in the second half. Vines began the second half riding an exercise bike and out of sight of most fans, leading my wife to wonder if he’d been kicked off the team and had begun walking home to Syracuse, but he re-appeared on the sideline and re-entered the game when Charles Jenkins picked up his fourth foul with just four minutes gone.

Vines promptly missed three shots, all badly, made a steal and got yanked for the rest of the game, all in two minutes and 51 seconds of action. He spent the rest of the game cheering on the Dutchmen in his pullover.

This guy is crazy entertaining—easy for me to say, I’m not his coach—and that’s when he doesn’t score a single point. Imagine the must see TV he’d create when he’s draining multiple threes. Make this happen, Hollywood. Or at least Hofstra Television.

Other bits and bytes:

—Did you hear the appreciative applause every time Zygis Sestakos entered the game Saturday and the roar every time he touched the ball? He’s the closest thing Hofstra’s had in some time to an authentic fan favorite. Oh sure, everyone loves Speedy Claxton and Loren Stokes, but other than walk-ons, I can’t remember the last underdog player whom the fans embraced like this.

This can’t be an easy season for Sestakos, who started 25 of 32 games and averaged nearly 28 minutes per night as a sophomore but has recorded eight DNPs this season, has played a minute or less in three other games and is the only scholarship player without a start. But the warm reception bestowed upon Sestakos are an acknowledgment of the inherent challenges of his job as the designated 3-point shooter who rarely gets the opportunity to break a sweat and get into the flow and an appreciation of his willingness to accept his role with minimal complaint. Nice to hear.

—Fun fact: The Arminas Urbutis-Darren Townes-Nathaniel Lester-Greg Johnson-Charles Jenkins lineup made its sixth straight start Saturday, tying it with Townes-Jenkins-Vines-Miklos Szabo-Tony Dennison for the most starts by a quintet this season. Both lineups are 4-2. And considering that the current arrangement worked pretty well Saturday, my guess is that lineup will take the season lead tonight.

The Dutchmen have used eight different starting lineup combinations, four of which have taken the court together in at least three games. The rundown:

Urbutis-Townes-Lester-G. Johnson-Jenkins: 4-2
Szabo-Townes-Dennison-Jenkins-Vines: 4-2
Urbutis-D. Johnson-Dennison-Jenkins-Vines: 3-0
Dennison-Urbutis-Jenkins-Vines-Washington: 1-0
Szabo-Townes-Lester-G. Johnson-Jenkins: 1-0
Townes-D. Johnson-Dennison-Jenkins-Vines: 1-1
Washington-D. Johnson-G. Johnson-Jenkins-Vines: 1-3
Washington-Davis-Saab-Dennison-Jenkins-Vines: 0-1

—Fun fact, part II: The only players to score for the Dutchmen during Jenkins’ nine-minute sabbatical in the second half Saturday were sophomores—Lester scored 13 and Greg Washington added four. That’s an encouraging development for the Dutchmen in both the long- and short-term.

—The CAA Zone is back, right before the arrival of mass anarchy.

—Delayed response to a question posed by Litos, who implored us all to get here, get here if we can last Friday: “Get Here” is by Oleta Adams. It was a big song in the winter of 1990-91, way back when I was a high school senior and penning a newsletter called Remarkably Red Raider. The song was considered one of the anthems for families with loved ones fighting in the Gulf War, and eventually peaked at no. 4 on the Billboard charts. I’m only mildly ashamed to admit almost all of that came off the top of my head.

—The Hofstra-Fairfield Bracket Buster game will be on ESPN360.com. Great news for those of us stuck with Cablevision! But hey at least we can get local news and weather, right?

—Hey, there’s a game tonight, isn’t there? ODU is pretty bipolar itself and this game looked a lot more winnable two weeks ago, before the Monarchs started picking off teams ahead of them in the standings. 6-foot-10 Gerald Lee has turned into a beast (22.0 ppg during the Monarchs’ four-game winning streak), which means Tom Pecora will need to coax another collectively impressive game out of Urbutis, Townes and Washington. The re-appearance of Dane Johnson would come in handy tonight.

We should have learned by now the dangers of trying to project more than 40 minutes ahead, but a win here—in the only game of the season between Hofstra and ODU, viva la unbalanced schedule!—and the Dutchmen could suddenly be in pretty good shape with an increasingly friendly schedule over the rest of the month. Litos expects Hofstra’s better guard play to be the difference and for Life of Corny to have a good episode, but he’s also a reverse lock when it comes to picking against ODU. Hey, he’s due!

Either way, we’ll be there, expecting to see another Hofstra-ODU game that goes down to the final seconds. I’ll be the guy re-enacting Aurimas Kieza’s buzzer-beater three seasons ago. (Warning: Not for those susceptible to motion sickness)

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