A Christmas Story: Jenkins’ Hofstra family ready to share in his NBA debut

For a few weeks this fall, Charles Jenkins Sr. and his wife Patricia were like any other parents of a recent college graduate who welcome their child back into the fold as he searches for his first “real world” job in a tough economy.

Speaking with a hearty laugh and tongue planted firmly in cheek, Charles Sr. said last week that “….my wife enjoyed having him around—I did too, I wouldn’t tell him that. We were anxious to see him get a job and leave. It’s the same. No different.”

Their son finally got that job and moved out—3,000 miles to the west, where tonight Charles Jenkins will punch a clock as a professional basketball player for the first time in front of a national television audience when the Golden State Warriors host the Los Angeles Clippers at 10:30 on ESPN.

Jenkins’ NBA debut on Christmas night is the culmination of a dream come true not only for the Jenkins family but also for the extended Hofstra family, all of whom will watch its favorite son with an uncommon sense of—wait for it—pride as well as an uncanny sense of connection shared by those who watched him for four transcendent years as well as the Flying Dutchmen basketball alumni who helped him prepare for and find his NBA opportunity.

“It doesn’t get any bigger than Christmas Day,” said Speedy Claxton, the former Hofstra superstar and current Warriors scout who was in the Warriors’ draft room and implored his team to draft Jenkins with the 44th overall pick of the draft in June. “I played 10 years, I played on Christmas Day once.”

“Watching Charles will be my Christmas present,” said Jason Hernandez, the former star Hofstra point guard and Claxton teammate who trained Jenkins throughout the summer and fall.

“The Hofstra connections—it means a lot,” Jenkins said from Warriors camp last week. “I’m a part of Hofstra for the rest of my life. That goes from the new guys that come in to the alumni that are here for me. The Hofstra family is a big one—once you get into it and you meet everybody, you build a friendship that lasts forever. That’s the friendship that I built with Jason Hernandez and Speedy Claxton.”

***

While the Warriors drafting Jenkins was the bit of unforeseen serendipity needed to give his NBA journey a storybook ending, the pairing of Jenkins and Hernandez was a natural and predictable fit. Hernandez opened the training facility Pro Hoops after the end of his professional career in Puerto Rico and often worked out with Jenkins during the latter’s stellar career at Hofstra. Shortly after his senior season ended, Jenkins teamed up with Hernandez and his staff, which put Jenkins and other NBA Draft prospects through rigorous two-a-day workouts.

Prior to the Draft, Jenkins’ schedule on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday consisted of basketball workouts at Pro Hoops from 9 to 10:30 a.m., followed by strength and conditioning from noon to 1:30 p.m. and skill specific workout (such as shooting or ball handling) from 3 to 4 p.m. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, Jenkins’ basketball workout went from noon to 2 p.m., immediately followed by an hour of core flexibility exercises.

Hernandez also introduced Jenkins to his sports nutritionist, Wendy Meyer-Sterling, who put him on a diet that allowed the already sculpted Jenkins to shed 16 pounds and record the third-best body fat percentage at the NBA Combine.

Once the lockout dragged into October, Jenkins left the apartment he was renting on Long Island and headed back home to Queens. Like most parents with a college graduate back in his or her old bedroom, the Jenkins didn’t give Charles a curfew. Unlike most parents with a college graduate back in his or her old bedroom, the Jenkins didn’t have to worry about where their son was in the late night hours or if he was doing everything possible to find a job.

“I knew I had the opportunity to play in the NBA and I just wanted to stay focused,” Jenkins said. “I know so many people in the world that would love to be in the position that I am. I didn’t take anything for granted. I just want to go and be the best player I can every day when I wake up.”

On the weekends, Jenkins went bowling or to the batting cages with friends and was home by 2 a.m. During the week, he was in bed well before the late news and out the door to work out at Pro Hoops before his Dad, a noted early riser even in retirement, was awake.

“I admire his work ethic,” Jenkins Sr. said. “He works extremely hard and I admire that. Even now I admire the fact that he gets up and goes to work hard and works hard everyday. I’m very proud of that. I think it’s a good representation of the family as well that he works hard to accomplish his goals.”

“I was always impressed with Charles’ work ethic and willingness to listen and then implement what he learned,” Hernandez said. “I was not surprised though. His parents are great people who work hard and they obviously instilled this into him. At Pro Hoops we always talk about training as a lifestyle and Charles believes that as well.

“We would be in the gym regardless of a season because this is what we do and who we are.”

***

The fate of the 2011-12 NBA season was uncertain long before the Draft. Of course, uncertainty is nothing new for Jenkins, who was lightly recruited out of high school and endured two coaching changes and the transfer of two starters prior to his senior year at Hofstra.

Still, an uncertain draft day was unexpected for Jenkins, who was expected to go in the second half of the first round but remained the top available prospect for the first hour of the second round. Yet even as other players flew off the board in the second round, Claxton never considered the possibility he and the Warriors might end Jenkins’ long wait.

“Most of the mocks had him in the first round and we had him in the first round,” Claxton said. “I really didn’t think about it until it came down to the last pick before ours.”

Claxton officially scouted Jenkins just once, at Manhattan last December, but saw most of his home games from his courtside seat at Hofstra Arena. And when the 44th pick arrived, and Jenkins was still available, Claxton wasted no time making his pitch for his fellow Hofstra alum.

“You always look at who is the best available and his name was first for a long time,” Claxton said. “I told [fellow executives]—I forget who else was the other option—but I told them this is somebody that is a great kid, that can really play and he’s a position that we need. He fits. That’s kind of a no-brainer. Everybody jumped on board and we just went with it.”

While the small but boisterous crowd at Bar Social celebrated Jenkins’ selection, a pair of former teammates began texting one another and marveling over the wild turn of events that linked a trio of Hofstra basketball legends and how the one team employing a Hofstra grad was able to give Jenkins a well-earned opportunity to play in the NBA.

“It was very, very, very exciting,” Claxton said. “Not only did I help him, but I helped the program to still keep their name out there and to show people that we’re producing pros.”

“I think the Hofstra connection is very cool,” Hernandez said. “[Claxton] scouts for a living and played in the NBA so he isn’t going to just vouch for anyone because his credibility and job are on the line.

“We texted each other the night of the draft and the sum of the conversation was that this is what it’s all about. Speedy and I were able to get to a NCAA Tournament together and now as professionals we were able to connect again and not only see an individual succeed, but Hofstra succeed once again.”

***

Jenkins’ success continues to unite Hofstra as well. His magnificent senior season turned him into an Internet superstar, earned him the honor of having his number retired by Hofstra while he was still wearing it and made a Flying Dutchmen basketball ticket an unusually hot item.

The two men who coached Jenkins at Hofstra appreciate how his success yields dividends at two different schools and marvel at how Jenkins, Hernandez and Claxton ended up intertwined.

“When you look at the bloodlines with Charles and then all the way down through Speedy and Jason and Norman Richardson—[and] Carlos [Rivera] and Loren [Stokes] and Antoine [Agudio] in the middle of that—we’ve always had great help from our alumni in recruiting and always been able to use our former players as points of reference for the guys we are recruiting,” Tom Pecora said this summer. “It’s good to see this continue at that level.”

“I think it’s incredible, it speaks volumes about the Hofstra basketball family—Jason Hernandez, Speedy Claxton and Charles Jenkins all tied together in this thing,” Mo Cassara said. “Part of what makes Charles so great is the Hofstra connection. These former players have been around him and influenced him so positively over the last couple years. And Charles embraces that too, which is really great.”

Hofstra, meanwhile, remains Jenkins’ foundation. He remains in constant contact with his ex-teammates and either watches Flying Dutchmen games online or gets reports from his Dad, who has season tickets. On his Facebook last week, Jenkins wrote “solid weekend for sports…both Hofstra men & women’s basketball won…and so did the Warriors!!!”

“I just want to thank everybody for their support—the Charles Jenkins Facts to the athlete page to the new 'Section 22' that they made [at the NBA Draft], I just want to thank everybody for staying with me,” Jenkins said. “I’ve got a big fanbase on Long Island and I hope everybody’s watching on Christmas.”

While Patricia Jenkins celebrated Christmas with her son today and attends her first NBA game tonight, the rest of Jenkins’ Hofstra family—spread out from his living room in Queens to thousands of other households nationwide—will be checking their watches during dinner and willing 10:30 to arrive.

“Such a short time ago he was running around with a Hofstra jersey on, helping us out last year,” Cassara said with a laugh. “I’m obviously going to be thrilled. It’s a great moment not only for Charles but for Hofstra basketball.”

“Watching Charles is like watching me—I’m reliving my career watching him,” Claxton said. “I wish him the best of luck. I hope he doesn’t get hit with the injury bug like I did once I got there and he can have a stellar career.”

And if you’re looking to get out of the house and can get to the Jenkins home in Queens, well, Jenkins’ Dad and at least one of his ex-teammates would welcome extended members of the family.

“Every Christmas I’m usually at his house,” said Nathaniel Lester, Jenkins’ co-best friend the last five years along with Greg Washington. “So I’ll just continue with that routine.”

“My son-in-law is going to spend the day with me [at] the house,” Charles Jenkins Sr. said. “Come by if you want.”

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

“And they are going crazy here at Hofstra Arena. The Flying Dutchmen are going to the Big Dance.”

Yup. I'm in there somewhere.

As Rick Apodaca stepped to the line for the two free throws that would ice the Flying Dutchmen’s 76-69 victory over Delaware in the America East championship game 10 years ago this afternoon and the sweaty, delirious, probably-have-no-idea-who-Butch-van-Breda-Kolff-was crowd gathered underneath the baskets to storm the court and receive its 15 seconds of ESPN fame, Tom Pecora thought of his first afternoon as an assistant coach at the Physical Fitness Center six seasons earlier and the very beginning of the ripple effect.

The 104-97 loss to new North Atlantic Conference foe New Hampshire in the first game of the Jay Wright Era amounted to a pebble being skipped across the water. And if Pecora or Wright chucked said pebble into the dusty, mostly unoccupied stands of the PFC, well, they probably wouldn’t have had a hard time finding it.

“There were like 150 people there and Jay and I looked at each other and said ‘What did we do?'" Pecora said in his office Wednesday. “But that’s what makes our success and what we’ve established here so special in our hearts.”

One hundred and seventy-four games after Wright’s inauspicious debut, the first of the Dutchmen’s back-to-back America East title game wins over Delaware not only completed the program’s rise from irrelevancy but also cemented Speedy Claxton’s status as the most important player in the history of Hofstra basketball.

Claxton, of course, was the key recruit from whom Pecora and Wright managed to land an early commitment and then hold on to even when the big-time schools came calling during his monster senior season at Christ the King in 1995-96.

The Dutchmen improved dramatically in each of Claxton’s first three seasons—from 12-15 to 19-12 to 22-10—but a thigh injury suffered by Claxton at the end of his junior year ended any NCAA Tournament hopes (the Dutchmen were eliminated by Drexel in the America East semifinals and lost to Rutgers in the NIT) and made his senior season the ultimate all-or-nothing proposition.

“It was really Speedy Claxton putting his stamp on this program forever, because he was the one to lead us back,” Pecora said. “If we hadn’t gotten there that year and gone the year after Speedy left, his impact wouldn’t have been any less. But perceptually, it would have been, you know what I mean?”

Claxton played as if possessed in producing a senior season that almost defied description. He racked up 19 20-point games, seven 30-point games and two 40-point games and won six America East player of the week awards on his way to being named the conference’s Player of the Year for the second time.

The Dutchmen, picked second behind two-time defending champion Delaware in the preseason poll, went 16-2 in conference but didn’t clinch the top seed until the penultimate game of the season, when Claxton sparked a game-ending 9-0 run to lead the Dutchmen to a comeback win over Maine on Senior Day.

A pair of relatively easy tournament wins in Delaware set up the epic title game against the Blue Hens, who led 35-33 at the half and appeared to be on the verge of sending Claxton and most of the sellout crowd of 5,124 home very unhappy when they took an eight-point lead with 14 minutes to go. But Norman Richardson’s 11 points sparked a 19-7 run for the Dutchmen before the Blue Hens mounted their own comeback to tie the game at 66 with five minutes to play.

A layup by Claxton and a nifty pass to Danny Walker for another layup turned a 68-67 lead into a 72-67 lead with less than a minute to play before the Dutchmen added the final four free throws. Though Richardson ended up leading the Dutchmen with 26 points, but it was Claxton’s typically huge performance—24 points, eight assists and seven rebounds—that lifted Hofstra to the historic victory.

Claxton went on to become a first round draft pick of the 76ers and dribbled out the clock as the San Antonio Spurs clinched the 2003 NBA championship, but upon returning to Hofstra for the retiring of his number 10 last season, he said nothing topped reaching the NCAA Tournament with Hofstra.

“It obviously had a tremendous effect on Jay’s career, it had a tremendous effect on my career, it had a tremendous effect on the guys’ lives who were involved with it,” Pecora said. “You know it’s something that, as a member of that team, whether you played a lot or you didn’t play at all, you were part of a special era, a special time here at Hofstra.

The Dutchmen’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 23 years felt like destiny, but the last five years have proven just how rare the storybook ending is for a senior looking to lift a program to the promised land. In 2006-07, the Dutchmen had two brilliant seniors, Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera, who were fueled by the ultimate snub administered the year before by the Selection Committee, yet something seemed a bit off all season and good ol’ George Mason knocked Hofstra out in the CAA Tournament quarterfinals.

And last weekend, the Dutchmen were on the wrong end of a Claxton-like effort from Northeastern senior Matt Janning, but there would be no happy ending for the Huskies and their four senior starters as they fell to William & Mary, 47-45, in the CAA semifinals.

Such experiences have only made the memories of 1999-2000—as well as 2000-01, when the Dutchmen repeated as conference champions with four senior starters and two more seniors playing reserve roles—even more special to Pecora.

“It was just a very, very cool moment,” Pecora said. “You always think of the team first and the kids first and then you look at the guys you’re working with, Joe Jones and Brett Gunning. Brett’s with the Houston Rockets now, Joe’s the head coach at Columbia. And you just think about all the good things and the positive effect it’s going to have on all of us and our families and our children and things like that. It’s amazing, the ripple effect.

“So often we think of ripple effect in negative terms, [but] the positive ripple effect of an event like that—we had Mike and the Mad Dog here in the building [broadcasting the game on WFAN],” Pecora said. “So it’s all good stuff. It’s neat stuff.”

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

Hofstra 77, Delaware 67 (Or: For a split second, it felt the way it did back then)

This will probably come as no surprise to anyone, since I run a blog in which I pay homage to Hofstra’s original nickname, but I’ve long been an overly nostalgic fellow. In fact, I earned some immediate ridicule from my future Loyal Readers by toting with me to campus in 1993 multiple AS SEEN ON TV!!!! ‘80s compilation CDs.

Looking back, I can’t blame anyone for making fun of me. I mean, it was 1993. The world was just getting re-acquainted with Meat Loaf. How could we pine for a time that was barely in the rear view mirror yet one whose music and movies already felt incredibly dated?

And really, how can you be nostalgic for a simpler time when simple is all you’ve known? I was 19 years old, too young to be bitter and jaded no matter how many copies of Editor and Publisher I read. Nothing horrible had happened in my life to provide the defining line between the good ol’ days and everything thereafter.

You can’t be 19 years old and get the poignancy of Alex Van Halen’s words—how meaningful it is to experience a moment in time that is reminiscent of an earlier and better one, even if it is nowhere near the real thing and even if it serves as a reminder that a long-gone era can never be relived.

Now, of course, things are different, both individually and collectively. Not a day goes by without my mind wandering back to the simpler days of 1989, or even 2007.

There’s a lot of daydreaming, too, by those who root for Hofstra athletics, and even those who have been there long enough to recall the halcyon days of a decade or so ago, which is why the Flying Dutchmen’s 77-67 win over former America East archrival Delaware Saturday (talk about burying the lede…if you’ve read this far, thanks!) was such a riveting experience.

The Hofstra Arena crowd of 4,019 made the type of noise so often lacking at on-campus basketball games and enjoyed the roller coaster ride on an afternoon in which victory was absolutely essential, and yet at some points perilously close to slipping out of reach.

“It was great to see the place rocking a little bit,” Tom Pecora said. “It was a great crowd, 4,000 people. I thought it was awesome. And that’s what we need—we need that home court advantage. And I think it helped us get over the top.”

Just as they were at the height of the Hofstra-Delaware rivalry, the Dutchmen were sparked by a Big East-caliber point guard who landed at Hofstra because his measurables didn’t measure up to Big East standards as well as a big-time scorer from the boroughs.

To see and hear Chaz Williams cap a sensational performance (18 points, eight rebounds and six assists) by bellowing to the rafters so loudly he could be heard several rows up in the stands was to recall Speedy Claxton authoring a similar performance (24 points, eight assists, seven rebounds) before he pumped his fist and screamed in the waning seconds of the Dutchmen’s win over Delaware in the 2000 America East title game.

And Williams’ driving layup as the shot clock expired with 1:27 left—a basket that extended the Dutchmen’s lead to 68-62 and effectively finished the Blue Hens—was incredibly reminiscent of Jason Hernandez’ back-to-back jumpers that turned a four-point lead into an eight-point lead in the final three minutes of the 2001 title game rematch.

“It was similar to when—not on [that] level yet—but it was similar to when Speedy was here,” Pecora said. “I would go speak for Nike [about] attacking pressure defense. They’d say ‘Well, what did you do when you had Speedy Claxton?’ I said ‘We didn’t have to use any of this.’ And it’s getting like this with Chaz.”

Queens native Charles Jenkins, meanwhile, essayed the role of Brooklynite Norman Richardson almost to perfection by scoring 21 of his 27 points in the second half. He also had four boards and no assists. In the 2001 title game, Richardson scored 26 points—20 in the second half—while adding three boards and one assist.

“I want Charles Jenkins to get out of bed thinking about ‘How can I get a shot?’” Pecora said. “I want him to go to the bathroom saying he ain’t missing. It’s got to be all about him getting shots and its got to be all about Chaz knowing how to get him the shot.”

Of course, to truly compare Saturday to either of the America East championship games is foolish. The largest gathering at the Arena in almost three years (since a sellout crowd of 5,047 turned out for the Bracket Buster against Holy Cross) was there largely for Scout Day, and Hofstra will be lucky to turn 10 percent of the audience into repeat customers.

The Dutchmen and Blue Hens were fighting for seeding in the bottom half of the CAA, not the America East title. A defeat would have been almost unimaginably awful not because it would have cost the Dutchmen an NCAA Tournament berth but because to lose a game in which Hofstra ended up leading wire-to-wire would have been a crushing blow to a team whose confidence was almost shattered during a five-game losing streak as well as to a fan base searching for any reason to believe an unlikely Cinderella run can take place in March.

And never mind that the Dutchmen won despite a less-than-stellar performance, and that less-than-stellar was all that was needed against a Delaware program that has been down in the dumps for the better part of a decade.

Freshman Halil Kanacevic came off the bench to provide 16 points and six rebounds, which helped the Dutchmen overcome quiet nights from Miklos Szabo (two points and one rebound in 14 minutes), Cornelius Vines (scoreless in 33 minutes) and Greg Washington (who followed his epic game Wednesday with five points, six boards and three blocks in 35 minutes.)

The Dutchmen won even though they let the Blue Hens hang around and erase almost all of a 13-point second half lead. Delaware twice got within one point and trailed by three with 26 seconds left before the Dutchmen hit their final seven free throws.

“Are you going to beat the best teams in this league without having everybody playing at a high level? No, we’re not,” Pecora said. “So we’ve got to get more consistent and learn from this.”

But fretting over how much work the Dutchmen still have to do to and how far they are from their ultimate goal could wait. On Saturday night, all that mattered was it felt, for a little while, like it did back then. There was no anguishing over the end of football, no pondering the untenable situation CAA membership has become for Hofstra, no wishing the school had never left the America East. Even the final score inspired some nostalgia.

And in a sweet bit of serendipity, one of the players responsible for the fond memories of yesteryear was along for the trip back in time as well. Claxton, his NBA career all but over because of chronic knee woes, sat in his familiar courtside seat and watched Williams create the type of magic that he once spun so effortlessly, back before things got complicated.

“A good Saturday for college basketball” is what Pecora called it. Especially for those of us old enough to understand just how good Saturdays against Delaware used to be, and to need a reminder of it.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Delaware, 1/30)

3: Chaz Williams

2: Charles Jenkins

1: Halil Kanacevic

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 41

Chaz Williams 24

Halil Kanacevic 19

Nathaniel Lester 18

Miklos Szabo 15

Greg Washington 11

Cornelius Vines 9

Yves Jules 1

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

Chaz already providing quite an assist

Chaz Williams may accomplish something as a freshman that even Speedy Claxton didn't do in four years.

Halil Kanacevic is the reigning CAA Rookie of the Week, but as well as Kanacevic played in the wins over Manhattan and New Hampshire, the most impressive performance by a Flying Dutchmen newcomer last week was the one authored Saturday by Chaz Williams.

The freshman point guard did something no player has done at Hofstra in the 16 years Tom Pecora has been associated with the program by collecting 10 assists with no turnovers. Speedy Claxton came closest to pulling off the feat twice during the 1997-98 season, when he had nine assists and no turnovers against Drexel and 13 assists and one turnover against New Hampshire. Major props to men’s hoops SID Jeremy Kniffin for doing the impressive amount of legwork to discover those facts.

Williams’ performance Saturday marked only the seventh time a player has collected at least 10 assists in a game in Pecora’s nine seasons as head coach. And no one was more efficient in doing so than Williams, who, unlike his predecessors, came off the bench and played just 31 minutes, the fewest of any of the players to rack up double-digit assists. Here’s the list of the six previous 10-assist games under Pecora:

Charles Jenkins: 13 assists/4 turnovers in 48 minutes vs. James Madison, 2/18/09**

Carlos Rivera: 10 assists/3 turnover in 34 minutes vs. St. Francis, 12/22/05

Carlos Rivera: 10 assists/2 turnovers in 46 minutes vs. UNCW, 1/3/07**

Gibran Washington: 12 assists/2 turnovers in 36 minutes vs. St. John’s, 12/2/03

Woody Souffrant: 10 assists/3 turnovers in 40 minutes vs. Delaware. 1/26/02

Woody Souffrant: 10 assists/3 turnovers in 37 minutes vs. Drexel, 12/23/01

**double overtime

This may just be the start of unprecedented feats from Williams, who enters the Holiday Festival with an assist-to-turnover ratio of just shy of 3:1 (41 assists, 14 turnovers). Since Pecora took over as head coach, no player has even produced an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2:1. Carlos Rivera came closest in 2005-06, when he had 117 assists and 60 turnovers (1.95).

The last Hofstra player to have an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2:1 was Jason Hernandez, who had 124 assists and 51 turnovers as a senior in 2000-01 (2.43). Speedy Claxton also had one season with a 2:1 assist-to-turnover as a sophomore in 1997-98, when he had 224 assists and 104 turnovers (2.15).

In addition, the CAA leader last season in assist-to-turnover ratio was Towson’s Brian Morris at 2.11.

That said, the presence of Souffrant on the list of Pecora-era players with 10 assists in a game serves as a cautionary tale. Souffrant was a freshman when he had his 10-assist games and had his first 10-assist performance in his first collegiate start, which further fueled the hype machine that had him pegged as the successor to Claxton and Hernandez.

But after a fast start, Souffrant faded: He started 50 games in his first two years—including all 28 in which he played as a sophomore—and averaged 4.5 assists per contest but made just four starts his last two years, during which he averaged 1.7 assists per game. So while restraint should be exercised with Williams, it’s not too early—a mere 10 games into his career—to wonder just how high a ceiling he possesses.

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

Same as it ever was…

Did you know David Byrne was singing about the home crowds at Flying Dutchmen games? It's true. You can look it up.

After the post-game handshake Saturday, Tom Pecora turned and looked at the Hofstra fans that had traveled up I-95 (or across Long Island Sound) to watch the Flying Dutchmen beat Fairfield. He waved at a boisterous student section and offered a smile that was as appreciative as it was bemused, as if he was wondering: This is awesome, but what is this? And why can’t we sustain it?

The Lion’s Den has responded to some pointed criticism with an impressive effort—home and away—over the last couple weeks, and interest should continue to build with the Dutchmen surging and threatening to make the CAA Tournament very interesting. But my guess is that this bounce is unsustainable, and that some year soon, another Chronicle writer (or Twitterer, perhaps) will bemoan the performance of the student section, because such complaints are a tradition that pre-date Pecora and will probably dog his successor, whether that guy arrives four weeks, four years or four Olympiads from now.

The problem is as generational as it is annual. This is New York, where people are more interested in the bright lights and the big names and not so much in mid-majors faced with decidedly uphill climbs to the NCAA Tournament. Eleven pro sports teams dominate the landscape (OK, fine…10 teams and the Islanders). Collegiately, there’s more interest in the non-local Big East teams (UConn, Syracuse) and the annual four-day orgy of world-famous hoops factories beating up on one another at the tournament at Madison Square Garden than there is in annual also-rans St. John’s and Rutgers.

Few adults are going gaga over Hofstra basketball, so that means few kids grow up watching the Flying Dutchmen and counting down the days until they can attend games on campus. Kids want to go away to school and craft their own identity during the college years. I could have gone to UConn or followed in my parents’ footsteps by going to Central Connecticut, but that would have been boring and I surely would have seen multiple people per day who remembered my gawky/geeky phase and how it lasted from, oh, first thru 12th grade.

In fact, of the Long Island natives in the Defiantly Dutch Army, no one rooted for Hofstra as a kid nor planned to attend the school. Ironically, in that it’s not ironic at all, Sully Ray began his collegiate career at UConn (does that mean, in an alternate universe, we’d be fighting each other for T-shirts at Gampel Pavillion?). Loyal Reader John started out at Oneonta. The wife and Loyal Reader Rob wanted to go to Syracuse and Virginia, respectively, but Hofstra made them offers they could not refuse.

The kids who do end up here, by and large, are still paying much more attention to the players they watch on TV than the players with whom they share a classroom. And it takes a lot to overcome that built-in disinterest. It was this way in 1995, when I wondered why nobody was coming out to watch a playoff-bound football team. It was that way in 2000-01, when the Dutchmen made their second straight NCAA Tournament yet drew an average crowd of 3,331 during the first full season at the sparkling Hofstra Arena.

It was that way in 2003-04, when I wrote a story about the Hofstra-Stony Brook rivalry and Pecora said he and the university were “…focusing on really getting the freshmen involved and creating a little bit of tradition here [in] getting people over to the game and making [it] part of the overall experience.”

A fine idea, no doubt about it, but one that has to be executed every single year. Easier said than done, as evidenced by the fact Hofstra is one win away from its fourth 20-win season in five years yet is still trying to lure fans to the Arena.

The average attendance the last five seasons:

2009: 2,604
2008: 2,740
2007: 3,623
2006: 3,023
2005: 2,352

The 2005 team started 9-0, was viewed as a viable contender for the CAA crown most of the season and was a safe bet to at least earn an NIT bid if it didn’t win the CAA, yet it drew fewer than 2,000 fans to four of its first five post-Intersession home games. The 2006 team had to draw at least 3,300 fans to each of its final six games (including two NIT contests) to reach an average of 3,000.

The boost from the Dutchmen making national headlines in 2005-06 lasted all of one season as we all learned again there is no margin for error for the program with the fan base. One sub-.500 season and it’s back to square one.

The Dutchmen aren’t helped by the built-in hurdles of the schedule, either. Let’s face it, November and December are filled with non-conference games lacking pizzazz—not exactly the enticement needed to lure students over to the Arena and on to the bandwagon.

Then there’s the world’s longest Intersession, which kills any momentum the Dutchmen had prior to Christmas—especially when students return to school with the Dutchmen seemingly destined for the middle of the CAA pack. There’s only a handful of home games in February, and half of those are usually played in the middle of the week. The Dutchmen have drawn more than 3,000 fans three times this year, all on Saturdays.

That said, February brings to students the same sense of urgency it brings the players—particularly the seniors on both sides: The feeling of oh my goodness, I only have ‘X’ games left to yell and cheer and paint my face and enjoy the best part of being a college student.

Only ‘X’ games left to have a chance at being part of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, which is the single greatest communal experience in sports. Only the diehards get worked up about the I-AA playoffs or the lacrosse tournament. I know, because back in the day I bragged to my friends and co-workers back home about Hofstra’s excellent football and lacrosse teams, and all I got in return were blank stares.

But EVERYONE knows about the men’s basketball tournament, and making it gives a school instant name recognition and swells its graduates with—wait for it!!!—pride. To be a student at a mid-major that goes dancing is a gift as random as it is serendipitous. There’s a finite amount of chances to experience that, even if you’re on the extended warranty plan like I was, and nothing will ever top it—for students and players alike.

“Winning a championship in the NBA was fantastic, but I don’t think a lot of people realize how special it was to get to the NCAA Tournament from a mid-major,” Speedy Claxton said after his number was retired Jan. 31. “When you go to a big school, they go to a tournament every year, so it’s really not a big deal. But when you get that automatic bid from a mid-major, it’s tremendous.

“That was the ultimate, ultimate experience. I don’t think anything will ever replace that.”

The size of the Dutchmen rooting contingent Saturday at the Arena at Harbor Yard—which basically served as a bonus home game for Hofstra—was an indicator today’s students are beginning to understand exactly what Claxton meant. The win over Fairfield probably helped build momentum and interest heading into this Saturday’s home finale, and I’ll wager the crowd there is easily the biggest of the season (especially if the Dutchmen stay hot tonight against Georgia State).

Hopefully there are fans in the student section wondering what took them so long to climb aboard. And if history is any indication—and trust me, in this case it is—there will be a bunch of students wondering the same thing at this time next year

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

Speedy returns to the house that he built

That's Speedy at the PFC. How's that for old-school?

Tom Pecora had no idea he was about to begin recruiting the player who would change the fortunes of Flying Dutchmen basketball—nor any idea just how massive a rebuilding job he, Jay Wright, Brett Gunning and Joe Jones were undertaking—the first time he saw Craig “Speedy” Claxton at a park in Queens in the summer of 1994.

“It was a Saturday afternoon and nobody else was there,” Pecora said Friday. “I was the only guy watching him. He was little—he was 5-5, 110 pounds, but playing, competing harder than anyone I’d ever seen. The following Saturday, me, Jay and Joe went, the three of us, and everybody’s like ‘What are you doing here?’ and we were there to see him. And that’s when we started recruiting him.”

Fifteen years later, a whole lot of people will be there to see Claxton today, when his number 10 is retired prior to the noon game against VCU. That the Dutchmen are playing a mid-major power that Claxton never opposed is appropriate, because landing Claxton was the most pivotal domino in the series of events that turned Hofstra from a program on the brink of extinction into a perennial contender in one of the best mid-major conferences in the land.

“He put us back on the map,” Pecora said. “We say, half-kidding, the house that Claxton built, talking about this arena. But he got us all the exposure and he got this place revved up. When you look at every coach’s career—[for] Jay, obviously, it was Speedy, for me, it was probably Loren [Stokes]—you have those players that put you on the map.

“Speedy did that for an entire university. This place was bonkers.”

So, too, was the end of the recruitment process. The Dutchmen had no trouble landing an early verbal commitment from Claxton, but an outstanding senior season for a legendary Christ The King squad (the other starters all played Division I ball: Lamar Odom, Erick Barkley, Ira Miller and Kamal McQueen) piqued the interests of multiple programs from major conferences.

“He was kind of the afterthought, he was the fifth guy going into his senior year,” Pecora said. “People were coming in to look at those other guys and I remember [Rick] Pitino saying ‘Hey, I saw the kid that committed to you guys. He could play on any level.’ And then at the end of the year I remember Georgia Tech and Villanova and St. John’s and Missouri and some other schools came in hard on him.

“And he stayed true to his word, he said ‘No, I committed to Hofstra, I’m going to Hofstra.’ And obviously that speaks volumes for the kind of person he is.”

Claxton’s ball-handling and defensive skills were already top-notch when he arrived at Hofstra—he is the program’s all-time leader in assists (660) and steals (288)—but he looked nothing like the all-around weapon who would eventually score 2,015 points, the fourth-best total in school history.

Claxton shot 43.2 percent from the field as a freshman but 46.8 percent for his career. He was just 14-of-68 from beyond the arc in his first three seasons—as a sophomore, he won the America East player of the year award despite making just two of his 11 shots—but made 51 of his 134 3-pointers as a senior.

He also established the template for the players Pecora would continue to recruit once he succeeded Wright as head coach following the 2000-01 season: Overlooked, eminently coachable players with inexhaustible work ethics who led by example.

“When he got here, man, he couldn’t make a jumper,” Pecora said. “[He] just worked and worked and worked and worked. His work habits were tremendous and that’s how he got better. No secret there. That’s usually the way it is with great players. Why are they so good? Well, you know what, they bust their ass to be good.”

During his junior season, Claxton said he thought his career at Hofstra would be measured by whether or not he led the Dutchmen to the NCAA Tournament. The Dutchmen seemed primed to make a serious run at the America East title after finishing third during the regular season in 1998-99, but a deep thigh bruise limited Claxton to 11 minutes in the tournament and Hofstra fell to Drexel in the semifinals.

“I think if I don’t win a championship, I’ll probably be just another guy that walked through here and was a good player,” Claxton said. “But I think if I win a championship I’ll be remembered for a long time.”

Claxton played his senior season as if driven by the disappointing ending to his junior year and as if his legacy was at stake. He averaged 22.8 points per game—nearly 10 points more per game than his average a year earlier and the highest average by a Dutchman since Rich Laurel in 1976-77—and set career highs in rebounds (168) and steals (102) while averaging six assists per game.

Claxton not only led the Dutchmen to the NCAA Tournament—a 16-2 regular season earned Hofstra the no. 1 seed and the right to host the conference title game, which it won 76-69 over Delaware—for the first time in 23 years but also turned himself into Hofstra’s second-ever first-round NBA draft pick.

The Philadelphia 76ers selected Claxton 20th overall in 2000 to begin an NBA career that has been alternately lucrative and frustrating. Claxton missed the 2000-01 season after tearing the MCL in his left knee but won a championship ring as a backup with the San Antonio Spurs in 2002-03. After two solid seasons split between the Golden State Warriors and New Orleans Hornets, Claxton signed a four-year, $25 million contract with the Atlanta Hawks but has played in just 42 games—and none since March 3, 2007—due to hand, knee and hamstring injuries.

Even if Claxton never suits up for another NBA game, Pecora figures he’s already had an enviable career—especially compared to the Christ The King teammates who landed at bigger, more established schools.

“He made the right decision—look at the rest of them,” Pecora said. “Kamal went to St. Peter’s and he had a decent career. Ira went to Louisiana Tech. Poor Erick went to St. John’s and it never really played out for him. And Lamar had a pretty crazy college career—Vegas and Rhode Island and all that. So when you look at who had the best collegiate experience and who went on and had the best professional experience—I mean, Lamar’s had a great career, but Speedy’s got a ring, you know?”

Pecora said he’d love to someday welcome Claxton—who is building a house in Old Westbury—back to Hofstra as a member of his coaching staff. Today, though, Pecora will be looking back and thinking of the first time he saw Claxton—and the first time he realized how badly the Flying Dutchmen needed a player like him.

“The first game we played in the PFC when we got here to Hofstra, there were 174 people there,” Pecora said. “I was an assistant and I counted. And I remember saying ‘What did we get ourselves into?’

“And then it was packed for his last game and people were hanging from the rafters.”

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

Hofstra 80, UNC-Wilmington 78 (Or: I don’t believe what I just saw)

Sure, he hit one of the most memorable home runs in baseball history. But did Kirk Gibson ever pluck an air ball out of the, uhh, air and lay it up and in to win a game at the buzzer?

Hope you listened to Litos (or, more accurately, read and absorbed his words) Monday when he wrote the following: “The JMU/Hofstra game is exactly why you pay for the video feed of CAA games.”

Dude is clairvoyant. I shall now call him Dion Warwick. His gifts are being wasted on us. He should be penning predictions for the National Enquirer. I miss those predictions of my youth. Some buffoon whose claim to fame in 1984 was predicting re-election for Ronald Reagan predicting silly crap for 1985 like “Michael Jackson will announce he’s retiring from music, only to return in December as the lead singer of Motley Crue, which will record the soundtrack to Breakin’ 3: Heavy Metal Boogaloo.”

Anyway, if you didn’t pay the $4.95 for UNC-Wilmington’s webcast last night, your loss. (Oh, and a little birdie tells me that the Hofstra website will soon undergo an overhaul that will allow it to offer webcasts. I’m going to believe that my words yesterday inspired the school to take action. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.)

I like to think I’ll be able to do justice to how the Flying Dutchmen turned a potentially gut-wrenching defeat into a holy crap moment and an 80-78 victory. But really…you should have been there, watching a webcast—good quality as far as those things go, but still nowhere near as crisp as watching it in HD, or even on our plain ol’ TV—whose inherent fuzziness added an additional surreal, is-this-really-happening vibe to the festivities.

As UNCW prepared to inbound the ball with 13 seconds left in a tie game, you should have been sitting there, in my dad’s recliner in an otherwise silent house, thinking to yourself how often you’ve wished for a steal in a situation like this and how rarely it happens.

Then you should have seen the Dutchmen swarm Chad “much better than my distant relative Brett” Tomko as time ticked away. Cornelius Vines and Nathaniel Lester surrounding Tomko near the left sideline, no timeouts for the Seahawks, nowhere to go for Tomko…maybe this could happen.

And then it did. Someone—Tony Dennison—swipes the ball and begins streaking towards the opposite basket. With no clock visible on the webcast and no idea how much time was left—what is this, soccer?—you should have been there, imploring Dennison to shoot. But then it looked like he slipped—or did he collide with Tomko? That’s right, the final sequence was so wild even those who had a crystal clear view of things had different views of what happened—and there’s Dennison sitting, a la me right now, and desperately chucking the ball towards the basket.

Air ball. But then there’s a shadowy figure, Arminas Urbutis, appearing out of nowhere, jumping up and putting the ball in and then…buzzer. Holy crap. Eat your heart out, Aurimas Kieza! It was as if this dude’s steal and this dude’s shot and these dudes' shots got together and had a baby.

Even without the dramatic finish (alas, being on a webcast wasn’t enough to land this on SportsCenter’s top 10 plays of the night), you missed one of the most enjoyable and, perhaps, pivotal games of the season. The biggest lead of the game was six (by the Dutchmen midway through the second half) and there were 13 ties and 24 lead changes. The Dutchmen didn’t so much play down to the competition as the Seahawks played up to it. UNCW will be a pretty good team’s nightmare matchup on the first Friday of March.

UNCW, which is only the seventh team this season to exceed 70 points against the Dutchmen, was so pesky Wednesday that Tom Pecora said he ordered his players to be aggressive on the final possession because he feared the Seahawks would win in overtime. That would have been the fourth straight season these teams have played an overtime game…maybe it’ll happen in 30 days. (For a more extensive take on the game, check out this excellent blog entry from UNCW beat writer Brian Mull)

A loss would have looked bad on the resume because a team that harbors hopes of playing deep into the first weekend of March—and beyond—can’t lose to a team seemingly doomed to finish among the bottom quarter of the conference. But the worst part about a loss Wednesday would have been the lack of a tangible reward for an encouraging performance.

It’s unlikely the 80 points—the third-most scored this season by the Dutchmen and only the second time they’ve hit or exceeded 80 points in a victory—are a sign of things to come. After all, everyone scores (must…resist…urge…to…make…cheap…pop…culture…joke) against the Seahawks.

But even with that caveat, there were plenty of positive developments on offense Wednesday. Even though the Seahawks shut him down for the final 12 minutes—during which he made just one of four shots from the field and scored three points—Charles Jenkins had the monster game most of us have been waiting for since the middle of December. Jenkins drained a career-best four 3-pointers in the first half on his way to a career-high 33 points. He also tied a career-high with a team-best three blocks and added five rebounds.

For the third straight game, Dennison stepped up in place of Jenkins in the middle of the second half. Dennison had no points when Jenkins went to the bench with three fouls with 12:10 left, but he scored the Dutchmen’s next six points and finished with 10 points. Dennison has scored 38 points in the last four games—37 in the second half.

Lester made me look almost as prescient as Litos by scoring a season-high 18 points, tying a season-high with three steals and playing 30 minutes without a turnover.

And the winning basket was an appropriate reward for Urbutis, who had a brilliant second half and seems to be emerging as the player most likely to have a Roberto Gittens-esque impact late in his senior season. The undersized Seahawks hustled their way to a 16-12 rebounding advantage in the first half, but Urbutis pulled down nine of his team-high 10 boards in the second half and the Dutchmen ended up outrebounding UNCW 36-31.

The victory was additionally valuable because it allowed the Dutchmen to maintain their grip on fifth place in the CAA. Those who are much better at math than me and compile the various RPIs are very likely skeptical of the Dutchmen’s solid standing, figuring they aren’t as good as their record because their uncannily good record in close games—9-1 now in contests decided by five points or less, and really, they should have beaten Iona to make it 10-0—means the good luck is going to turn sour at some point.

But the more games the Dutchmen win like this—and Wednesday marked the fifth time this year the Dutchmen have won a game in which they trailed in the final minute—the less it is about luck. It’s about toughness—a toughness Hofstra has displayed in the macro sense as well by going 4-0 against the spectrum of the CAA since what could have been a season-ruining rout at the hands of Drexel 15 days ago.

That toughness will come in handy Saturday, when pre-season favorite VCU arrives at the Arena. I’m no psychic, I’ve got a pretty good feeling you’ll get some legitimate bang for your buck if you show up Saturday. At the least, you owe it to Speedy Claxton in his return to The House That He Built. More on that tomorrow.

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