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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bits and Bytes: All the blogging that’s fit to print!

Will there be any newspapers left to Chronicle (get it? Chronicle? I'll be here all week!) the return of Hofstra football?

According to his biography in the Hofstra media guides, athletic director Jack Hayes “…has placed a significant emphasis on fund-raising during his tenure,” which is a nice way of saying the price of our season tickets have risen dramatically under his watch and means he’s not always the easiest guy in the room for whom to feel sympathy.

But count me among those who have felt for him since last Thursday’s announcement that Hofstra was pulling the plug on the football program. Hayes’ career arc suggests Hofstra is a stop along the way, not the final destination, and I cannot imagine KILLED FOOTBALL is the type of thing one who aspires to return to a BCS school wants to have on his resume.

The task of delivering the news that would crush a coaching staff and its 80-some players was also left to Hayes, presumably because Stuart Rabinowitz had to go over his talking points and rehearse for his appearance with Mike Francesa. Eight days later, Rabinowitz is nowhere to be found while Hayes is still taking the bullets and the heat for his boss’ decision.

Hayes sat down this week with the original Hofstra blogger, Jack Styczynski, for a Q&A at The New York Times’ “Quad Blog.” Even if you’d prefer to have an audience with Rabinowitz, it’s a really good, insightful interview that is well worth your time. And, personally, it gives me reason to hope that in nine or 10 years, when Hofstra football returns, I’ll be conducting Q&As with Hayes’ successor at The New York Times or some other prestigious newspaper. Aren’t I a dreamer, thinking newspapers and their websites will still be around in 2020?

While I ponder how nobody is organizing Facebook pages to save newspapers and mass media as we know it, here are some other pre-weekend, pre-exam bits and bytes:

—Tom Pecora has not been pleased with the Dutchmen’s last two home wins, but I think the narrow victories over Fairfield and Manhattan will be pivotal ones in the Dutchmen’s development. A team that is still quite young, experience-wise, needs to win games like those—and in the fashion it did, by outlasting Fairfield in a shootout and hanging on against Manhattan in a defensive sludge fest—to hasten its maturity process.

Beating Fairfield and Manhattan doesn’t mean the Dutchmen will win the CAA, but the gritty wins over the Stags and Jaspers should build confidence and momentum and reduce the odds of a midseason skid like the one the Dutchmen endured last season, when they went 2-6 immediately after an eight-game winning streak.

I thought the most crushing defeat in that span was the 67-64 loss to Iona right before Christmas. Like against Manhattan Wednesday, the Dutchmen threatened to blow Iona out in the first half before letting the Gaels crawl back into it. The difference this time, of course, was the Dutchmen never allowed the Jaspers to come all the way back. They’re ugly wins and they made for some sleepless nights in the Pecora household, but do not underestimate how valuable those wins might look in March.

—Of course, if the Dutchmen lose tomorrow—when New Hampshire, one of the teams they beat during the 2-6 funk last year, visits the Arena—I’ll look really foolish. The America East retro rematch against the Wildcats, whose coach is ex-Drexel head man Bill Herrion, could make the Manhattan game look like the hoops version of Jennifer Aniston.

New Hampshire lost to Pitt last Friday in a game in which it trailed 15-7 at halftime. Fifteen. To. Seven. It was the lowest-scoring first half of the shot clock era. If the Dutchmen and Manhattan were throwing rocks Wednesday, what were New Hampshire and Pitt throwing? The White Mountains?

Anyway, like most teams, the Dutchmen respond better to an angry coach than a reasonably happy one, so I’d expect a sharper effort tomorrow. And if that effort doesn’t appear? Don’t be shocked if Pecora is willing to absorb a painful loss, a la Iona last year, to teach some lessons.

That said, Charles Jenkins will not go 3-of-14 from the field again and I imagine Miklos Szabo and Cornelius Vines will play more like they did last Saturday than Wednesday. And for some reason, I think we’ll see more out of David Imes, who has impressed Pecora in limited duty this far. I don’t think we’ll see Brad Kelleher, because the NCAA is trying to confirm whether or not he took two cents from the penny dish at Dunkin’ Donuts in order to pay for a coffee three years ago. But John Wall is free and clear!

Where was I? Oh yeah. New Hampshire came back from an early deficit to give the Dutchmen everything they could handle up north last year, so I’d be surprised if the Wildcats were blown out of the gym. The Dutchmen win but Litos’ prediction might be a bit too optimistic. If you’re there—and you should be there, since this is the last home game until the New Year—stop by and say hi. I’ll be the guy yelling about the Shaq of the NAC.

—Looking for a new college football team to follow? Charlotte announced today it still plans to play football beginning in 2013. The school had considered putting off its debut season for three years to allow the economy to further improve. What a concept, a school not quitting on a football team that doesn’t even exist yet. How cute of “Little Charlotte.”

—Speaking of football, sort of, I was so hoping the final of the Manhattan game would be 52-38. That would have been AWESOME. As is, the Flying Dutchmen football team never played a 44-39 game, though it did come close with a 45-38 win over Lehigh in 1997. As I wrote on Twitter late Wednesday (gratuitous plug): Damnit! Just swap FTs and we would have had that tonight.

Some other 44-39 near-misses, lifted from Twitter (gratuitous plug):

—41-40 loss to Maine, 2008

—44-41 loss to Furman, 2005

—43-37 loss to Richmond, 2005

—44-36 win over Buffalo, 1998

—Going back to newspapers for a moment: To borrow a phrase from Peter King, this may only interest me, but I was disappointed to see the New York Daily News’ coverage of the Manhattan game relegated to the web Thursday morning. I got my copy of the paper on the Island, so it’s possible that different editions had it, but I tend to doubt it.

Like most people, I long ago began reading everything on the web, but I try to support the News by buying it on the newsstand as often as possible. The News has been my favorite newspaper since I was old enough to read—my Dad used to bring home copies from the office—and it remained the same size even as Newsday, the New York Post and Times cut an inch or more of newsprint, thereby giving people even less reason to pick them up. (I’m pretty sure Newsday is a postage stamp now)

Alas, nothing good lasts forever and so the News is now much smaller than it used to be. Still better than the rest, but not as good as it was.

—I leave you with this: VCU hosts Richmond Saturday in the renewal of one of Virginia’s best hoops rivalries. Maybe next year, it’ll be a conference game again. More next week on my ideas for CAA realignment and, more importantly to us, Hofstra's new long-term athletic home.

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

Of scheduling goofs and goofs on (and off) Twitter

Jim Larranaga found out the hard way this was not about one's posts on Twitter.

First things first: I goofed big-time in Friday’s post about the men’s basketball schedule, when I wrote the Flying Dutchmen visit Georgia State in their second conference game following the new year. That’s incorrect, they actually travel to your favorite team and mine, George Mason, on Jan. 4, two days after hosting William & Mary. I blame a lack of sleep, though I’d swear on a stack of Hofstra Bulletins from 1993-94 that I read Georgia State.

Anyway, my humble apologies for the error, and check out part one of Litos’ annual “four-in-seven” series for his take on the challenge awaiting the Dutchmen in the first full week of the CAA season.

Speaking of George Mason, Litos also reports, via Washington Post blogger Dan Steinberg, that Jim Larranaga has stopped Tweeting. Oh darn it. And here I was hoping he’d follow me and we’d exchange stupid, goofy inside jokes and trade movie quotes all season long.

@DefiantlyDutch: Just watched Simpsons where Man Getting Hit In Groin By Football wins award @ Springfield Film Fest. LOL.

@MasonCoachL: Awesome. Always makes me laugh. Watching Pulp Fiction now, dude about to get shot in junk.

@DefiantlyDutch: “And when you’re gone, you stay gone, or you be gone. You lost all your LA privileges. Deal?”

@MasonCoachL: Best. Movie. Ever.

@Defiantly Dutch: Def agree. OK off to watch our Final Four video.

@MasonCoachL: Off to read Newsday stories about HU’s NIT win over St. Joes, then to cry and kick stray puppy.

(Parenthetical tangent: I actually entered these in the Twitter window to make sure they were 140 characters or less. Imagine if I hit send by accident and Larranaga got a message about the dude in Pulp Fiction getting shot in the junk. LOL.)

Check out Steinberg’s story and in particular Larranaga’s quotes about his decision to stop Twittering. It sure seems to me as if Larranaga is just aching to blame the media for publicizing his Twittered thoughts, but he’s just self-aware enough to realize how foolish that would make him look and sound.

Larranaga’s decision is interesting, though, because for all the talk about how Twitter is going to cut out the middle man and allow celebrities (snort) to speak directly to the masses, said middle man is still going to report those Tweets and therefore increase the possibility that said Tweets are going to create some controversy and leave the celebrity (snort) backpedaling and spinning in circles about how great the NCAA is and how it has a tough job and never gets perverse pleasure out of tying itself up in red tape. And in the end, the celebrity (snort) decides he/she can no longer control the message via this new toy and goes back to just issuing boring-ass quotes to the assembled masses.

Don’t believe me? Remember something called Athletes Direct? Exactly.

Larranaga’s exit from Twitter will probably disappoint Diehard Dogs, the website and magazine which covers Northeastern sports. Diehard Dogs posted last month about how his “…favorite part of Twitter so far is reading Mason’s basketball coach rant about the movie Funny People.” (Dear Dieharddogs: Don’t get mad at me for quoting your Tweets)

Fortunately, if other CAA bloggers/reporters determine there is a giant gaping need for a head coach doubling as a movie reviewer, Tom Pecora can step in as the league’s resident Jeffrey Lyons. I mentioned to him last year how watching the webcast of the Hofstra at Towson game was like watching torture porn.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Like Untraceable.”

I mean, really, that’s just awesome.

The most amusing thing about Larranaga’s Twitter retirement was it took him five Tweets to say goodbye, and even then he left the door open for a return. For crying out loud, Jim, even Brett Favre thinks that’s wishy-washy. To paraphrase a memorable quote from the best movie ever: “And when you’re gone, you stay gone. You lost all your Twitter privileges. Deal?”

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

Nobody asked me, but…here’s how Hofstra could be part of a brand-new ECC

Take Hofstra, Northeastern and Drexel from the CAA, Providence, Seton Hall and St. John's from the Big East and mix them up with LaSalle and Stony Brook and...HIVENGLAVIN!!!!

This was a false alarm. Please return to your homes and continue pricing flights to Richmond for next year’s CAA Tournament as well as sending nasty Twitter messages to Jim Larranaga (seriously, Litos must really think a lot of my self-restraint to post that bit of info, and doubly seriously, don’t send nasty Twitter messages to anyone, even someone at George Mason).

All that talk about Hofstra leaving the CAA for the A-10 was apparently premature, as Steve Marcus reported Wednesday. But I wouldn’t be in a rush to buy a wardrobe full of clothes sporting the CAA logo, either.

One of these times, the buzz about changing leagues will be legitimate. And it won’t just be Hofstra and a handful of CAA schools doing the conference shuffle. The current Division I landscape is an overfilled backyard pool, busting at the seams and liable to explode and flood the neighborhood at any moment.

The expansion of Division I to 353 schools means 31 conferences are no longer enough. A 16-team Big East…a 14-team Atlantic 10…13 other conferences with more than 10 schools, including our beloved CAA. And no matter how much CBS and your average bracket-filling Joe might love it, the 65-team NCAA Tournament has outlived its usefulness.

It’s time to blow the whole damn thing up.

It won’t be easy, of course. Bigger is better for the BCS conferences. After all, the Big East can’t try to get nine bids to the NCAA Tournament if it only has eight schools.

And the NCAA has made it as difficult as possible for anyone to think outside the box (groan) and form conferences that are more geographically and numerically friendly. Under current NCAA guidelines, the Great West Conference, the first new conference this decade, won’t be eligible for an automatic bid to the men’s tournament until 2020, by which point we’ll all be getting around in flying cars.

The NCAA did what it does best—bent the rules as it saw fit—the last time a new conference was formed in 1999, when the Mountain West broke off from the WAC. Mountain West schools had to wait only two years to receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Something tells me the NCAA won’t be as eager to award an automatic bid to the Great West and rob another deserving 17-12 BCS school of an at-large bid. But what if the Great West is just one of three new conferences? And what if waiving the usual requirements and awarding automatic bids to these new conferences after two years—and expanding the NCAA Tournament to 68 teams—means March Madness creeps into the national conscience a couple days earlier than it does now?

A 68-team tournament would allow for four play-in games that would take place, two apiece, on Tuesday and Wednesday. That makes for six consecutive glorious days of hoops during the first week of the tournament. Hard to argue with that, yes?

Sure, a North Dakota State might be ticked off because it was not eligible for the NCAA Tournament until its fifth year at Division I. Just because that’s the way it used to be doesn’t mean it should always be that way. I had to type my research papers in college on a Brother word processor, but I don’t plan on subjecting my kid(s) to that if I ever procreate.

Most importantly, from the perspective of a Hofstra fan, what if one of these new conferences features the Flying Dutch as a core member? It’d be the first time since the ECC that Hofstra would be on legitimately equal footing in its conference (the school was on its way to that kind of stature in the America East before the departure for the CAA).

What if the new conference was the old conference? What do you think about this East Coast Conference that features multiple natural rivalries and saves the member schools countless thousands of dollars in travel expenses?

Hofstra
Northeastern
Drexel
Seton Hall
St. John’s
Providence
Stony Brook
LaSalle

I have to think that any realignment of Division I will be centered around breaking up the Big East. And if and when that happens, the non-BCS schools that are mired in the middle and back of the conference—DePaul, Providence, St. John’s and Seton Hall—will be the ones most endangered.

All four schools have glorious hoops histories that overshadow anything Hofstra, Northeastern, Drexel, Stony Brook and LaSalle have accomplished, and I can’t imagine Providence, St. John’s and Seton Hall want anything to do with joining a bunch of eastern mid-majors. But they may not have a choice.

The Big East Three are afterthoughts in their own conference now. Georgetown and Villanova, in particular, have proven it’s possible to reverse such a downfall. But all you’ve got to do to accomplish that is hire the son of the most legendary coach in school history (actually, DePaul already did that) and a guy from Hofstra, respectively. Maybe Providence can get Rick Pitino Jr., but Seton Hall and St. John’s aren’t getting their paws on Tom Pecora.

LaSalle is the choice for the second Philly-area school because St. Joseph’s and Temple are far more established in the A-10. Stony Brook hasn’t even been a Division I school for 10 years yet, but the school has much bigger things in mind than the America East. Better to just cut ties now and take some growing pains in the new ECC.

I imagine any new conference will have more than eight teams, but such a small alignment leaves room for other schools to make the leap as well as takes into account future expansion. And the new ECC could be really interesting if the football-playing Big East schools end up overtaking the league and pushing out the non-football schools.

Can you imagine a 10-team ECC that also features Georgetown and Villanova? Lehigh Football Nation wonders if the recent departure of Georgetown AD Bernard Muir for the same position at Delaware is the precursor to Georgetown getting the boot from the Big East (and, somewhere down the line, Delaware joining the Big East).

To ditch Georgetown, Villanova and Marquette—all of whom are national championship-winning programs that have reached the Final Four this decade—would require a ruthlessness and short-sightedness that is hard to comprehend. Which of course means you can’t rule it out.

My third new conference, by the way, has been dubbed the Great South and features a bunch of Division I newcomers as well as a familiar face:

Longwood
Savannah State
NC-Central
Kennesaw
SC-Upstate
Lipscomb
NC-Wilmington

The more I think about it and talk to people who know more about it than me (line forms to the left), the more I think Wilmington would be in some serious danger if the CAA wants to be known for football as much as basketball. That said, this Great South was concocted in about five minutes and with the knowledge the Atlantic Sun probably wouldn’t be thrilled if Kennesaw, South Carolina-Upstate and Lipscomb bolted.

Plus, I’m sure college hoops fans south and west of the White House can come up with a new conference or two formed from the wreckage of the bloated likes of the Sun Belt, Southern, Southland and Conference USA, though breaking up the latter would be difficult since all 12 of its schools play I-A football.

Lastly, here’s what the new CAA, Big East and A-10 would look like:

CAA:
Charlotte
Delaware
George Mason
Georgia State
James Madison
Old Dominion
Richmond
Towson
VCU
William & Mary

Like Georgetown, Villanova and Marquette in the Big East, VCU and Mason are established enough in basketball (and in the board room) to survive despite not playing football.

Big East:
Cincinnati
Connecticut
Georgetown
Louisville
Marquette
Notre Dame
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
South Florida
Syracuse
Villanova
West Virginia

A-10:
Dayton
DePaul
Duquesne
George Washington
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
St. Bonaventure
Saint Louis
St. Joseph’s
Temple
Xavier

I realize this runs counter to what I wrote yesterday, when I said Saint Louis made no sense for the A-10, but add DePaul and suddenly you can split the league into two divisions—the East (GW, UMass, URI, St. Bonaventure, St. Joes and Temple) and the West (Dayton, DePaul, Duquesne, Saint Louis and Xavier). Can the A-10 lure a Horizon or Missouri Valley school to even out the divisions?

Fun stuff to chew on, for sure, even if it’s just talk for now. But at some point this will be a lot more than talk, because it’s hard to imagine anyone being satisfied with the status quo—at Hofstra and far beyond. And for Hofstra, at least, the best solution is a fresh start in a newly formed conference…one with an old name, of course.

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