Hofstra-UNC Wilmington: More exciting than a monster truck rally!

Hofstra and UNC Wilmington...going to overtime in Hempstead WEDNESDAY WEDNESDAY WEDNESDAY!!!!

If you’re the bizarro world version of me and need to find a babysitter in order to go to the Arena tonight to watch the Flying Dutchmen take on UNC Wilmington (that is the most extreme of inside jokes, by the way), I suggest you lock the hard-working teenager in for four hours. The Dutchmen and the Seahawks have gone to overtime in Hempstead three times in the last four seasons, including a three-overtime classic in 2006. And the one year in which the two teams didn’t need overtime at Hofstra (2007), they needed two extra sessions in Wilmington.

Even if the game only goes 40 minutes, chances are it’ll be a nail-biter: The last seven games between the two schools at Hofstra have been decided by seven points or less, and that seven-pointer was last year’s overtime duel. The school should employ that old monster truck rally saying in trying to lure people to the Arena tonight: “You’ll pay for the entire seat—BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EDGE!!!!”

(Also, I enjoy watching the Seahawks and will miss them once Hofstra bolts the CAA, so this doesn’t bother me, but can anyone explain to me how Hofstra and UNC Wilmington—separated by roughly 3,000 miles—have played each other twice a year every year since the CAA expanded to 12 teams and went to the unbalanced schedule? Why do the Virginia-based schools take turns playing Hofstra just once a year while Hofstra plays an annual home-and-home with its second-most remote rival?)

This is the first game of the spring semester, so hopefully there are a few more people occupying entire seats, though the Dutchmen’s recent skid has me fearing most of the campus has forgotten the school even plays Division I basketball. Tonight also marks the beginning of the second half of the conference schedule, during which the Dutchmen will play six games against teams that were 3-6 or worse in the first half. So theoretically, at least, there will be plenty of opportunity for the Dutchmen to make an upward move, or at least solidify the seventh seed in the conference tournament.

But it’s hard to assume anything given how resoundingly the Dutchmen lost to Drexel Saturday—especially against a UNC Wilmington squad that once seemed to be on the edge of falling apart but which has since lost by two to ACC leader Virginia last Monday and snapped its own five-game losing streak by edging James Madison Saturday.

On the other hand—if not now, when? The Dutchmen finally get to be home for a week and are finally at something resembling full health. The Seahawks are not: Their star guard, Chad Tomko, continues to battle a nagging foot injury. And at some point soon the Dutchmen have to enjoy a game in which their layups fall in instead of rolling out.

Tom Pecora said yesterday he’s not giving up on his veterans, but I would be surprised if Nathaniel Lester is in the starting lineup tonight and I still think Yves Jules and David Imes—who will likely be back for the Delaware game Saturday—will end up getting a ton of minutes down the stretch at the expense of Lester, Cornelius Vines and/or Greg Washington.

Check out the UNCW perspective from Wilmington Star News beat writer Brian Mull (that’s right, kiddies, some teams in the CAA are covered, home AND away, by the local newspaper!), who, like me, has gotten into a car accident while on the road this season. And also check out his interview with some goofy ass Hofstra blogger. Seriously, thanks to Brian for the opportunity and for calling this blog “excellent.” Someone’s angling for a Colony Diner burger tonight!

Either way, don’t expect the Dutchmen to cover the 6 ½-point spread (for entertainment purposes only, as Mull says!), but they better win, because I’ve already got my victory Tweet lined up (John Sterling would approve). See you there. I’ll be the guy making dated taunts about Brett Blizzard.

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

Are You Experienced? No, not really.

Jimi Hendrix was singing about the 2001 Flying Dutchmen, not the 2009 Dutchmen

Like a crowd at a Foreigner concert 30 or so years ago, the Flying Dutchmen’s seniors have the numbers—the strength in numbers (that one’s for Loyal Reader Rob, who refuses to let me live down the fact I was into Foreigner when everyone else was into Nirvana). With six seniors on the roster—the most since the Class of 2001—Senior Day Feb. 28 may take all weekend to complete.

So when Tom Pecora expressed hope a month ago that multiple members of the senior class would emerge and have big second halves, a la former Dutchmen such as Roberto Gittens (who averaged 13.1 points and 6.6 rebounds in the final 14 games of his career in 2001) and Aurimas Kieza (who scored in double digits in 12 straight games as a senior in 2005-06), the strength in numbers suggested that his wish would be granted. But with 12 or fewer games left, the odds of a senior following in the footsteps of Gittens or Kieza are slim and dwindling by the day.

For a team with half a dozen seniors, the Dutchmen have little experienced leadership. That’s not a knock on anyone among the group of Mike Davis-Saab, Greg Johnson, Zygis Sestakos, Arminas Urbutis, Dane Johnson or Darren Townes or a damnation of their leadership abilities. But a lot of leadership is production and it’s unfair to expect a sudden surge in the latter from a group of role players late in their senior seasons.

The seniors are averaging just 17 points per game, less than half the output of guards Charles Jenkins, Cornelius Vines and Tony Dennison (37.2 points per game). In addition, the only senior ranking among the top five Dutchmen in average minutes per game is Greg Johnson (fifth). Dane Johnson, Townes, Urbutis, Sestakos and Davis-Saab rank eighth through 12th in average minutes per game with a combined average of 57.4 minutes per contest, slightly behind the duo of Jenkins and Vines (61.4 minutes per game)

Overall, the six seniors have made a combined 187 career starts—fewer than the ’07 class of Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera, who made 218 starts. Nobody in this group of seniors can match the experience of Gittens, who set a program record by playing in 124 games, or Kieza, who played in 113 games and was one of five players to set a single-season record with 33 games played in 2005-06. In fact, Jenkins (52 career starts) could sit the rest of the season and still end the year with more starts than anybody else on the roster.

Townes leads the seniors with 38 starts, but he and fellow big man transfer Dane Johnson (29 starts) have alternated this season between starting and bench-warming, sometimes in the same game. Both have performed far better than long-forgotten front court transfers Kenny Harris (two starts in two years) or Osei Miller (three starts in two years), but neither has matched the impact of Greg Springfield (61 starts in two years) or Adrian Uter (45 starts in two years).

Among the four-year players, Davis-Saab (37 starts) and Sestakos (29 starts) rank second and tied for fourth in starts and were regular starters as sophomores, but they are the last two scholarship players off the bench and played in the same game Tuesday for just the seventh time this year. Greg Johnson (36 starts) is the closest thing to a senior who has been a four-year core player, and even he recorded the first DNPs of his career this season. Urbutis (18 starts) is the only senior to play in every game this season, but his nine starts equal his total entering the year.

Beginning with the class of 2000 (i.e. the Class of Speedy) and counting this year’s four-year seniors, 19 players have played four seasons for the Dutchmen. Let’s be very optimistic and assume there are 12 games left (seven regular season, three in the CAA Tournament and two in the NCAA Tournament, the NIT, the CBI, the CollegeInsider.com tournament or the Defiantly Dutch Invitational, the latter of which is coming soon to a playground near you).

Even if the four-year seniors were in the starting lineup the rest of the season, the quartet of Davis-Saab, Sestakos, Urbutis and Greg Johnson would still rank among the bottom third on the below list in terms of career starts and ahead only of little-used big men Lars Grubler and Marc Petit and former walk-on Ryan Johnson.

Antoine Agudio (’08): 122
Speedy Claxton (’00): 117
Loren Stokes (’07): 115
Roberto Gittens (’01): 107
Carlos Rivera (’07): 103
Norman Richardson (’01): 101
Rick Apodaca (’03): 76
Aurimas Kieza (’06): 74
Woody Souffrant (’05): 54
Wendell Gibson (’05): 53
Danny Walker (’04): 52
Mike Radziejewski (’05): 50
Mike Davis-Saab (’09): 37
Greg Johnson (’09): 36
Zygis Sestakos (’09): 29
Lars Grubler (’03): 23
Arminas Urbutis (’09): 18
Marc Petit (’03): 17
Ryan Johnson (’08): 1

For the last 10 years, we’ve become used to experienced seniors with the basketball version of institutional knowledge. But Agudio, Stokes, Rivera, Gittens, Richardson and Jason Hernandez (88 starts in three years) are not walking through that door, fans. And if you expect them to walk through the door, they’re going to be there for Alumni Day Saturday (note to Hofstra: I’ll be very disappointed if there’s no alumni scrimmage before or after the game. I’ll even suit up if you need an extra body. But I need at least 20 shots to find my stroke…you know, like Dennison *rimshot*).

You’ll probably see a group of seniors bursting with institutional knowledge in Jenkins, Nathaniel Lester and Greg Washington come Senior Day 2011. But if the Dutchmen are going to play another dozen games—and as discouraging as Tuesday was, just remember that anything is possible in the CAA after the ninth-, 11th- and 12th-place teams in the conference beat the fourth-, second- and first-place teams last night, this stuff is for the sadistic, I tell you—it’ll probably be the sophomores, and not the seniors, who will lead the charge.

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

Oh, relax kids, I’ve got a gut feeling this year’s Uter is around here somewhere

Adrian Uter transferred to Hofstra, Uter is a foreign exchange student from Germany at Springfield Elementary. Good enough for me!

First things first: Be patient and forgive me over the next few days if posts are brief and/or sporadic. The wife and I are traveling out-of-state on short notice today and I’m not sure if we’ll be able to listen to/watch the game tonight or how much time we’ll have to post over the next couple days. Hopefully everything returns to some semblance of normalcy soon and we can get back to giving the word count a good workout.

As for tonight against Drexel, Tom Pecora’s comments Monday about transfers Cornelius Vines, Tony Dennison and Miklos Szabo—“Your transition period is over”—reminded me of Bill Parcells’ famous saying about rookies and the increased expectations and responsibilities that will greet them in the NFL: “You’re not on scholarship anymore.”

Except, well, Vines, Dennison and Szabo are on scholarship. But Pecora’s sentiment is the same as the one espoused by Parcells: No more talk about inexperience, no more chalking up early season struggles to the adaptation process. The training wheels are off. You can’t run with the big dogs if you stay on the porch. Place your own cliché here, baby. (That is the most extreme of inside jokes, by the way)

As of the first tip in Philly, the regular season is more than halfway over (of course, with the Flying Dutchmen destined to win all three CAA tournament games and six NCAA Tournament games, the actual midway point of the season won’t arrive until a week from Saturday at James Madison). I imagine Pecora isn’t too displeased with Vines, who is one of only two players to start every game and whose non-stop motor and unflappability as a shooter are valuable traits.

But it’s time for Dennison and Szabo to begin chipping in like Pecora envisioned when he brought them to Hempstead—Szabo more so than Dennison, the latter of whom isn’t a pure point guard and isn’t shooting well enough to get more than a handful of minutes in relief. The Dutchmen, though, can really use Szabo to add to their front court depth, especially with Greg Washington slumping and Dane Johnson having played 30 minutes in a game just once.

When discussing the transfers last week, Pecora mentioned Adrian Uter—who, like Szabo and Dennison, transferred to Hofstra from Broward CC in Florida—as someone who experienced his share of initial struggles in moving from a JUCO to Division I. And Uter’s final stats in 2004-05 (6.2 points, 5.2 rebounds. 19.1 minutes per game) are quite comparable to Szabo’s stats through his first 14 games (3.9 points. 5.8 rebounds. 18.9 minutes per game). Szabo missed the Dutchmen’s first two games while serving an NCAA suspension for playing with professionals in his native Hungary.

There are also some notable similarities in how Uter and Szabo performed through 14 games. Each had had one double-double, two games in which they recorded 10 or more rebounds and four games in which they played 30 or more minutes.

But overall, Uter made a bigger and more immediate impact than Szabo. With Wendell Gibson missing the first half of the season recovering from knee surgery, Uter started 13 of the Dutchmen’s first 14 games, during which he averaged 7.3 points, 6.2 rebounds and 25.2 minutes per game. Uter scored in double digits six times and pulled down seven or more rebounds six times.

Szabo has scored 10 or more points twice and had seven or more rebounds four times. In addition, his 30-minute performances, though, all occurred within his first five games.

Uter started the Dutchmen’s 15th, 16th and 17th games before giving way to Gibson, who started the final 13. Uter’s numbers over the final 16 games of the season dropped precipitously: He averaged 5.2 points, 4.3 rebounds and 13.9 minutes per contest over that span.

For the Dutchmen to end this season the same place they ended the 2004-05—or better—they’ll need Szabo to finish this season the way Uter began it four years ago. And there’s no better time than tonight for that emergence to begin (how’s that for a segue?).

Szabo is the pick to click and the guess here is Greg Johnson, who scored a career-high 15 points at Drexel 362 days ago, plays another 38 to 40 minutes and enjoys another impressive game at the point. Perhaps a few days away from the gym and a return to Philly and the scene of his most impressive game last season (21 points, seven rebounds and six steals) allows Charles Jenkins to further shake his slump.

Another interesting thing to watch: How many passes the Dutchmen make per possession now that Johnson is re-entrenched as the point guard. Jon Wagner, who is chronicling the Dutchmen and Jenkins in particular this season for the Queens Ledger, has been steadfast in his belief that the more the Dutchmen move the ball, the better the offense performs, as he notes in this very interesting post.

In addition, you’ve also got to figure a defense that has suffocated opposing guards during conference play won’t allow Scott Rodgers to go off like he did 11 days ago.

With sizzling Northeastern coming to Hempstead Saturday, this would be a fine time to steal a roadie. And a win in the not-so-cozy confines of the DAC would also line up with the trends in a series that summarizes the unpredictability of the CAA. The Dutchmen are just 2-6 at home against Drexel in the Pecora Era—pretty remarkable for a team that is 65-27 overall at the Arena in that span—but they’ve won three straight in Philly to lift their record at the DAC to 3-4.

The unexpected, after all, is expected. How’s that for a new twist on an old cliché?

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