Hofstra 68, St. Francis 52 (Or: Gee Dubs arrives!)

Greg Washington + a breakout game against St. Francis = an excuse to post a photo from a criminally underrated early '90s gem.

The most pivotal moment of the Flying Dutchmen’s 68-52 victory over St. Francis Saturday barely showed up in the box score and really had no impact on a game that was not nearly as close as the final score indicated (to borrow from this guy, you know you’re a lot better than the other team when…you get 12 players on to the floor in the first half).

But with 5:45 left, Greg Washington blocked a shot by Justin Newton—and then smiled and briefly hammed it up for the cheering student section. It symbolized a revelatory game by Washington, who racked up a career-high 12 rebounds and added nine points in 22 minutes and was particularly interesting because it came from someone who usually plays with a poker face and a bit of self-consciousness.

Again, just like with my analysis of Nathaniel Lester Friday, this is purely amateur shrink territory. But Washington has struck me as someone who realized that everyone THOUGHT he should be a Grade-A stud, because he’s 6-foot-10, but also knew his game didn’t yet match the expectations. It’s hard enough to play the game as is, I can imagine how tough it is when someone feels he’s not living up to the hype he had nothing to do with generating.

Guys who stand 6-foot-10 don’t land at Hofstra unless they’re raw, and Washington’s rawness was evident in his reed-thin stature (I’ve never actually seen a reed, BTW). His listed weight of 210 pounds inspired this quote (scroll down to October 30) from Tom Pecora (and now that Chris Gadley is gone, I’ve got 30 spare pounds if Washington wants ‘em).

It didn’t help Washington when he, through no fault of his own, turned into a near-mythic figure before he ever suited up for the Flying Dutchmen. The thought of a 6-foot-10 guy landing on campus—the year after Adrian Uter’s graduation left a huge hole in the middle and the year after George Mason made the Final Four with a plodding wanna-be NFL tight end at center—left Hofstra fans salivating at the thought of a Big East-type talent lurking in the paint.

The legend grew even larger when the NCAA declared Washington ineligible as a freshman and Dutchmen subsequently struggled to make the NIT in a season in which they were supposed to win the CAA and make a Mason-type NCAA Tournament run. If we only had an inside presence, the fan base thought, leaving unsaid the thought that the inside presence was supposed to be Washington.

The savior talk was quieted last year, when Washington averaged three rebounds, 1.6 blocks and 12.2 minutes per game for a team that was clearly more than one player away from contention. And when he opened the season by playing 25 minutes in his first four appearances (he was in street clothes for the Old Westbury game), it seemed as if he might forever be more curiosity than building block, the 6-foot-10 guy who could accidentally rack up a few boards and blocks per game yet was more comfortable shooting 12-footers.

But he posted consecutive double-doubles against Fordham and Towson, and even in a quiet performance against Stony Brook, he contributed by swishing a pair of free throws to seal the game with less than 10 seconds left. That, too, represented progress for a guy who was 3-of-17 from the line all of last year.

Washington will never have the build of a Dane Johnson or even a Uter or Darren Townes, but there he was Saturday, before the Big Block, muscling with his back to the basket against two defenders and converting a lay-up. While the Big Block was a pivotal symbolic point in his development, the ability to score down low will come

Washington has played more than 20 minutes in four straight games, a mark he reached just five times last year. Now that said, he played 20 minutes or more in three straight games last December before falling deep into the bench and recording three consecutive DNPs at midseason. So chances are there will be some more hiccups along the way.

But for now, as a 6-foot-10 sophomore on a program bursting with potential, the optimism is endless. And as a result, I think he’s surged past Miklos Szabo and right into First Guy To Get A Nickname territory.

How’s Gee Dubs (an obvious homage to Litos) sound? And should we call his blocks GWBs? These are the things I ponder with a week between games. Get here soon, conference season.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Bits and Bytes: 12/12

If this was the Moe's offering a student a year's worth of free food in exchange for a halfcourt shot, I'd re-enroll at Hofstra.

Some bits and bytes entering the weekend:

—At Stony Brook, the wife and I sat in the first row of bleachers across from the benches, right off the floor and right behind the super duper movers-and-shakers courtside seats. I say that with all sorts of snark and sarcasm because the mover-and-shaker seats are folding freaking chairs. Nothing says class like folding freaking chairs.

But at least Stony Brook’s got an excuse for the arrangement, since Pritchard Gymnasium is the program’s temporary home. I have a whole lot more contempt for the arrangement at Hofstra, because our administration yanked out press seats in order to place folding freaking chairs there. I realize about 97 percent of the country is giddy whenever the press is inconvenienced, but it hacks me off.

Plus, it’s damn dangerous. Let’s see how long that arrangement lasts after a 6-foot-5, 225-pound guy goes flying into someone in the mover-and-shaker seats.

Where in the hell was I? Oh yeah. So guess who takes a seat right in front of us at the end of the first half? Stony Brook president Shirley Strum-Kenny, wearing a Seawolves pullover with the America East logo stitched on the back. File under: Things you’ll never see at Hofstra, not in a million years.

—I also like Stony Brook’s student giveaways a whole lot more than Hofstra’s. At Hofstra, a student is selected at random to attempt a half-court shot. If he/she hits it, he/she gets free food at Moe’s for a year. No, not Moe’s Family Feedbag (pictured above), but Moe’s Southwest Grill. What a prize. Hit a miracle shot, get free gastrointestinal distress for a year. Sign me up!

At Stony Brook, meanwhile, the prize is a 42-inch plasma TV. Holy smokes. What kind of dorm rooms do they have at Stony Brook? I could barely fit a 13-inch rabbit-earred special into my room back in the day.

Alas, just like the kids at Hofstra, the guy at Stony Brook came up about 12 feet short on his shot. No TV for you.

—I’ll be rooting for Stony Brook to win the America East, because Pritchard Pit is a place that needs to host the championship game. What an environment. Though I can only imagine the logistical nightmare ESPN will present Stony Brook if the title game is there. I figure the capacity will be 37 after ESPN finishes setting up all its stuff.

—And finally, a few overdue links. SI.com had a highly entertaining piece on the man who saved Hofstra basketball, Jay Wright. There are plenty of anecdotes about Jay’s status as the nicest man in major college basketball, including this awesome quote from his first employer, Rochester coach Mike Neer: “Jay can sell sand to an Arab or red, white and blue to Bin Laden. You can’t say no.”

Jack Styczynski, who ran the Hofstra Hotsheet on Rivals.com back in the days when companies actually paid people to write on the Internet, revealed why Charles Jenkins’ favorite player is Pearl Washington, who starred for Syracuse before Jenkins was born. My goodness that sentence makes me feel old.

Former Newsday writer Jason Molinet has started a site covering Long Island hoops called, appropriately enough, HoopsLI.com. He profiles Jenkins here.

I’ll also be adding and updating the links on the right-hand side of the page to include the likes of this page from Proud Pride Fan of the Hofstra board at the CAAZone. He’s blogging about Jenkins and the Dutchmen this season for the Queens Ledger newspaper. Comprehensive stuff here, I like it.

Sean Brennan, the veteran and versatile New York Daily News sportswriter, has started a local hoops blog here. I like Dick “Hoops” Weiss, but his stuff is more national in scope. Kudos to the News and Brennan for thinking of the little guy, too.

And Newsday has also started a college hoops blog, though entries about the local squads are few and far between. Of course, on the list of things to be upset with Newsday about, that blog is way down the list and long after this news. More on that next week.

—And lastly, happy 12/12 day to this guy!

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

No longer the pits for Nat?

Megaburgers for all after Nat Lester leads the Flying Dutchmen to the CAA crown!

The Flying Dutchmen’s 61-56 win over Stony Brook Wednesday wasn’t an aesthetically pleasing one, but it was plenty interesting—particularly the sight of Nathaniel Lester on the floor at the end of the game.

Lester played the final 8:37 against the Seawolves and set a season high with 20 minutes, seven points and three rebounds. Before Wednesday, Lester had not played more than seven minutes in the second half in any of the Dutchmen’s first seven games. He didn’t get off the bench at all against Western Michigan or Old Westbury and played more than five minutes in the second half just twice—in the lopsided season-opening loss to Clemson and Saturday against Towson, when he played seven minutes.

That Lester has set a season high for second half minutes in consecutive games indicates he may be ready to emerge from the pack of guards on the Hofstra roster and establish himself as a consistent member of the eight- or nine-man rotation. His talent is unquestioned, and at 6-foot-5 he’s big enough to play forward or present matchup problems for the opposition at guard.

But from afar, Lester’s body language suggests he’s a sensitive kid whose confidence comes and goes. He scored 14 or more points four times in a seven-game span last December yet reached double figures just twice in the Dutchmen’s final 20 games.

Lester’s relationship with Tom Pecora—again, from afar—seems to be a work in progress as Pecora employs some tough love with the quick hooks. But Pecora knows it’s way too early to give up on someone like Lester, especially given that Lester is the only true sophomore on the squad. Charles Jenkins (who is exactly 10 months younger than Lester) and Greg Washington both redshirted in 2006-07.

Lester’s first shot Wednesday was one of those it’s-out-no-it’s-in-no-it’s-out-no-it’s-in specials that rattled around the rim for about an hour before falling through. I’m convinced he’s not nearly as busy the rest of the night if that shot bounces out instead of in. From my days as a terrible pick-up player at the local Y, I can tell you I knew if a day would be good by whether or not my first shot went down (it so often did not).

Who knows? Maybe a shooter’s roll was the turning point for Lester and Pecora.

—Speaking of turning points, sort of, I meant to start this Wednesday, but, well, I forgot. Something about new furniture and some guy coming in to fix the rug and it turning into a day-long process featuring my most profanity since Selection Sunday 2006. I don’t want to talk about it.

Where was I? Oh yeah. One of the few predictable things about the Dutchmen this season is the unpredictability of the Dutchmen rotation. Guys who are struggling or stapled to the bench one game will emerge as key contributors the next. So that gave me an idea: Try to identify the surprise contributor (or contributors) prior to every game.

My guess Wednesday was going to be Tony Dennison, who had been ice cold in his previous three games (7-for-24 from the field, including 2-for-12 from 3-point land). Dennison was better against Stony Brook (2-for-6 from the field, including 2-for-5 from beyond the arc), but he was also on the bench down the stretch in favor of Lester and has played just 40 minutes the past two games.

So I’ll stick with Dennison for Saturday against St. Francis and also add Darren Townes to the mix. (Yes, this increases my odds of being able to pat myself on the back Monday. My blog, my rules) Townes has started the last four games, but his minutes have read like a locker combination: 24-11-8-8. Foul trouble has saddled him the last two games (three fouls against both Towson and Stony Brook), but he didn’t draw a single foul against Fordham Dec. 3.

The Dutchmen are deep, but not so deep that they can’t use a lot more than eight minutes out of Townes. Big game Saturday, you watch. If you’re going, I’ll be the guy yelling about Sean Titus.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Hofstra 61, Stony Brook 56 (Or: Can the Arena undergo a year’s worth of renovations, thereby pushing the Dutchmen to the PFC?)

Stony Brook's vaunted recruiting class did not feature werewolf Scott Howard, above.

Tom Pecora saw it coming before the rest of us, which is why he’s a well-compensated, well-dressed Division I coach and I’m an unemployed sportswriter typing this in shorts.

The Flying Dutchmen had extended their 11-point halftime lead to 13 and seemed more likely to double that advantage than lose it against a Stony Brook team that had been within one possession twice all night when Pecora called time out with 16:18 to play Wednesday. He saw the Dutchmen open the second half in a 2-for-8 funk from the field and probably sensed the additional momentum the Seawolves could gain in a claustrophobic, hostile building straight out of Hollywood central casting and wanted to nip any rally before it began.

Through no apparent fault of his own, he didn’t, and the rally not only began but built to a near-deafening crescendo as the Dutchmen—not to mention the handful of us hanging out in enemy territory—had to sweat out (it was like one million degrees in there) a 61-56 win that wasn’t clinched until Greg Washington—or, as Michael Litos points out today, GREG FREAKIN' WASHINGTON!!!—hit two free throws with eight seconds to play.

The high-powered offense that threatened to ring up triple digits on Towson Saturday was nowhere to be found, especially in the second half, when the Dutchmen shot an ice-cold 4-of-22. That’s right: The 2-for-8 stretch was as good as it got.

Actually, that’s not true. The Dutchmen made two of their first five shots to open the half. Then they missed six in a row over nearly eight minutes before Armanis Urbutis hit a layup to give the Dutchmen a 49-36 lead with 10:01 left. Then they missed two shots over the next three-and-a-half minutes before Cornelius Vines hit a 3-pointer for the final field goal of the game.

Hofstra missed its final six shots and scored its final eight points from the free throw line, though those points were nostalgically torturous: The Dutchmen were 15-of-27 from the line in the second half, including 3-of-8 after Vines’ 3-pointer before Charles Jenkins and Washington combined to hit five of their final six freebies.

Fortunately for Hofstra, the Seawolves were almost as errant and had no teenaged werewolf to lift them to a dramatic last-second victory: Stony Brook shot just 28.8 percent overall, including 27.6 percent in the second half, and was 12-of-20 from the line in the second half.

It wasn’t quite the momentum-building victory one would have preferred after the yup-they’re-for-real win over Towson. But not every win is going to be one worth savoring and placing in the ol’ time capsule.

That’s not to say the victory was without value. Good teams find ways to win games in which they don’t play well. Plus, playing at Stony Brook is probably as close to a conference game environment as the Dutchmen are going to find this month, especially with UMass stumbling along.

Just like last year, the game grew increasingly physical in the latter stages, with at least two instances in which players had to be pried apart following the whistle. In addition, Pritchard Gymnasium is going to be the difference in multiple America East victories for the Seawolves this year. That place is a pit, and I mean that as the highest of compliments. It’s loud and the fans are right on top of the action and I can only imagine how difficult it is to communicate in such an environment. It makes me pine for a return to the Physical Fitness Center, except even the PFC seems like a cavern compared to Pritchard.

This wasn’t a conference game, but just like on the road in the CAA, Pritchard is place from which you’re grateful to escape with a win, no matter how ugly it might have been.

The win also served as a nice reminder—to the Dutchmen as well as those of us driving the bandwagon—that the bus isn’t guaranteed to get on the highway and drive to a first-round site the third weekend of March.

As promising as this team has looked for most of the past month, it’s still a fairly inexperienced bunch (the two seniors who see the most playing time, Dane Johnson and Darren Townes, are transfers and the four four-year seniors bounce back and forth between the floor and the side of a milk carton) prone to the familiar free throw woes as well as head-scratching hiccups.

Litos also notes today that aside from Jenkins and Zygis Sestakos, the Dutchmen are shooting 54.6 percent from the line. That inability to hit throws that are free catches up to EVERYBODY in the end. Just ask Chris Douglas-Roberts.

The Dutchmen looked as if they’d blow Stony Brook out of the barn in the first half. They took a 10-point lead less than 10 minutes into the game and shot 55.2 percent in the first 20 minutes. Jenkins was clearly the best player on the floor—the dude goes from zero to 94 faster than anybody I’ve ever seen—and had one of those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding me moments when he drove the lane, whirled, got caught up in a handful of players and somehow hit a layup anyway.

When Stony Brook brought in its mammoth center Desmond Adedeji—who is such an awful and awkward free throw shooter that he makes his idol, Shaquille O’Neal, look like Calvin Murphy—Pecora responded by putting in Washington and Dane Johnson. It was probably just a coincidence, but it was pretty cool when those two were the first players on to the court for the Dutchmen following the timeout. Seemed to set the tone.

I thought there should have been some really dramatic music accompanying their entrance, like “Gonna Fly Now,” minus the awkward hug. Or maybe “Welcome To The Jungle,” minus one of the guys completely losing his mind and needing 15 years to make a pile of crap that turns into one of the epic bombs of all-time. Or at least “Beat It,” minus, well, you know, just about everything. But the game was at Stony Brook and I don’t think the powers that be there were in the mood to add mood music for the opposition.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Johnson and Washington combined for a ridiculous nine blocks, including six by Johnson—one of which he punctuated with a Dikembe Mutumbo-esque wag of the pointer finger, a gesture for which he was immediately warned by the ref. Yet the leading rebounder for the Dutchmen was Jenkins with seven and Stony Brook held a 42-40 rebounding edge—shocking considering how often it seemed as if multiple guys in blue uniforms were swarming a poor lonely Stony Brook guy down low.

The Dutchmen should have routed Stony Brook, but it was a one-possession game with 39 seconds to play. How did that happen? Who knows? But Pecora saw it happening before anybody, which has me figuring he spent today and will spend tomorrow making sure it doesn’t happen again Saturday against St. Francis.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

NIT-picking Stony Brook

Marcus Henry of Newsday gave me a run for my money as the most optimistic person about a Long Island basketball program last week when he surmised in a blog that Stony Brook—whom the Flying Dutchmen play tonight at Pritchard Gymnasium—could parlay a win over Hofstra into a breakout season and a possible berth in the NIT.

But while the Seawolves are shaping up to be much better this year—and not a moment too soon for coach Steve Pikiell, who entered this season 20-67 in his first three seasons—they’d have to go from (almost) worst (Stony Brook finished eighth in the nine-team America East last year via a tiebreaker over Maine) to first, and then lose in the conference tournament, to make the NIT.

When it invited 40 teams from 2002-2006, the NIT was a viable alternative for low-major teams left out of the Big Dance. Those fields featured little-known schools such as Tennessee Tech, Wagner, Eastern Washington, Austin Peay, Fairfield and Denver as well as America East schools Boston University and Northeastern and former Atlantic Sun member Georgia State. The NIT took another step towards including deserving low-majors in 2006, when it began to award an automatic bid to regular season conference champions who didn’t win their conference tourney.

But 2006 was also the year the NCAA bought the NIT to end a five-year legal battle between the two sides. Not surprisingly, the NCAA didn’t wait long to begin pushing around the little guy. The NCAA dropped the field back to 32 teams in 2007, ostensibly because it’s easier to schedule four eight-team brackets.

Of course, the teams left on the outside looking in are the smallest Davids. Counting automatic bids, the NIT invited 17 non-BCS schools in 2007 and 20 in 2008, right in line with the average from 2002 through 2006, when 116 of the 200 invitees were non-BCS schools. But the at-large bids to the NIT the last two years—12 in 2008, 10 in 2007—have come almost exclusively from the power mid-major conferences.

(As an aside, I hate further breaking down the mid-major conferences and schools into major mid-majors and mid mid-majors, because that just further encourages the BCS schools to take bigger and bigger pieces of the pie and softens the impact of the inevitable day that the NCAA Tournament is for the Big Six only and the rest of us are rooting for our alma maters to win the I-AA national title in the NIT. So please forgive me and let’s move on.)

So even before taking into account the minimal preseason expectations for Stony Brook, the Seawolves have a long way to go—even longer than Hofstra, which plays in one of those power mid-major conferences and reached the NIT despite sputtering to the finish line in 2007—to sniff the NIT.

On the other hand… those of us who went to school in western Nassau should be familiar with the encouragement Stony Brook fans are feeling right about now. Like Hofstra, Stony Brook has proven far better than initially expected in producing the best non-conference record in its conference. And like Hofstra, Stony Brook is clicking with a handful of new faces.

I’m not sure if tonight’s game is the beginning of an authentic rivalry—even after last year’s win at Hofstra, Stony Brook is 4-17 all-time against the Flying Dutchmen—but it should be an entertaining contest between a pair of teams eager to prove their early success is not a fluke.

This may just be blog bias talking, but Hofstra would seem to have more at stake: In addition to the historic dominance of the Seawolves, the Dutchmen made the leap from the hunters to the hunted with the impressive win over Towson Saturday. The Dutch debuted in the Collegeinsider.com mid-major top 25 at no. 19 this week, a 22-spot jump from a week ago. People are watching. Another win tonight and the bandwagon may even begin to get a little more crowded.

If you’re going, see you there. I’ll be the guy yelling about Setauket native Rob Ogden. It’ll just be me and the wife as Sully Ray had to cancel. Apparently, he’s swamped with work at his job and in his house. Employed AND a home owner. What year does he think this is, 2005?

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Hofstra 90, Towson 81 (Or: All aboard HAHAHA!!!)

Ozzy Osbourne indicates how many games he thinks Hofstra will win in the NCAA Tournament. Which is good, 'cause who can understand what he says anyway?

Sorry for the lack of a post Monday. The last three days have been crazy at Defiantly Dutch World HQ, with actual paying work making its way across my desk, a visit to the dentist for Root Canal 2: Electric Drillboogaloo and the wife and I spending far too many hours shopping for and preparing the HQ for new furniture.

True story: Dante’s original manuscript for his Divine Comedy mentioned 10 circles of hell, the last one of which was shopping for furniture. But his editors said 14th century readers didn’t have the attention spans and were too busy arguing over global warming and fearing the day they’d fall off the edge of the flat Earth to read about 10 circles of hell, so he had to axe it to nine. I swear. I learned it in English class.

Anyway, for a little while Saturday night, I was worried root canal and furniture shopping had met, courted each other, fallen in love, gotten married, had a baby and named it Hofstra-Towson. I was suckered into spending the $5 for the Towson webcast of the game, and not only was it impossible to get in at 7 p.m., but when the game finally appeared on my screen, Hofstra was losing 12-2.

Worse yet, a few seconds later, I realized I’d paid $5 for a webcast that had all the quality of a basketball snuff film. I mean, seriously, I understand the need to create new revenue streams in this happy happy joy joy economy, but c’mon. At least make it so it’s possible to tell the teams apart.

The webcast got no better, but fortunately, the Flying Dutchmen did in a 90-81 victory. (Also, nobody was hacked to pieces) All the usual caveats apply about how it’s only one game and there’s still 17 games left in the conference season and a whole lot can change between now and the next CAA contest and Towson, while solid thus far, is still a consensus pick to finish in the bottom third of the conference.

But still, if you’re the type of person who likes to plan ahead and hates being rushed and likes to laugh at the harried and irresponsible and panicked, I’d go ahead and book a reservation on the Hofstra bandwagon. Cause it may just get as crowded as the Port Jefferson-Bridgeport ferry on Christmas Day (which, as a harried and irresponsible and panicked individual, I always make at the last possible second).

First Saturday of December and all, this was as thorough and encouraging a victory as I’ve seen (or barely seen) in a long time. We all remember Hofstra victories where the Dutchmen got hot from 3-point land—and the vaguely unsettling feeling engendered by those wins, that knowledge that somewhere over the hill, maybe even in the same game, there was an extended period of time awaiting the Dutchmen in which they went cold from beyond the arc and couldn’t find another way to create some offense.

But such worries were minimal in the first half Saturday, even though all seven of the Dutchmen’s 3-pointers came from two players—Cornelius Vines was 5-for-7 and Charles Jenkins was 2-for-2—and though Zygis Sestakos (0-for-5), Tony Dennison (0-for-2) and Nathaniel Lester (0-for-1) combined to miss all eight of their 3-point shots.

Typically, you’d fear the market correction on Vines and Jenkins, but the pre-season hope that this would be a deeper and more versatile Hofstra team was proven correct again in the second half, when the Dutchmen went 2-for-9 from 3-point land yet still scored 41 points.

More than half the points in the final 20 minutes were scored by the “bigs,” including five apiece by Dane Johnson and Miklos Szabo (who hit one of the 3-pointers) and two by Arminas Urbutis. No one looked (or sounded) as good, though, as the suddenly emerging Greg Washington, who had nine points and nine boards in the second half alone on his way to his second straight double-double.

The Dutchmen also got a where-in-the-hell-has-THIS-been performance from Greg Johnson, who committed just one turnover in 22 minutes—one minute more than he’d played combined in Hofstra’s five previous games against Division I foes—and was 6-for-8 from the free throw line in the second half.

Speaking of the free throw line, the Dutchmen were 10-of-10 from there in the first half and 25-of-31 overall (80.6 percent), a remarkable performance for a team that had shot below 50 percent from the line in its last two games and had yet to even reach 70 percent in a game once this year.

Other stats as fun as they are encouraging: Five players scored nine or more points, eight played at least 13 minutes and the Dutchmen outrebounded Towson 39-30. And despite the 90 points, it wasn’t a perfect game on offense. Dennison scored just two points on 1-of-6 shooting. Darren Townes started but played just eight minutes—none in the second half—after picking up three fouls.

As good as the Dutchmen looked against Fordham and in spurts against Manhattan, it needed to happen against a conference foe to lend it an additional air of legitimacy. There’s no easy way to beat the Dutchmen and they’re nowhere near a finished product.

These guys are for real. Get on board. I’ve got a feeling the bandwagon is going to begin filling up pretty soon.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Tiger Beat?

If you ever picked up Tiger Beat expecting to read about Towson, you were sorely disappointed. Or so I've heard.

Like with Bucknell on the football schedule a couple months back, seeing Towson (do you think there’s a blog in Maryland called Stubbornly Towson State? I hope so) next up on the docket for the Flying Dutchmen basketball team brings back some fond memories.

Actually, the memories shouldn’t be so fond, since all Towson did during the Defiantly Dutch era was kick Hofstra where it hurts. But what can I say? Nostalgia is strange and unpredictable.

The Tigers knocked off the top-seeded Dutchmen in what was supposed to be the final ECC championship game in March 1992 (of course, that didn’t really upset me at the time, since I was skipping class to play hearts at community college and couldn’t have found Hofstra on a map). There was no automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament at stake and no expectations of an at-large bid by Butch van Breda Kolff—who had no idea he was proving the more things change the more they stay the same when he told Newsday the selection committee would “…rather take a seventh-place team in the Big 10, the ACC or anything other than the ECC”—but a win over Towson would have made Hofstra 21-8 and given it a pretty good shot at an NIT bid.

Towson gave the selection committee—albeit in a different sport—all the ammo it needed to keep an underdog Hofstra squad out of the postseason in October 1994, when the Tigers stunned the unbeaten Flying Dutchmen football team, 24-21, in an instant classic at Hofstra Stadium. Towson led 24-7 entering the fourth quarter, but the Dutchmen stormed back, whipped a crowd of 5,829 into a frenzy and appeared to take the lead when Nick Johnson scored on a 34-yard reverse. But the Dutchmen were called for a ticky-tack holding penalty (oh sure, I’m over it) and the drive eventually stalled at the Towson five-yard-line in the final minute.

Fourteen years later, I’ve still never seen a post-game locker room sadder than that one. That’s the difference between the pros and mid-major colleges: The pros almost always have next year as well as piles of million dollar bills on which to sleep. The mid-majors have one random, light-streaking-across-the-sky shot and an eternity to wonder what could have been.

Offensive lineman Ricky Wyatt, officially listed at 6-foot-2, 230 pounds but unofficially A Very Big Dude, sat stoically at his locker, still dressed in his uniform, for a while before his shoulders began to shake and tears began to stream down his face.

“We played hard and the fans were awesome,” said Wayne Chrebet, who had no idea he was four years away from playing for the AFC title. “But we lost, and it’s a loss that myself and the other seniors are never going to forget for the rest of our lives.”

The stakes weren’t as high at University Field in April 1996, because, well, has there ever been a high stakes Hofstra baseball game? But Towson’s 9-3, 11-inning win over the Dutchmen was much more compelling and dramatic than the final score would indicate. (I’m not going to subject you to the overwrought prose I churned out for The Chronicle that week, so you’ll just have to trust me on it) It also extended the Tigers’ win streak over Hofstra to 19 games. NINETEEN GAMES! That’s unpossible!

A decade later, a 94-91 loss to Towson in men’s basketball may have been the loss that kept the Dutchmen out of the NCAA Tournament. Had the Dutchmen—who, as Michael Litos reminded us earlier today, were missing Adrian Uter, who was in the midst of a four-game absence due to a bad ankle—won that game, they would have finished 15-3 and in a three-way tie for the CAA championship. Winning a share of the regular season crown was among the pile of crap reasons the band of roving idiots provided for giving Mason the at-large bid. Of course, had Hofstra shared the regular season title but lost in the CAA tourney, this guy probably still would have come up with another reason to keep Hofstra out.

Where was I? Oh yes. All that said, for the handful of heartbreaks Towson has provided the Dutch, Hofstra’s actually had the upper hand in the rivalry.

Football is 4-3 against Towson, and I would have bet my increasingly meager fortune that the two teams had played two or three times as many games against one another. The baseball team is 22-35 all-time against Towson, which is not bad at all given that 19-game losing streak. Women’s basketball is 22-26 against Towson while the volleyball team is a robust 34-7 all-time against the Tigers.

Men’s basketball, meanwhile, is 11-5 against Towson under Tom Pecora and 29-19 all-time. The Flying Dutchmen have recorded as many or more wins against just four other schools—Delaware (42-23), Wagner (33-16), Drexel (31-35) and Kings Point (29-6).

The two programs have been going in opposite directions since they were reunited in the NAC/America East in 1995-96. While the Flying Dutchmen won consecutive America East titles and have become a regular CAA contender, Towson has endured 11 straight sub-.500 seasons, hasn’t finished higher than seventh in the CAA since joining in 2001-02 and finished higher than eighth just once in its final five years in the America East.

But maybe this is the year the rivalry is renewed. Hofstra and Towson were both picked to finish in the bottom half of the CAA, but they’re among the few—if not the only—teams in the conference to exceed expectations thus far. Litos likes the Tigers, a lot, and the stats he produces in today’s blog indicate Towson is putting together a team that will look familiar to the Flying Dutchmen.

Towson has nine players averaging at least 16 minutes a game, Hofstra has seven. Towson has four players averaging at least 10 points a game, Hofstra has two (and a third, Tony Dennison, with 9.8 ppg). Both teams have seven players averaging at least three rebounds a game.

Hofstra ranks eighth in the CAA in points per game (68.2) and third in points allowed (65.3). Towson ranks ninth (67.7) and sixth (67.9), respectively, in those categories.

Add it all up and this is the most intriguing December game the Flying Dutchmen have played in a long time. A win Saturday, in a place where close games are the norm (five of the seven games in Towson in the Pecora era have been settled by seven points or less), could be a springboard to a season much better than anyone envisioned.

Of course, I predict a narrow victory. And of course, if the Dutchmen fall, I reserve the right to say it’s just one game and it’s too early in the season to declare watershed moments. Hey, my blog, my rules.

Alas, win or lose, we won’t be there. We’ll be listening to or watching the game (which you can also do right here) as we put up the Christmas tree. So if you crane your neck just right, you’ll probably hear me yell “FINE! YOU’RE SO SMART, YOU RIG UP THE LIGHTS!”

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.