Defiantly Dutch Q&A: Mo Cassara

Neither Mo Cassara nor I will be judging cakes tonight.

Last night wasn’t just about judging cakes and reflecting on the first year on the job with Mo Cassara! We also asked him some questions about the 2011-12 season, which finally tips off just 110 minutes from right now, but who’s counting? Thanks to Cassara as always for his time.

How do you feel going into the season?

It’s time to start playing against somebody else. I think sometimes, for so long here—five or six weeks now—you kind of just analyze yourself. It’s time to analyze yourself against somebody else. We have a lot of new faces. We’ve got a lot of guys like Nat and Stevie, who are very talented [and have] played a lot of basketball, but they haven’t necessarily played a lot of basketball together. The last time Nat played, Mike Moore wasn’t playing. The last time Mike Moore played, Nat wasn’t playing. And even if you throw Dave Imes into that—the last time Nat played, Dave really didn’t play. So the you throw Moussa in there or Steven, you’ve really got five guys—although some of them are older and veteran guys that have played some basketball—they’ve never played together. So there’s going to be a learning curve. It’s going to take some time.

Can that learning curve be sped up in practice?

I don’t know. I think it’s getting better everyday, but I think in all reality it’s going to take us playing in some games and having some ups and downs and dealing with some adversity. And ultimately that’s what helped us last year. You come out of Puerto Rico 0-3 and we were all ready to fold the tent, But in all reality, coming through that adversity and then learning how to win really helped us down the road.

Can those experiences from last season—knowing that a bad start doesn’t have to ruin the year—help you this season?

Yeah I think it helps me as a young coach. I think you want to win every time. You want everybody to be happy and you want everything to be great. In some ways, we’re more in more of a transition this year than we were last year. So I think we have to be realistic to know that some of the losses or some of the games in which we don’t do well now, we can use to get us better in February. And if we’re playing better in February, that’s all that really matters.

Obviously everyone’s goal is to win the CAA Tournament and get to the NCAA Tournament, but do you have any numeric goals for this season? A .500 record? A certain amount of wins?

You know what, I don’t. I don’t. I didn’t last year and I don’t think I’m ever going to do that. Because last year, I didn’t think we would win 14 or 15 games when we first started and I got proven wrong. So I try to stay away from that. I never really made a prediction. I just think we’ve got to try to win the games we’re supposed to win, win home games, try to find a way to steal some games on the road. I think one of the things I’m most proud of is that team last year, other than the fact we didn’t turn the ball over and made free throws and won a lot of close games, is we found a way to win on the road. Our road record was really incredible.

Last year, out of necessity as much as anything else, you only used two starting lineups. Now that you have a little more depth, do you think you’ll experiment a bit more, or are you a guy who likes to have a set lineup?

I think, especially when we don’t have a lot of guys who have played together, I think playing the same starting lineup—playing guys together—is something we’re going to have to do. Ups and downs, through good and bad, we’re going to have to continue to play those guys so they can start to get comfortable with each other.

Do you track how certain lineups perform and substitution patterns perform?

We don’t necessarily stat that, but I think I’m a little more of a feel coach. Some guys script that and I’ve worked for guys that did that. Not really my style. I’m much more of a feel guy. Ultimately you have to go back to the film sometimes and say ‘Hey, this group really played well together’ and stuff like that.

Is the lineup we saw Saturday indicative of the one we’ll see [tonight]?

We started a different group at [the scrimmage in] Hartford than we did [against] Queens. We’re going to continue to play around a little bit. I think if you asked me a month ago, I probably would have told you a different group than I would tell you now. That stuff is going to figure itself out a little bit. Ultimately—I say this all the time to our team—basketball’s a very social game. You’ve got to have a good social dynamic and find the guys who socially fit together and can talk to each other and can figure out how to play together and go through those ups and downs. They have to figure that out on their own and they have to do that in the locker room and they have to do that in the huddles. That’s the stuff we promote and talk about all the time.

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

For Cassara, a Hofstra basketball coach unlike any other, Year Two begins in familiar fashion

Judging cakes is all part of a day's work for Mo Cassara.

The day before season two of the Mo Cassara Era went a whole lot like the day before season one went for the head coach of the Flying Dutchmen: A lot of basketball, a lot of interacting with fans online, a lot of meeting and greetings on campus, a lot of caffeine—and not a lot of eating or sleeping.

“I’m wolfing down the first thing I’ve eaten all day,” Cassara said as he dove into a cardboard box filled with Pan Asia Beef inside the Hofstra Student Center around 7:30 last night, less than 24 hours before the Dutchmen’s season tips off against Long Island at the Arena.

Between 2:30 and 8:30 yesterday, Cassara participated in a Newsday.com chat, ran a three-hour practice, raced across campus, met with student groups in the Student Center to promote tonight’s home opener (the first 1,111 students will receive a T-shirt and one of the three groups with the most students in attendance will win $1,111.11), ate dinner at a table in front of the bookstore while answering questions from some pesky blogger guy and walked to the back of the cafeteria to judge a student “Ace of Cakes” competition.

That’s a full day for anyone, but it was just the final leg in the latest of an endless series of 16- or 18-hour days for Cassara, whose Wednesday was even busier: He joined university dignitaries at a Yankee Stadium party honoring the 40th anniversary of the Hofstra Law School.

“Got back home about 12:30, was up at 5:30 working on the social media and catching up on my email, take the dogs for a walk, take a shower and been at it ever since,” Cassara said. “It’s a long day.

“Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, man. They just hand me a coffee when I walk in the door.”

The employees at the Dunkin’ Donuts across from Hofstra’s main entrance aren’t the only ones who instantly recognize Cassara these days. Indeed, to see Cassara functioning on adrenaline, hugging the cashiers at the Student Center cafeteria and offering tickets to anyone who says hello is to be reminded of Jay Wright, who arrived with similar enthusiasm 17 years ago.

Wright pitched the program to an apathetic student body by shooting free throws outside the Student Center, meeting with dozens of groups on campus and accepting challenges to show off his dance moves at the first Midnight Madness at Hofstra USA in 1994. (Retroactive Tweet: Jay Wright is auditioning to join Hammer right in front of me. THAT JUST HAPPENED. #Hofstra #NACHoops)

There’s little doubt Cassara would shoot free throws and throw the boogie down at Hofstra USA if requested, but social media has, of course, allowed Cassara to introduce himself to a far larger crowd. He’s also borrowing a page from the Wright book by recognizing the value of shaking hands and making speeches.

“One of my goals here is to make every kid on this campus that wants to be involved have access to me, to be able to feel like they know me,” Cassara said. “I think if we do that, we would just continue to build a great fanbase here.”

In many ways beyond his embracing of social media, though, Cassara is a Hofstra coach unlike any other. His unprecedented path to the big office overlooking Hofstra Arena, of course, is bordering on the stuff of legend by now. But it’s not just the sequence of events that earned him the job that separates Cassara from Wright, Tom Pecora and the rest of his predecessors.

He went from a third assistant at Boston College to the head job, which is the coaching equivalent of playing a bar one night and headlining an arena the next. That relative inexperience lent an air of never-to-be-replicated newness, wide-eyed wonder and outright joy to many of last year’s experiences, some of which Cassara wishes he could bottle and experience everyday.

There was the scene at the Richmond Coliseum just after tipoff against Old Dominion, when the Flying Dutchmen baseball team arrived from a rainout at Norfolk State to cheer on the basketball team in the CAA semifinals. Two weeks earlier, Cassara—flanked by Jack Hayes and Danny McCabe—smiled along with his bosses as they stood near Section 114 in the Arena and watched the Flying Dutchwomen mount a comeback from a 23-point deficit to beat James Madison.

“Walking through the Student Center here with News 12 right before Charles broke the [school scoring] record, we had a sellout the next day, people on campus were excited, the team was excited, everybody was happy,” Cassara said. “That was one of those moments where I was like ‘I wish I could do that everyday.’ I think the other one coming to my mind was probably walking out on the court for the last home game with Delaware and it was a sold-out crowd, a bunch of excited students [out] to see some seniors kind of end their career the right way.”

While the good far outweighed the bad, last year was not without unpleasant or difficult moments for Cassara. When other schools were using the perception that Cassara was on a one-year deal against him on the recruiting trail, Hofstra—which is normally cloaked in the type of secrecy only an NFL coach can appreciate—announced Cassara signed a four-year deal upon taking over for Tim Welsh (Cassara signed an extension through 2015-16 following the season).

After the season, Cassara had to replace assistant coach Allen Griffin, who took a similar position with Dayton, and navigate the delicate process of meeting with Yves Jules, Paul Bilbo and Roland Brown and letting them know there would be little playing time in the future for the three players, all of whom ended up transferring.

“In year one, you’re dealing, when you first get there, [with] kids leaving the program and then, at the end of the year, kids leaving the program again and figuring out if they can or can’t play, do they want to transfer or not,” Cassara said. “Those are challenging things.

“Those are really, really tough conversations. Really tough things to deal with. It’s part of the business, but nothing can prepare me for how challenging that was—a lot of the challenges we went through after the season last year. It certainly gave me a lot of sleepless nights—not that I sleep very much anyway.”

Cassara had perhaps his most unique sleepless night ever when Hurricane Irene washed over Long Island Aug. 27-28. Cassara lives in Point Lookout, which is one of the most flood-prone areas on Long Island, but the higher ground he sought wasn’t his parents’ house near the Canadian border but his office in the Arena, where he rode out the storm with his dogs.

“I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to get back here, so I just said ‘Hey, I might be able to get a day’s worth of stuff done in the office.’” Cassara said. “I brought the dogs up. [Facilities director] Jay Artinian probably isn’t thrilled about them hanging out in the office.”

Heading into the office to ride out a hurricane is proof that while Cassara shares the same dedication and passion for the job as his predecessors, he is able to display it in a different way than anyone else who has occupied the position. Cassara, who is single with no children, is the first unmarried, childless head coach at Hofstra since at least the 1950s and, likely, the first one in program history. While Cassara admits he would like to someday strike a better balance between his work and personal lives, he also recognizes his unyielding focus can generate positive results for the Flying Dutchmen.

“As you can tell from my social life, I don’t have a great balance in what I do,” Cassara said. “I think that people would say that I’m married to my job. I’ve been able to bounce around a lot in this profession, been all over the country, never really been in one place long enough and I haven’t been able to find that balance yet. I think it also helps me do what I want to do really well right now.”

Cassara’s staff is similarly focused. Only longtime Cassara mentor Wayne Morgan is married, and every person on the staff has been fired from a previous gig and is fueled by the hunger that is generated by the fear of falling out of a business in which it is exceedingly difficult to get back in. Cassara’s sleepless nights are dominated by the thought that, if not for a good first impression with Stuart Rabinowitz, he might be doing his best Tom Cruise-circa-1988 impersonation at his Dad’s bar tonight instead of leading the Dutchmen on to the court against Long Island.

“I think I have a newfound appreciation for that, after going through what we went thru and then obviously [having] a president and an AD who took a chance on me as a young guy,” Cassara said. “I think we embrace that and we kind of use that to drive us a little bit everyday when it might not be going that well.”

More than anyone else, Cassara knows all the Tweeting and all the Facebook friending and all the cake judging in the world won’t matter if the Dutchmen don’t win. As year two begins, he and his staff have a better idea of what to expect, both internally and within the CAA, and what it will take to lift the program to the heights everyone envisions.

While Cassara is eager for this season to begin and looking forward to applying what he learned last year in order to help the Dutchmen exceed meager outside expectations, he is excited about what next year and the impact a big-time recruiting class—including Penn State transfer Taran Buie and UConn transfer Jamaal Coombs-McDaniel, each of whom is practicing with the Dutchmen as they sit out this season, and recently signed high school seniors Dallas Anglin and Jimmy Hall—can make in both the short- and long-term.

“I think we’ve carved out a niche,” Cassara said. “Now we feel a little more comfortable on a daily basis. Last year we knew what the league was, but we didn’t know how good it was. We didn’t know how challenging the scheduling was going to be. We didn’t know how challenging the league was, even though we thought we did. I think we have a much better appreciation of [all of] that. I think we have a much better appreciation for what we need in recruiting. So all those things are starting to come together.”

Until everything comes together—and probably even after that—there are fans to lure, tickets to sell, new friends to make and cakes to judge. After strolling from table to table judging the cakes, Cassara announced the winners and posed for a picture with the team of Michelle LaFiura, Brittany Visconti and Rachel O’Neill.

“Hey,” Cassara said as he draped his arms around the trio. “Are you guys going to come to some games this year?”

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

In which I tip off the season with THE GREATEST PHOTO IN THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET (G-rated division)!!!

That's me and Gary Cherone. Litos is right. We have it better.

Twenty-four nights ago, a few hours after the Flying Dutchmen's first practice of 2011-12, I was stiff and nursing a sore back in a bar in Rochester. Getting old and standing still for hours at a time waiting for the headlining act to take the stage is a bitch.

A bar eight hours from home is an odd place to be when you get to be my age, especially on a national holiday such as FIRST PRACTICE OF THE YEAR DAY! (Doesn’t really roll off the tongue—I blame Hallmark) But I was there with a definitive Defiantly Dutch purpose:

I was going to get my picture taken with Gary Cherone as we held aloft a 1994-95 Hofstra basketball poster.

Of course, by merely clicking here you know the story has a happy ending. And if you’re a regular visitor, either here or on Twitter, you probably know that Extreme—the band Cherone fronts, though not the one I saw in Rochester, more on that shortly—is the Official Band of Defiantly Dutch and that their 1991 hit “Hole Hearted” is our official anthem.

In August 2009, Extreme put on the best show I ever saw, one that turned me into a super-duper Internet sensation (snort). In terms of both background music and philosophies, Cherone and Extreme are a big part of the Defiantly Dutch operation.

Trying to find correlations or similarities between oneself and a famous entertainer is an inherently dangerous proposition, one that skirts a little too close to a giant ego stroke. “Hey look at me I’m just like so-and-so!” So let’s make this clear: I’m not declaring I’m anything like Cherone. He’s sung two top-five hits and on three top-10 albums, performed as the lead in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” headlined arenas and stadiums around the world with both Extreme and Van Halen and, with Extreme, stole the show at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert in 1992. I quote sitcoms on Twitter. He survived the slings and arrows of being The Other Lead Singer in Van Halen. I survived the slings and arrows of bashing Jim Larranaga.

But in terms of both words and actions, Cherone’s work is an inspiration. I came to think of “Hole Hearted” as an especially appropriate song about writing as multiple deadlines came and went for my Red Sox book (I know, what are the odds, me missing deadlines—in my defense, I was writing 90 percent of a monthly magazine and posting multiple stories per day on the accompanying website) and I began to wonder if I’d ever finish it. “Should have known from the start I’d fall short with the things I do” is not only a pretty sobering thought for a writer, it’s also a pretty downbeat way to end an album.

I finally managed to finish what I started and remain proud of the final product, yet in the nearly four years since I was kicked to the curb by Corporate America and forced into the world of non-journalism writing, I’ve found just about every line of “Hole Hearted” particularly relevant—about not only the act of writing but also the challenge of trying to find time for a passion that no longer pays the bills yet remains just about as essential to me as breathing. As the saying goes: It’s hard to write, but it’s harder not to. (True story: Carl Van Doren, who spoke those spot-on words, died in my hometown in Connecticut).

Extreme is on a long hiatus (guitarist Nuno Bettencourt is touring as Rhianna's lead guitarist—bet you never expected a Rhianna reference here), so Cherone put together Hurtsmile along with his brother, Mark, and released a self-titled CD (Google it, kids!) last winter. The CD is similar to Extreme in that it’s not easily categorized and requires and rewards repeated listens. My wife’s cousins go to college in the Rochester area, so when I saw Hurtsmile’s tour itinerary, we decided to make a weekend out of it.

I’d heard for years that Cherone was a friendly to fans and regularly met with them after shows, so I had it in the back of my mind that maybe I’d get to shake his hand. But while packing the car the day before our departure, the idea struck me: Bring the 1994-95 poster schedule and ask him to pose for a picture with it. I mean, that would be brilliant—Defiantly Dutch doesn’t get much more, umm, defiantly dutch than the lead singer of Extreme holding aloft a poster picturing Jay Wright’s first team.

Of course it’s also insane, and silly-sounding to anyone else, so while I put the poster in the trunk, I wasn’t all that sure I’d actually ask him for a picture, never mind one in which we’re holding the poster.

It took one song for me to figure out that I had to find a way to get this picture taken. There were just a few dozen people milling about at the Montage Music Hall, and I counted just 14 people lined up along the front of the stage when Cherone and Hurtsmile appeared after four opening acts.

Yet Cherone took the stage as if he was playing in front of tens of thousands, racing around in such a fury that he was soaked in sweat by the end of the first song. At multiple points during the show, Cherone thanked those in attendance and said he appreciated all those who came out as well as the club owners for hosting the concert.

This Hurtsmile “tour” was actually just a two-date trek to upstate New York and was at least the band’s third mini-tour of the year in the United States. My guess is none of these jaunts are money-making endeavors for Cherone and the band and that a lot has to go right just to schedule these short trips. I can appreciate that, and hope that while Hurtsmile was driving home, a drunken fan of a rival and overlooked late ‘80s/early ‘90s hard rock band didn’t plow into their van.

But despite the haphazard scheduling and the lack of profitability, Cherone maximized and cherished the opportunity, put everything he had into the show in Rochester and performed as if he was playing Madison Square Garden.

I like to think I can appreciate that too. I can’t write here as much as I’d like to, and that disappoints me. I’ve got about 10 story ideas that I figured I’d post in the preseason and all 10 are still in my head. Nothing would make me happier than focusing all of my energies on this blog. If that is not possible, then what I can do is make sure the posts I do make are worth reading, and that I deliver as promised if I must emphasize quality over quantity.

That said, I’ll also make some modifications in order to post in a more frequent and timely fashion now that the season has started. You already saw the first new wrinkle of the season, the “Postgame Buffet.” This is intended to get a recap up shortly after, you know, the game has actually been played. I’m not a huge fan of bullet point recaps, and this may only last until Charles Jenkins comes out of the stands to beat George Mason with a 93-footer and I find it impossible to try and wax poetic about what I just saw, but it drives me crazy to waste time trying to find the right tone and the right phrasing while a day or more goes by.

So as a compromise, I offer “The Day After,” which will be a more traditional story providing further analysis of a particular part of the game. The hope is, without trying to cram everything into one piece, I’ll offer two better and better focused pieces. My initial feeling is I’ll post the Postgame Buffet the day after the game, even on the weekends, with The Day After appearing, in true Alanis irony, two days after the game is actually played.

We’ll see how it goes, and I thank you in advance for your patience both with my sporadic posting as well as the imminent adaptation process. And thanks to Gary Cherone for the inspiration and motivation, for a pretty cool conversation following the show and for posing for the photo after I told him about Extreme’s exalted status over here. And I bet he thought hitting number one with “More Than Words” and singing for Van Halen was a big deal!

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

Postgame Buffet: Queens

My wife and I actually ate at a Chinese buffet last night, before I came up with the "Postgame Buffet" name. Is this irony?

I’m trying something a little new this year with post-game recaps, which I’ll explain in the official tip-off post coming later today. Of course the official tip-off post is arriving after the Flying Dutchmen have already played a (fake) game, but that’s how I roll here. Anyway, the first-ever Postgame Buffet, which is a better term for five postgame thoughts!

1.) We’re better than West Virginia! The Flying Dutchmen were never seriously threatened in a 71-57 win over Queens, a victory that snapped that epic 46-year losing streak against the Knights. Of course, exhibition games are inherently no-win propositions for the home Division I team—margin of victory is irrelevant when you’re supposed to win—and the real goal is getting out healthy. But beating Queens sure beats the alternative, which is losing like West Virginia, Butler, Arizona and Utah did to lower division opponents this week.

“We talked about it throughout the week, we put some of the [results] up on the bulleting board,” Mo Cassara said. “I think this time of year teams are very susceptible to that…especially with a lot of new faces. There’s a lot of good teams out there, there’s so much parity in college basketball and there’s a couple kids out there [for] Queens tonight that played really, really well and you’re going to see that. Obviously you’re a little nervous, but we [delivered] the message to our team and ultimately we found a way to win and hopefully we’ll use this to help us get better.”

2.) Cassara has been raving about Stevie Mejia (that’s M-E-J-I-A, idiot blogger guy) for more than a year now, and the Rhode Island transfer did not disappoint in his initial impression. Mejia wasn’t perfect—he had four turnovers and was just 5-of-9 from the free throw line—but he had 10 points, nine assists and five rebounds in a team-high 36 minutes. That latter figure was especially notable because a Hofstra point guard played 36 or more minutes just twice last season—both by Brad Kelleher and his second marathon effort was in the overtime classic against William & Mary. While he lived up to his reputation as a true point guard by taking just four shots—one of which was a 20-footer as time expired in the first half—he was aggressive in driving to the basket and ended up leading the Dutchmen in both free throws and free throw attempts.

He also displayed some gritty point guard tenacity: Early in the second half, Mejia had the ball stolen from him as he dribbled up the court, but he hustled back and knocked a Queens pass out of bounds underneath the Knights’ basket. All the caveats about an exhibition apply, but Mejia did nothing to discourage the notion he’s going to provide two years of stability at point guard, which is two more stable years than the Dutchmen have had since Carlos Rivera graduated.

“Definitely felt good just playing basketball against somebody, especially after sitting out the whole year,” Mejia said. “Could barely sleep [Friday] night.”

3.) Four other players spent at least 20 minutes on the court. Mike Moore scored a game-high 20 points and led the Dutchmen with seven rebounds in 29 minutes, David Imes had six points and six rebounds in 28 minutes, Nathaniel Lester had 13 points and five rebounds (and one inexplicable technical foul) in 27 minutes in his first game action since Tom Pecora’s finale in March 2010 and Shemiye McLendon put an early grip on sixth man duties by scoring six points and impressing on both sides of the ball in 24 minutes.

The Dutchmen employed an interesting three-man rotation at center, with 6-foot-7 freshman Moussa Kone drawing the start and scoring four points and pulling down four rebounds in 19 solid minutes. Sophomore Stephen Nwaukoni was scoreless and had four fouls, three rebounds and two blocks in 13 minutes. And 6-foot-10 junior college transfer Bryant Crowder put on the most eye-opening show with 12 points—including 10 in the second half—with four rebounds and two blocks in 17 minutes. Crowder was 4-of-6 in the second half, delivered a thunderous one-handed slam off a Mejia inbounds pass and seemed to grow more comfortable on the court by the minute.

“I thought Bryant did some really good things,” Cassara said. “He certainly has an offensive mind. He attacked the basket and made a couple nice plays and he’s got great length, as you saw, and great athleticism. If he can bring some of that to the defensive end, I think he’s really going to help us win some games.”

4.) In addition to finally acquainting myself with tempo-free statistics and, in particular, points per possession (the unofficial figures from the exhibition: Hofstra 1.04 points per possession in 68 possessions, Queens 0.81 points per possession in 70 possessions), I’m also going to do my best to keep track of how each lineup fares. I figure that’ll be far easier during home games than road games, but we’ll see how it turns out.

As for Saturday, it’s interesting to note that four players were on the court for each of the Dutchmen’s big runs. The lineup of Moore-Meija-Crowder-Imes-McLendon engineered an 8-2 run in a span of 3:18 late in the first half that extended the Dutchmen’s lead to 27-18 while the quintet of Imes-Moore-Crowder-McLendon-Lester authored a 10-2 run over 1:53 late in the second half that gave Hofstra its biggest lead at 67-48. As noted multiple times already, it’s tough to read too much into exhibitions, but the presence of Crowder and McLendon on the court for the game-deciding runs is certainly a good sign for a Dutchmen team for whom depth is a question.

5.) The margin of victory was a comfortable one, but for much of the game the Dutchmen were as raw as the calendar might suggest. They were just 16-of-23 from the free throw line, 3-of-15 from 3-point land and allowed a handful of mini-runs by Queens as well as six offensive rebounds by the Knights in the second half. So Cassara won’t lack for things to hammer home this week before the real opener against Long Island.

“All three of these guys in here tonight had one or two players where they were out of position and they know that,” Cassara said as he was flanked at the postgame press conference by Moore, Mejia and Lester. “We’ve just got to be solid. I talked to our team about just being solid. It’s team defense and the second thing would be rebounding. If we do those things, the offense will come. We’re going to make more shots, we’re going to make more free throws, we’re going to make some better plays, we’re going to do some different things offensively that we just didn’t do tonight. That will come in time, but we’ve got to work on those things to have a chance against a very good LIU team.”

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

Touch of Madness

Excuse to post Night Ranger for the win!

While dozens, if not hundreds, of schools of all sizes either opened the college basketball season with Midnight Madness-esque festivities last Friday night—or are planning a similarly themed party at some point in the preseason, a la Iona tonight and Stony Brook next week—Mo Cassara and the Flying Dutchmen are getting underway in a low-key fashion. The first practice of 2011-12 came and went late last Friday afternoon with nary an undergrad nailing a half-court shot and having his tuition paid for by ESPN and his books covered by Dickie V.

And other than the season ticket holder meet-and-greet scheduled for next Thursday, practice will continue unfolding in perfectly routine fashion leading up to the season opener against Long Island three weeks from tonight. Cassara and the marketing staff at Hofstra figure their efforts are better utilized focusing on filling the Arena for that rare Friday night home game and using that as a springboard to a season that features a program-record 17 home games rather than on an event long on filler and short on substance.

That’s not to say Midnight Madness won’t someday actually arrive at Hofstra (those of a certain age—mine—will recall that Midnight Madness in the Jay Wright Era didn’t actually include basketball). But holding Midnight Madness now would be like planning an extension on a house whose foundation has barely been poured. The program made great strides expanding its heretofore meager fan base last year, but there’s still work to be done retaining the students and other newcomers to the bandwagon last year.

Plus, you don’t need Midnight Madness to go a little mad. For one thing, these realignment rumors will make anyone go nutty. How about Stuart Rabinowitz, that noted sports fan who is less than two years removed from begging Mike Francesa to get Hofstra out of the CAA and into the Atlantic 10, not only serving as the president of the CAA Council of Presidents/Chancellors but, per the New York Times, cold-calling Charlotte, George Washington, Richmond and Boston University to see if they’d like to join the CAA?

As the kids say: What is up with that? I mean, geez, two of those schools play that dreaded brand of I-AA football. What does Rabinowitz say to 2008 national champion Richmond as well as Charlotte, which will begin I-AA play in 2013? “I was just kidding, CAA football is awesome!”

I half-think Rabinowitz’ new gig is just his way of paying homage to horror movies past and present: “We all go a little mad sometimes.”

Anyway, Rabinowitz suddenly emerging as a member of the CAA’s inner circle is just one of the reasons I’m a little less WHOOHOO WE’RE GOING TO THE A-10 SEE YA CAA!!!! than I was a few weeks ago.

Saner, smarter people than me (line forms to the left) believe the CAA will emerge from realignment stronger than it is right now—your good friend and mine Mike Litos reminded us recently that Tom Yeager, with his conference on tilt, managed to gut and forever weaken the America East 11 years ago—and that it will be proactive in the process, not reactive, even if it is quiet right now.

As much as Southern Bias drives me freaking crazy, what good would it do Hofstra as well as Northeastern and Drexel—two more northeast schools now putting all their eggs in the basket of men’s basketball—to leave the CAA if it means taking a step down? As one of those saner, smarter people said to me recently: If the A-10 ends up losing Xavier, Dayton and Temple to the Big East or an off-shoot of it, who wants to end up in what is left of the A-10?

No matter how it shakes out, I still firmly believe the CAA and the rest of the Division I landscape will look far different 12 months from now, which creates a weird purgatory for 2011-12—for the league as well as the Flying Dutchmen.

A spate of graduations and the defection of a certain coach (sniff) means a regression for the CAA is likely and that one bid is all the league will get come March. The good news there is the CAA is more wide open than usual: Drexel is the preseason pick to finally overcome Southern Bias on the first Monday of March, but the Dragons are far from an overwhelming favorite. It’s the type of year in which just about everyone has a touch of madness when it comes to evaluating their chances at winning the CAA—even the fans of the team picked to finish eighth!

Believe it or not, eighth place ISN’T seven spots lower than I would have picked the Dutchmen, It’s a smidge lower than my projection—my ample gut is saying seventh, for some reason—but a perfectly reasonable one given how little we know about this team.

The Dutchmen are adjusting to life without Charles Jenkins and will field a starting five that has spent far more time together in practice than on the court. The lineup against Long Island will likely include two incumbent starters from last year in Mike Moore and David Imes, two players who were in the program but redshirted last season in Stevie Mejia and Nat Lester (who is going to sweep the balloting for the “Holy crap didn’t that guy play against David Robinson?” award) and JUCO transfer Bryant Crowder.

While actual experience together is a concern, the collective maturity of the starters is not. Moore, Mejia and Lester are all five years removed from high school while Imes prepped following high school and is four years removed from his graduation. Other returnees Dwan McMillan, Shemiye McLendon, Stephen Nwaukoni and Matt Grogan have all bought into the Cassara system and will be valuable leaders this season in helping four newcomers adjust to Division I.

This team is going to be better than people think and will feature at least one and maybe two first- or second-team All-CAA players. It’s the type of year in which a seventh-place finish and an 18-15 record is a cause for celebration, or at least pursuing a CIT bid, and reason to believe the foundation—there’s that word again!—has been set for a potentially magical 2012-13 season, when the Dutchmen will welcome a loaded recruiting class that features highly touted freshmen as well as big-time Division I transfers.

Admittedly, when it comes to forecasting this season, it takes a touch of madness to think of anything beyond a middle of the pack finish for the Flying Dutchmen, at least until we get to see them in action in November. But isn’t that what this time of the year is all about—unbridled and often uncharacteristic optimism about everything?

Why can’t the league be more balanced than expected and the Dutchmen gel faster than projected? Why can’t Hofstra work in the CAA long-term? Why can’t I root for George Mason whenever the Patriots aren’t playing the Dutchmen? I’ve got a touch of madness, and until that last sentence I really didn’t want the antidote.

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

Media Day For The Soul

Whoohoo! Prospectuses! (Who knew? That actually is the plural of prospectus)

Media days would seem to be an unusual source of inspiration and self-affirmation, but I’m an odd duck even by the standards of unpaid sportswriters. So I decided yesterday, after Hofstra’s first media day for the men’s and women’s basketball teams, that when I write my first book that anybody outside my immediate family reads, I’m going to title it “Media Days For The Soul.”

I was fretting all week over Media Day because I felt wholly unprepared for it. I’ve been buried in copy writing assignments, which, again, is good because it means my wife and I and our cats can eat, but it leaves little time for the passion that is Hofstra sports. I hate feeling as if the season has completely snuck up on me, even if we’ve all been counting down the days to tomorrow since the loss to Evansville in the That Which Shall Not Be Named Tournament.

I figure if Media Day was a day or two later, I would have endured the dreaded “I went there naked” dream. That’s right. Most people dream about showing up to a final exam naked, I worry I’ll dream about showing up to a media day naked. Normal I am not.

Anyway, as is usually the case with writers who can’t get out of their own heads, my fears were unfounded. Media Day was a smash hit from start to finish. Walking into the Arena felt like slipping on an old pair of shorts or sweats. It was kind of like the first day of school, with familiar faces saying hello and new faces introducing themselves and everyone excited for the months to come even if nobody knows what is going to happen.

Collecting a bunch of interviews in one place for usage over the next few weeks, meanwhile, reminded me of the infant days of my sportswriting career and attending press conferences with one-on-one opportunities at Shea Stadium (Google it Crain!). Getting a bunch of stuff in one sitting is reinvigorating, makes me feel as if I accomplished something and negates most of that whole “season snuck up on me” vibe.

It was a big-time event put on by Hofstra and the sports information department of Stephen Gorchov, Jim Sheehan and Len Skoros and an essential addition for a school that wants to produce big-time basketball teams.

“Basketball is very important to Hofstra,” Jack Hayes said in his opening remarks. “We will do everything we can to remain competitive and to continue to build our basketball programs. The runs that we have had recently in men’s and women’s basketball have been very good but I think anybody that you will hear from today believes that the future of our basketball programs are the best years.”

“It’s the type of stuff that we have to continue to do,” Mo Cassara said. “We have to continue to sell what we’re so proud of. And I think we’ve got a great product here. We’ve got a lot of people that are excited about the program on and off the court and we want to keep talking about that.”

As big-time as it was, the endearingly down-home vibe we’ve come to appreciate at Hofstra remained firmly in place. For example, I can tell you I’ve never loaned a book to a professional baseball player.

“This is personal,” Krista Kilburn-Steveskey said. “The D.C. CAA one is great, but I like this atmosphere. I like how we did it. It was serious but then yet it was casual. I think it just allows for you to personally get to know players a lot better and see them in a different light and [for her] to really be able to brag about my players. I could brag about everybody. I didn’t just have to talk about Shante [Evans] like I do in the CAA. So I thought it was a home run—a complete home run.”

Good analogy. I approve.

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

Flying Dutchwomen field hockey team hopes to make history against royal Monarchs

Most coaches preparing a team for a game against the top-ranked team in the country have a boilerplate of quotes and thoughts about the task ahead of them: It’s only one game. We’re not viewing it as any bigger or smaller than any other game. It’s a good opportunity but not that big a deal. We can’t look ahead and think about what it might mean to win such a game.

But Kathy DeAngelis isn’t sticking to the script as the Flying Dutchwomen field hockey team heads to Old Dominion to take on the no. 1 Lady Monarchs in the CAA opener for both schools at 5 p.m. This IS a big game. This IS a big deal. And winning it WOULD mean a lot for both the field hockey program and Hofstra.

“That’s really exciting for our program to be playing the number one team in the nation,” DeAngelis said by phone yesterday from Virginia. “The opportunity to say hey, we’re playing the number one team in the nation—I feel that excitement, it’s in the air everywhere.

“We can leave a mark—obviously for us to win this game but [it] would also be a huge, tremendous win for the university.”

No matter where Old Dominion is ranked, DeAngelis always looks forward to facing the Monarchs, who have certainly earned the moniker in field hockey. Old Dominion has won a record nine national championships and Lady Monarchs coach Beth Anders is the sport’s all-time winningest coach with 532 victories in 29 seasons at the helm.

Even by their lofty historical standards, though, the Lady Monarchs are putting together some kind of season. Old Dominion is 8-0 with seven wins against top 10 teams and has already toppled a pair of no. 1s in Maryland and North Carolina. The win over the Tar Heels last Friday catapulted Old Dominion to no. 1 in the polls for the first time in nine years. (For more on Old Dominion’s hot start, check out this story about the Lady Monarchs from the Daily Press in Virginia)

“The Old Dominion game is really the highlight of our year every year,” DeAngelis said. “Wherever they are ranked, we know that they are a tremendous team and we have great respect for their program.”

As respectful as the Dutchwomen are of Old Dominion, they’ll take the field this afternoon feeling confident and well-prepared. Hofstra, which was picked eighth in the nine-team CAA in the preseason poll of coaches, has begun to get some attention nationally thanks to a four-game winning streak that includes a win over then-no. 16 Albany as well as a potent offense that ranks fifth in the nation with 44 goals—more than the Dutchwomen scored all of last season. That creates a matchup of strengths against Old Dominion, which has outscored its opposition 27-8.

Since opening the season with a 7-1 loss at fourth-ranked UConn, the Dutchwomen have scored at least three goals in every game but one and have lost three times by a total of four goals, including an overtime defeat to Stanford, which is currently ranked eighth in the nation. Last week, the Dutchwomen had the CAA’s co-player of the week in senior forward Genna Kovar as well as the rookie of the week in freshman forward Jonel Boileau.

“They have exceeded, personally, my expectations,” DeAngelis said. “Scheduling is definitely part of that, but it’s also really exciting we’ve scored that many goals. We have so many players that can put the ball in the net and that makes us very dangerous.”

In addition, while Hofstra is 1-8 all-time against Old Dominion, 13 of the 27 players on this year’s team were on the 2009 team that upset then-no. 16 Old Dominion, 6-5, in Norfolk in 2009. And the Dutchwomen were competitive in falling 3-1 last year to a Lady Monarchs team that ended up winning the CAA and advancing to the NCAA quarterfinals.

A win today would not only be the biggest ever for the field hockey team but also one of the most notable achievements for any program at Hofstra. Only three Flying Dutch squads have ever beaten the nation’s no. 1 team—something DeAngelis plans to remind her team about in the pre-game meeting.

“To be able to play against [Old Dominion] in conference play is just huge,” DeAngelis said. “But for us, that definitely creates interest knowing that we have a chance to create some history here. I can kind of use that [today].”

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