Postgame Buffet: Oregon State 82, Hofstra 72 (Or: They had the upset in sight, but just outta reach)

Good news Flying Dutchmen fans: Much like Chuck Cunningham, we'll never see Jared Cunningham again.

There will be approximately 900 opportunities this season for a “Red Line Upset,” the Kyle Whelliston-coined term for when a team from one of the 24 mid-major conferences beats a team from one of the eight majors. If the numbers from the last two years are any indication, only 17 percent or so of these games will end with the good guys winning.

As for the other 83 percent, well, the fans of the losing team will swear somewhere close to 100 percent of the time that their hardwood heroes were this close to winning. The upset would have been pulled off, if only this had happened, or that had happened, or if the referees didn’t suck.

When you hear (or read) these stories sans a rooting interest, you’ll just nod, offer a rote and symbolic pat on the head and mutter to yourself that this fan of Mid-Major U. is completely out of his gourd. His team never had a shot, but whatever allows him to sleep at night.

Well, I am here to tell you, somewhere between 6 and 7 am on the morning after, that the Flying Dutchmen WERE this close to beating Oregon State of the Pac-10, err, Pac-12 last night, even if they lost 82-72. And I’m going to give you five reasons why—right now! (Hey Loyal Reader Missy, that’s a hint as to the genesis of the Postgame Buffet subtitle)

1.) A mere two games into this season, there is no need to worry whether or not the Flying Dutchmen are tough enough or resilient enough to make things interesting in 2011-12. After racing out to a 6-0 lead, the Dutchmen were victimized by Oregon State runs of 11-0 and 19-4, yet they clawed back, made a 14-0 run late in the first half and went into the locker room nursing a 42-41 lead. The Dutchmen lost the lead for good less than a minute into the second half and fell behind by six with less than three minutes gone yet closed within three or less five times before Oregon State pulled away in the final six minutes.

In addition, the Dutchmen were not intimidated by playing in a noisy and unfriendly foreign environment as they gave as good as they received in an increasingly chippy game in which 51 total fouls were called. Dwan McMillan was whistled for a technical foul and was booed every time he touched the ball in the final 10 minutes or so while David Imes also earned a technical foul. It’s impossible to tell who initiated what on a choppy Internet feed, but Imes’ technical—which came right after he was fouled by Roberto Nelson—seemed to be the textbook example of a referee catching the reaction and not the instigation. (I should also note that I watch everything, choppy Internet feeds and otherwise, through Dutch-colored glasses) Regardless, the experience of Wednesday night will come in handy during physical CAA games and in hostile environments south of the George Washington Bridge.

2.) Much of what cost the Dutchmen a chance at victory can be rectified. For instance, while watching his team shoot a Mason-like 19-of-32 from the free throw line—a performance which featured the typically reliable Nathaniel Lester, Mike Moore, Stevie Mejia and Shemiye McLendon ALL enduring trips to the line in which they missed both attempts—surely contributed to a sleepless overnight for Mo Cassara, you can be sure he’ll spend the rest of the season hammering home the importance of free throw shooting. The Dutchmen had more than twice as many turnovers (15) as assists (seven), but six of those turnovers occurred in a seven-possession span during Oregon State’s early first half run. Mejia finished with five turnovers and no assists as he was again outplayed by fellow point guard McMillan, but it was just his second game back after a redshirt season and Mejia is one guy who is going to look a lot better in February than he does in November.

And Lester was tremendous again, except this time in just 16 minutes thanks to foul trouble (he fouled out with 3:45 left). Lester scored 12 points on 6-of-8 shooting—he’s now 15-of-23 in two games—and put back both of his offensive rebounds for baskets. Right now, as long as he can stay on the court 35 minutes a night, it’s hard to believe there are nine better players in the CAA.

3.) The more we see Imes, the more we’re convinced we’re seeing the best Dutchmen big man since Adrian Uter. Imes, once again forced to play bigger than his 6-foot-7 frame, scored 15 points, pulled down a team-high seven rebounds and, most important and impressive of all, committed just one foul in a career-high 38 minutes. His contributions and ability to stay on the floor were doubly important with Lester in foul trouble, freshman Moussa Kone recording no points or rebounds in 29 minutes and Stephen Nwaukoni playing just 10 minutes. Playing 29 minutes against a Pac-12 team in his second career game will only help Kone and Nwaukoni continued to provide hints he can develop into a pretty solid front court player by collecting three offensive rebounds.

All that said, the sooner Bryant Crowder makes his season debut, the better. Crowder didn’t play due to a coach’s decision against Long Island and didn’t travel to Oregon State, and given how desperately the Dutchmen need size, we almost have to hope he was left back due to injury and not because of a disciplinary action. He certainly would have come in handy as the Dutchmen tried to shut down the Beavers’ 1-2 punch of Jared Cunningham (35 points) and Devon Collier (25 points).

The anticipation for Crowder is starting to reach Greg-Washington-in-2006 levels, except Crowder—a junior college transfer who was once recruited by San Diego State—might be able to immediately fill the type of role Washington couldn’t as a freshman. With the CAA in chaos, the Dutchmen have a chance to be a lot better than anyone could have expected, but without more than one reliable big man, there’s little hope of getting past the Drexel-George Mason-Old Dominion-VCU gauntlet come the first weekend in March.

4.) Even in defeat, the Dutchmen’s balanced scoring attack was very encouraging. At halftime, the score sheet read like a New Year’s Eve countdown: 9-8-7-6-5-4 (Moore-Imes-McLendon-Lester-Mejia-McMillan). The Dutchmen ended up putting four players in double figures, led by Moore’s 16, and Mejia came within a point of becoming the fifth player with 10 points. (Today’s task: Find out the last time Hofstra had five players in double figures in a loss) Lester is looking like this year’s Charles Jenkins, and it’s good to know the Dutchmen will have other options if he’s rendered ineffective for whatever reason.

5.) While Moore had a quiet night despite leading the Dutchmen in points—he was just 5-of-13 from the field, including 1-of-5 from 3-point land, and was limited to 29 minutes by early foul trouble—McLendon looked ready to assume a bigger role by scoring 12 points, draining both his 3-point attempts, pulling down five rebounds and recording two steals in a career-high 31 minutes. McLendon may never be a superstar, but he’s got a good chance at becoming a homegrown 1,000-point scorer and evolving into a poor man’s Loren Stokes—someone who can do a little bit of everything and fill up a boxscore. Not bad for a player the Dutchmen found at the last minute during their abbreviated recruiting period in the spring of 2010.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Oregon State, 11/16)

3: David Imes

2: Shemiye McLendon

1: Mike Moore

SEASON STANDINGS

David Imes 3

Mike Moore 3

Nathaniel Lester 3

Shemiye McLendon 2

Dwan McMillan 1

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

Five halftime thoughts: Oregon State

1.) If nothing else, we know, three halves into the season, that the Flying Dutchmen have plenty of toughness and resiliency. After Hofstra jumped out to a 6-0 lead, Oregon State went on runs of 11-0 and 19-4 and seemed ready to blow the game open, but the Dutchmen changed up defenses and went on a 14-0 run and lead 41-39 at the half. (Just broke the no. 1 rule of journalism—list the final or in this case most recent score first. Oh well) And the Dutchmen came back largely without Nat Lester, who has three fouls.

2.) The Dutchmen are a better team, at least right now, with Dwan McMillan on the court. Stevie Mejia is still playing off the rust of sitting out last year and committed a handful of turnovers that led to Oregon State’s first run. McMillan’s insertion coincided with the beginning of Hofstra’s comeback. The two players were on the court for much of the first half and that will need to remain the case if Hofstra wants to pull off the upset.

3.) Foul trouble is a worry for the Dutchmen in what has been an increasingly chippy and physical game. Lester and McMillan have three fouls while Mike Moore, Shemiye McLendon and Moussa Kone have two apiece. The lack of depth, especially down low, could be a factor in the final few minutes. Still, the Dutchmen have limited the damage Oregon State has done in the paint after the initial runs and are actually outrebounding the Beavers, 15-12.

4.) 9-8-7-6-5-4. That’s the Dutchmen’s impressively balanced scoring attack (Moore-Imes-McLendon-Lester-Mejia-McMillan). Hooray! No more shutting Hofstra down with garbage defenses and sending four guys at one player!

5.) The Dutchmen will have a tough time winning if they can’t figure out a way to contain Jared Cunningham, who may or may not be related to Richie. Cunningham has 17 points on 6-of-10 shooting, including 5-of-6 inside the 3-point line.

5b.) This game is fun. If Hofstra hangs on, it will surely be time to make NCAA Tournament reservations. Or at least consider the possibility this program’s renovation could arrive a year ahead of time.

The Day After (or so): Lester's 2nd senior year worth the wait

Flying Dutchmen fun fact: Nathaniel Lester scored the final points of the Tom Pecora Era by hitting a pair of free throws with 35 seconds left in the That Which Shall Not Be Named tournament loss to IUPUI on March 17, 2009.

Somewhat amazingly, Lester did not also score the first points of the Pecora Era in 2001. Nor was he in my Comm 101 class Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings in the fall of 1993. Nor did he play both basketball and tennis under Butch van Breda Kolff, nor did—well, you get the idea. Lester, a redshirt senior who graduated in three-and-a-half years and could finish his masters degree in linguistics by May, has been at Hofstra a long time.

“I’m definitely the old man on the team,” Lester said with a laugh last week. “I get a lot of those old guy jokes.”

But the old guy sure looks like he’s going to get the last laugh. Lester, who missed all of last season due to a torn left quad (although it should be noted that when you search “Nathaniel Lester injury” on Google, the third link is about a Nathaniel Lester who got injured in 1898), played his first game in 604 days last Friday and promptly had the best night of his Hofstra career, no matter how long that is.

Lester scored 33 points—shattering his previous career high by 11—in leading the Dutchmen to an 89-71 rout of Long Island. He scored 11 straight points for the Dutchmen in the first half, a stretch in which he managed to tie his career high for 3-pointers in a game by hitting three in as many possessions over a 101-second span. He was also 12-for-14 from the free throw line, far surpassing his previous bests in both categories, as he earned CAA Player of the Week honors.

“I’ve dreamed about a day like this since I came to Hofstra,” Lester said afterward.

It was the kind of day that many expected out of Lester back in 1898—err, 2007—when he arrived at Hofstra as the most highly touted member of a freshman class that also included a pair of redshirts named Charles Jenkins and Greg Washington. Lester, a 6-foot-5 player who could play either guard or forward position, was considered one of the best players in New York City as a high school senior, when he averaged 29 points per game and led Canarsie to the PSAL semifinals.

Jenkins, of course, wasted zero time beginning to establish himself as the best player in school history. Like Washington, Lester gradually worked his way into the starting lineup for Pecora, and, after a few impressive bursts his first two seasons (including two double-doubles as a sophomore and a stretch in which he scored at least 10 points in eight of his final 13 games), seemed ready to blossom into a star as the calendar turned to 2010.

With Jenkins battling foul trouble, Lester scored 17 points and led the Dutchmen past Florida Atlantic Dec. 29. Four days later, in the real CAA opener against William & Mary, Lester was the best player on the floor in posting game highs with 14 points and 10 rebounds in a 48-47 loss.

But Lester lost his momentum, and eventually his starting job. Over the final 20 games of the season, he averaged just 5.8 points per contest. Lester played fewer than 30 minutes in each of the final 18 games, played 20 minutes or less 10 times in the last 11 games and bottomed out against IUPUI, when he started in place of an injured Washington but was benched 94 seconds into the game and scored half of his eight points in the meaningless final minute.

“I was just going to be that energy guy coming off the bench,” Lester said of his mindset following the demotion. “If that’s what my team needed me to do, then that’s what I was going to get out there and do. Whatever it takes to win. That’s the type of player I am.”

Pecora said Lester might have struggled because he was one of the few healthy players on a roster decimated by injury and illness in January 2010. The Dutchmen went 1-8 in Lester’s final nine starts, a stretch that included seven losses in the Dutchmen’s first eight CAA games in January.

“Maybe sometimes you don’t win and you’re the healthy guy and you say ‘Man, I can’t carry the team,’” Pecora said.

Pecora also said Lester may have struggled because it was difficult for both he and Lester to find a role in a guard-dominated offense for a classic “tweener” such as Lester.

“I remember him winning a game for us at Florida Atlantic—Charles got in foul trouble, I ran 10 cuts in a row for [Lester],” Pecora said. “Nat had certain sweet spots on the floor—if you got him the ball in those spots, he was unstoppable. And that’s what I had to get better at.

“I think it was hard. He wasn’t a guard who dominated the ball, and Charles had the ball in his hands. So that made it difficult for him at times, I think.”

Pecora’s exit in March 2010, followed by the transfers of Chaz Williams and Halil Kanacevic, seemingly opened up another opportunity to start for Lester, and he and his best friends Jenkins and Washington wasted little time bonding with new NEW coach Mo Cassara. But Lester’s senior season became endangered in July, when he tore the quad while working out at Shuart Stadium.

“I didn’t realize until two hours later that something was really wrong,” Lester said. “I stretched out and went back to my room and realized my leg was swollen.”

While the Dutchmen desperately needed the depth Lester could have provided, Cassara and Lester agreed not to burn his senior year for what would have been, at best, a half-season’s worth of games. That a new coach would redshirt a senior player whom he inherited spoke volumes of how quickly Cassara and his staff bonded with Lester.

“I think most coaches would probably try to sacrifice Nat’s senior year by getting him out there as quick as we could,” Cassara said. “But what it really developed into is he ended up playing a great role for us on the bench. He was a great guy in the locker room, a great guy on the bench. And once I saw that he embraced that role, I had to do everything I could to try to support him and do what he wanted to do.”

While freshmen are regular redshirts at Hofstra, Lester is only the second Flying Dutchmen upperclassmen to since 1994 (Danny Walker redshirted as a senior in 2002-03). While freshmen use a redshirt season to adjust to college life off the court and to get an idea of what to expect on it, sitting out a year allows an older player such as Lester to see the game in a far different fashion, one that will allow him to slow things down upon his return.

“On the court, you can see when the game needs to be slowed down and when it needs to be picked up and how you need to come out hard and bring energy,” Lester said. “I think being in the game for 40 minutes, 35 minutes, you don’t see all of that stuff.”

“For a guy like Nat, he was able to sit back and really watch this team develop and watch our program develop and watch our system develop,” Cassara said. “And he really bought into it. I think sometimes that year sitting out is a lot more valuable sometimes as an older kid because they have a few more tools in their pocket to say ‘Wow, that really works.’ They can kind of reference that a little. Sometimes a freshman doesn’t know any better. They’re just sitting out to sit out.”

Basketball staffers noted last summer how Lester’s presence and double-double potential could help the Flying Dutchmen exceed low pre-season expectations and how he seemed primed for an impressive senior season. Nobody could have foreseen last Friday night, when Lester became the first player not named Charles Jenkins or Antoine Agudio to score 30 points in a game for the Dutchmen since Carlos Rivera in 2007.

Walker returned from his redshirt season by putting up a career-high 21 points in the Dutchmen’s season-opening win over Marist Nov. 18, 2003. He exceeded double digits just six more times and recorded only one double-double the rest of the way, but those who know Lester seem to believe many more big nights are in his future.

“I think having this fifth year is going to help Nat tremendously,” Pecora said. “Year five is a magical year for young guys. Very few guys don’t have a good year in their fifth year. They’re bigger, stronger, more familiar, more confident in the second senior year.

“As far as the wings go, with him on one side and Mike Moore on the other—not many teams that wouldn’t want those two guys playing on your wings,” Pecora said.

“Obviously the injury fed into it a little bit and having more time to build a relationship with me and our staff, but Nat’s one of those guys that’s benefited from the change and that’s really helped him, I think, develop to where he is now,” Cassara said last week.

After the game, Cassara was busting with—WAIT FOR IT—pride over both Lester’s emergence and the amount of time that went into making it possible. “I'm really proud of Nat because he stuck with it," Cassara said. "Certainly not a more deserving guy than Nat Lester—the time he’s put into this program [and] this university."

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

Postgame Buffet: Hofstra 89, Long Island 71 (Or: They’re pretty good with first impressions)

Wha--Indiana's own John Mellencamp featured in a blog that has nothing to do with an Indiana-based school? It has something to do with a general theme of this year's game recap subtitles. Intrigued? Or have I lost my mind? Or both? It's late. Read my blog damnit.

Mo Cassara declared early in his postgame press conference Friday night that the Flying Dutchmen finished the game in sloppy fashion, but the final seconds of the stunningly dominant 89-71 victory over Long Island University provided a perfect bit of symbolism for an evening that turned out far better than anyone’s best-case scenario.

With the shot clock off, the Blackbirds’ Arnold Mayorga missed a 3-pointer and teammate Robinson Odoch Opong grabbed the rebound. The ball eventually ended up in the hands of Kurt Joseph, whose layup was blocked by Stephen Nwaukoni. Arnold Mayorga corralled the loose ball and tried passing it as time expired.

The Dutchmen toyed with the defending Northeast Conference champions during a blistering second half and were threatening to post the program’s most dominant non-conference win over a Division I opponent in 28 years until the Blackbirds’ game-ending 12-5 run. There’s 39 games to go (counting the three CAA Tournament games and six NCAA Tournament games), but…wow.

“About as good as I could imagine,” Cassara said.

Here’s the first postgame buffet of the season—the first one that counts, anyway!

1.) Charles Jenkins was sitting in section 101, but the best player in the building Friday night was Nathaniel Lester, the fifth-year senior who returned from a redshirt campaign but putting on a performance that defied description and raised the hair on the arms of the 3,589 in attendance. Lester, playing his first game in 604 days, gave the Dutchmen the lead for good by scoring all their points in an 11-5 run midway through the first half, scored 17 points in the first half—a total he’d matched or exceeded just 10 times in his first 96 games in a Hofstra uniform—and finished with a career-high 33 points. That shattered his previous best of 22 points, which he recorded in 48 minutes in the double-overtime classic win over James Madison Feb. 18, 2009 a mere 995 days earlier. Lester was the first player not named Charles Jenkins to score at least 30 points in a game for the Dutchmen since Antoine Agudio scored 36 against—warning! irony that’s not really irony alert!—Fordham on Dec. 5, 2007.

We’ll have much more on Lester in tomorrow’s The Day After, but any discussion of the season-opening win begins with him. If Lester plays like this—and looks like someone who was touted by many as the best New York City recruit in the class of 2007—then the Dutchmen are going to surprise even the most optimistic of observers (hi there!).

“I’m really proud of Nat,” Cassara said of Lester, who also had five rebounds and two steals. “There’s certainly not a more deserving guy than Nat Lester [for] the time he’s put into not only this program but this university. I’m just so happy for him.”

2.) Mike Moore gave the Dutchmen a potent 1-2 punch by channeling Jenkins and making up for a quiet first half by playing almost perfect basketball in the second half. Moore was 6-of-6 from the field—including 3-of-3 from 3-point land—and 6-for-10 from the line in scoring 21 points in the final 20 minutes. He single-handedly sparked the Dutchmen’s decisive second half surge by scoring all eight of Hofstra’s points in an 8-1 run that lasted just 74 seconds. Moore finished with 23 points, a total he exceeded just twice last season.

“Charles used to do that last year,” Moore said, referring to the second half outburst. “[In the] offseason I talked to Charles a lot. I’m going to have to step up this year. He told me if it’s not going well in the first half, just stay positive, be a good teammate. Guys patted me on the back in the locker room [and told him it’s) going to be a better [second] half.”

“We need Mike and Nat to really continue to be tough matchups,” Cassara said. “If they can continue to score like that, I think we’re going to continue to improve.”

3.) It will be tough for the Dutchmen to play much better than they did in the second half, when they scored 57 points—the most points a Hofstra team has scored in a half since the Dutchmen put up 57 against Hartford in the quarterfinals of the NAC, err, America East Tournament on Feb. 28, 1998—and shot a blistering 15-of-21 from the field (71.4 percent) and 23-of-32 from the line (71.9 percent). After averaging a mediocre 0.86 points per possession in the first half (32 points on 37 possessions), the Dutchmen scored a remarkable 1.43 points per possession in the second half (57 points on 40 possessions). The Dutchmen scored on 26 of their final 31 possessions and had TWO runs in which they scored on nine straight possessions.

Pretty impressive, especially considering the Dutchmen opened the half by scoring on just three of their first nine possessions and endured a stretch of 11 straight scoreless possessions late in the first half. You wouldn’t believe it by looking at the final score, but the score was tied and Long Island had a chance to take the lead less than two minutes into the second half (C.J. Garner missed two free throws).

“I think we loosened up a little bit at halftime,” Cassara said. “I told everybody relax a little bit, we’re OK. Trust in what we do, believe in what we do. It’s going to start clicking. I told the team I’m really proud of the way they came out of the locker room at halftime.”

4.) The second half run is even more notable considering it happened after the Dutchmen fell into foul trouble. Moussa Kone picked up three fouls in the first 3:14, by which point Lester, Moore, Nwaukoni and David Imes were all playing with two fouls apiece. Yet the Dutchmen remained aggressive on both ends of the floor, thanks in large part to the smaller lineup Cassara fielded—or, as he might call it: I’ve finally got two point guards and I’m going to use them.

The Dutchmen had two point guards for a grand total of three games last year before Dwan McMillan suffered a season-ending eye injury that forced a rusty Brad Kelleher into the lineup full-time. McMillan saw more time at the point than starter Stevie Mejia, who looked a bit rusty in his first game since sitting out last year following his transfer from Rhode Island, and was on the court in place of Mejia as the Dutchmen began pulling away around the midpoint of the second half. McMillan finished with 10 assists, only the fourth time since Carlos Rivera graduated in 2007 that a Hofstra player has reached double digits in assists.

But the rout really began once Mejia joined McMillan on the court for the first time at the 8:14 mark. Over the next 5:26, the Dutchmen outscored Long Island 21-11 to expand their lead to 85-61.

“I thought our defensive intensity from about the 15-minute mark to the 8- or 10-minute mark was terrific,” Cassara said. “We were able to play a smaller lineup for a little while, and as you can tell those guys can really get after the ball. They created some problems for those guys, got a little frustrated [and] missed a couple shots. One thing we do have is pretty good team speed. Off the long rebound we can get the ball to the other end of the court pretty fast, and once we got some confidence and got a couple layups, [it] really opened the game up.”

5.) Contrary to what the preceding 1,250 words might have you believe, it wasn’t a perfect night for the Dutchmen. There was that long drought spanning the two halves that kept the Dutchmen from scoring 250 points (or so). The Dutchmen committed 18 turnovers and shot just 67.6 percent (23-of-34) from the free throw line. And the foul trouble among the bigs once again made Imes (10 points and seven rebounds) the lone presence in the middle for the Dutchmen. Promising center Bryant Crowder was in sweats on the bench due to a coach’s decision, and the Dutchmen will almost surely need him Wednesday against an Oregon State team that features nine players 6-foot-7 or taller.

But still. It was a pretty damn good night, especially for a program trying to build and sustain a fanbase. As assistant AD Tim McMahon noted as he sipped on a celebratory can of root beer—something he will repeat after all 17 home wins, see what I did there?—anyone who showed up for the first time Friday is going to want to come back, including, most certainly, the students who packed the Lions Den.

“One thing about this team is we have a bunch of guys who just haven’t played together a lot,” Cassara said. “[You] see bits and flashes of them starting to get comfortable with each other. Overall I’m pleased with our effort against a very good team and really excited about the crowd and atmosphere and everything we had tonight.”

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Long Island, 11/11)

3: Nathaniel Lester

2: Mike Moore

1: Dwan McMillan

SEASON STANDINGS (duh)

Nathaniel Lester 3

Mike Moore 2

Dwan McMillan 1

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

Five Halftime Thoughts: Long Island

1.) Charles Jenkins didn’t graduate, he just cloned himself and returned as Nathaniel Lester. The fifth-year senior is having an incredible game with 17 points—including 11 in a row to jumpstart a 15-7 run by the Flying Dutchmen—and is just five points shy of his career high, set way back in the double OT classic against James Madison in February 2009. He also has three boards and two steals is looking like someone who waited 604 days to play this game. If Lester reaches the potential he flashed in his first three years, this season could be a lot better than anyone expected.

2.) David Imes was the Mike Moore to Lester’s Jenkins with eight points (on 4-of-6 shooting) and four rebounds and played like the guy everyone is expecting to flirt with double-doubles on a nightly basis. Imes and Lester have combined to play 37 minutes, only one other Dutchman has played more than 13 (Moore).

3.) Of course, since the Dutchmen are only up 32-30, the first half wasn’t a complete thing of beauty for Hofstra. Much as they did last season, the Dutchmen allowed a team to come back late in the first half and turn what could have been a rout into a nailbiter. The Dutchmen went 11 straight possessions without scoring before Shemiye McLendon’s 3-pointer in the final minute as Long Island whittled a nine-point lead to two. Mo Cassara is surely talking about finishing off teams as I type.

4.) Moore and Stevie Mejia have struggled, with Moore racking up as many turnovers and fouls as points (two) and Mejia committing two turnovers and seeing as much time at the point as Dwan McMillan. The Dutchmen need one or both players to find their form in the second half.

5.) Foul trouble is an issue for the Dutchmen, who have collected 11 fouls and gone to the line just twice. Stephen Nwaukoni has two fouls in six minutes, Moussa Kone played just eight minutes and Bryant Crowder is inactive, so Imes will have his hands full in the second half down low. Fortunately for the Dutchmen, Long Island was just 6-of-13 from the line.

6.) Bonus thought: This is a surprisingly electric atmosphere. A win here would go a long way towards not only building confidence for the Dutchmen heading to Oregon State and the meat of the non-conference schedule but also give Cassara quite a boost in generating fan support.

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.