Postgame Buffet: Florida Atlantic 62, Hofstra 60 (Or: Another Rainy Night Without A Win Over FAU)

It didn't actually rain during the FAU game last year. Writer's license, baby.

From the foul line and just as the buzzer sounded, Shemiye McLendon volleyball tapped the ball into the basket, more out of disgust than a frantic last-ditch attempt to send the game to overtime. Afterward, Mike Moore remained on the floor for close to a minute, clutching a head that hurt as much from the final result as the fall he had just absorbed.

Players and the announced crowd of 1,436 alike trotted out of the Hofstra Arena slowly, as if dazed by the late offensive surge by Florida Atlantic and the game-winning layup by Alex Tucker with 2.5 seconds left that lifted the CAA champion Owls to a 62-60 victory over the Flying Dutchmen Tuesday night.

A little while later, in the interview room, the bottles of water on the podium remained unopened and untouched. Those in the room who did take a swig found it decidedly unsatisfying.

“This water tastes terrible,” Hofstra assistant AD Tim McMahon said, morosely clutching the bottle of water instead of his third celebratory can of root beer of the season.

A little while later, in the car, my wife said “That one took everything out of me.”

A loss two days before Thanksgiving left everyone feeling a whole lot like we’ve felt on the first weekend of March the last 10 seasons. The Dutchmen squandered a nine-point second half lead and, thanks to another avert-your-gaze game offensively and an atypical defensive collapse in the final few minutes, an excellent opportunity to continue establishing themselves as a CAA sleeper as well as to build momentum for this weekend’s tournament in Rhode Island.

“That’s a game we really should have won,” Mo Cassara said. “That’s a game we should have won. We had a lot of careless turnovers, a lot of just lackadaisical play. And it’s something that we’ve got to get better at and we’ve got to continue to learn. I told the guys in the locker room we’ve got to find a way now to bounce back. We’ve got to find a way to learn from some of the things we didn’t do well.”

The more Cassara spoke, the less bleak things sounded. Well, sorta.

“That loss sucked,” I blurted out somewhere along Hempstead Turnpike.

It sure did, even If most of what ailed the Dutchmen Tuesday seems fixable. Here’s five reasons why Florida Atlantic’s second nail-biting win over the Dutchmen at Hofstra in the last 50 weeks stung a lot more than the first:

1.) In most narrow defeats, the initial instinct is to declare the losing team was one play away from winning. That’s not usually true. But it was Tuesday night. If just ONE more thing went the Dutchmen’s way, then everyone almost surely would have been smiling and cracking open those cans of root beer and bottles of water in the interview room.

If Moore didn’t begin his bizarre night (20 points on 5-of-11 shooting and 9-of-9 from the free throw line with seven rebounds, three assists and four turnovers in just 29 minutes) by missing a defensive assignment, allowing a 3-pointer to Raymond Taylor and getting yanked almost immediately by Cassara, maybe the Dutchmen win.

If Nathaniel Lester shoots 2-for-13, instead of 1-for-13, or David Imes shoots 2-for-6 instead of 1-for-6 or Dwan McMillan shoots 1-for-5 instead of 0-for-5, maybe the Dutchmen win. And if the Dutchmen make just ONE stop down the stretch—or McLendon gets his fingertips on the ball during the frantic scrum following Lester’s three-quarters court pass a split second earlier—maybe they at least force overtime.

“If we go back and look at a lot of the things we didn’t do well, they’re pretty correctible things,” Cassara said.

2.) The defense was certainly the most frustrating thing to go wrong. Florida Atlantic opened the second half by missing seven straight shots on its first five possessions, yet mounted a 13-0 run immediately after that to turn a nine-point deficit into a four-point lead.

Even with that surge, Florida Atlantic was just 8-of-23 from the field in its first 27 possessions. But the Owls not only finished the game by scoring baskets on their final six possessions over a span of 3:10, they did so on 6-of-6 shooting. The defensive breakdown was particularly galling since it happened a mere three days after the Dutchmen held off St. Francis by limiting the Terriers to two points on their final nine possessions.

“We got a little lackadaisical on defense—it wasn’t that we weren’t trying, it’s just that we didn’t execute,” Cassara said. “They executed better than we did and they got some wide-open shots and they made them count. Something that we clearly have got to do a better job of is finding a better way to defend down the stretch.”

3.) Cassara said Saturday the Dutchmen were not a very good offensive team, yet they managed to regress Tuesday. Lester’s 1-for-13 effort was the worst shooting performance by a Dutchman player with at least 10 attempts from the field since the program joined the CAA. Our Man Corny and Woody Souffrant each endured a 1-for-11 performance, but Vines was 1-for-9 from 3-point land against Charlotte Nov. 24, 2009 and Souffrant was 1-of-4 from beyond the arc against UNC Wilmington Jan. 4, 2003. Lester, whose only basket came on a tip-in, took just one 3-pointer.

Lester is 6-for-27 in his last two games after opening the season by going 15-of-23. Imes, meanwhile, is 3-for-12 and McMillan is 1-for-9 in the last two games. Still, it could be worse: In discussing the Dutchmen’s offensive execution, Cassara didn’t pull a John McKay and declare he was in favor of it (Google it, DC!).

“You look at some of the shooting lines of some of our guys and we just seem to not be able to make some easy shots around the basket,” Cassara said. “I’m not really quite sure what that is. Sometimes it’s physical, sometimes it’s mental. I think right now it’s a little mental for us. I think we’re just missing a lot of easy shots.

“We weren’t able to execute and that’s something we’ve really got to work on—our offensive execution.”

Said Moore: “I just think that we’ve just got to step up and make shots. We got some rebounds, but I think we’ve just got to step up and make shots. That’s the bottom line.”

4.) Despite the final result (and the preceding 1,000 words), plenty went right for the Dutchmen last night, which alternately made the loss a tougher one to absorb while providing some reason for optimism going forward.

The Dutchmen, who didn’t record their first offensive rebound Saturday until 33 minutes had elapsed, pulled down an eye-popping 20 offensive boards Tuesday, the most against a Division I team under Cassara (the Dutchmen had 21 offensive boards against Farmingdale in last year’s opener). Now, a team that is pulling down a lot of offensive rebounds is almost surely shooting poorly, and the Dutchmen were just 5-5 with four blowout losses the last 10 times they recorded at least 20 offensive rebounds in a game under Tom Pecora.

But the Dutchmen displayed impressive tenacity in recording at least two offensive rebounds on six possessions and converting those into points four times—including both times they pulled down three offensive rebounds in a possession.

Speaking of rebounding, Lester had a career-high 12 rebounds and has 21 in the last two games, his most ever over a two-game span. Imes finished with nine rebounds, six of which he pulled down during a second half in which he was ferocious on the glass. The raw Moussa Kone (four rebounds, two blocks) and Stephen Nwaukoni (an old-fashioned 3-point play and three rebounds) looked more fluid in trying to finish on offense.

Moore, Mejia and McLendon almost provided enough offense for the Dutchmen in going 15-of-30 from the field and combining for 48 points, including the final 18. Ice Ice Shemiye scored eight of his 12 points in the first half after coming in early for Moore and drained another clutch shot with a fallaway jumper that tied the game at 58 with 1:00 left.

Mejia had by far his best game on offense and channeled Loren Stokes and Jason Hernandez in scoring 14 points. More importantly, he displayed impressive leadership by taking responsibility, unprompted, for the late-game defensive lapses.

“I felt like those three last plays were kind of my fault,” Mejia said. “I feel like I’ve got to talk to my teammates more and do better communicating on defense. Those last three plays, I was involved in all three of them when they made the shot. So we’ve got to talk and we’ve got to do a better job.”

5.) The task now for Cassara is an unenviable one: Fix what went wrong last night while making sure this doesn’t fester going into this weekend’s three-games-in-44-hours stretch in the Ticket City Classic in Rhode Island against formidable foes Rhode Island, Cleveland State and Boston University. The hope is Tuesday night pays dividends—if not this weekend, then at some point this season.

“We’ve got three really challenging games this weekend,” Cassara said. “It’s going to be a physical challenge for us, but I think it’s going to be a real mental challenge for us. How do we bounce back? And how do we learn from this? That’s something we talk about a lot and it’s something that’s going to help us improve.”

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Florida Atlantic, 11/22)

3: Mike Moore

2: Shemiye McLendon

1: Stevie Mejia

SEASON STANDINGS

Mike Moore 9

Nathaniel Lester 5

Shemiye McLendon 4

David Imes 3

Dwan McMillan 2

Stevie Mejia 1

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

Postgame Buffet: Hofstra 63, St. Francis 59 (Or: Cool as ice)

Except much better! (Also, I've seen this movie. Not in the theatre, amazingly enough)

As a Division I basketball coach, it’s Mo Cassara’s job to be the hard-ass who finds flaws with every performance, no matter how perfect it may appear in the boxscore or on the scoreboard. But while he had plenty of fodder Saturday afternoon, he could barely feign even a minimal amount of annoyance following the Flying Dutchmen’s 63-59 win over St. Francis.

The Dutchmen missed too many seemingly easy shots, missed too many free throws, had more turnovers than assists—even though they had only eight turnovers—and needed more than 32 minutes to pull down their first offensive rebound in a herky-jerky offensive effort. But less than 72 hours after flying 3,000 miles from Oregon, they got contributions from everyone on the floor in the final five minutes in clamping down on and finally putting away a good St. Francis squad.

It was the type of effort that won’t be enough to beat the top echelon CAA teams, or maybe even enough Florida Atlantic at the Arena tomorrow night. But it was a win that builds and reveals the type of character necessary to compete come March.

“We didn’t have our ‘A’ game tonight, I don’t think anybody would question that statement,” Cassara said. “But we found a way to win and that’s part of learning as a team, growing as a team and we made some plays down the stretch [when] we had to. So I’m proud of that.

“It’s been a long week for us, all the way out to the west coast, hard-fought, tough game, all the way back and playing an early game on Saturday. I don’t like to make excuses and I’m not making excuses, but it’s been a long week and we found a way to go 1-1 and that was the worst-case scenario for us. I’m pleased about that.”

What else was there to be pleased about Saturday? Find out here in the postgame buffet!

1,) Sure, it’s only November and St. Francis was picked to finish 11th in the 12-team Northeast Conference, but there are no points for style and good teams find ways to win fugly games like this—just as the Dutchmen did last season in going 8-3 in games decided by six points or less and winning seven games in which they trailed by double digits. I’ll go into this in greater detail in The Day After (which, of course, won't be out until Tuesday, and that's if I'm lucky—yeah I suck), but a win like this is another indication the Dutchmen have the type of collective calmness and maturity that could come in really handy in a CAA that is in a complete and chaotic transition.

The Dutchmen won despite going just 19-of-49 from the field, making just 23 of their 36 free throw attempts, receiving no points from the center position for the second game in a row, recording assists on just six field goals and averaging just 0.91 points per possession (63 points in 69 possessions).

“It was evident tonight we just didn’t really have our legs,” Cassara said. “We weren’t really clicking. I’ve been doing this 14 years, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many missed easy shots around the basket. What we continued to do is put pressure on our defense—instead of going up five, seven, nine [with] a layup here, a layup there, two free throws here, we just kept putting pressure on our defense. It was one of those nights the ball wasn’t going in the basket for us.”

Over the last 5:32, the Dutchmen were just 2-of-10 from the field and missed three of six free throw attempts, including two by Mike Moore that would put the game away with 14 seconds left. But that overworked Dutchmen defense limited St. Francis to two points in its last nine possessions.

“I thought our defense got really improved,” Cassara said. “We went to some zone and it actually worked pretty well for us. We found a way to win. I’m a coach, most of you know me, I’m not super pleased, but certainly happy that we found a way to win.”

2.) Almost as importantly, the Dutchmen showed Saturday they are no longer a one-man team. That is in no way a knock on Charles Jenkins, who was so damn good that absolutely nobody—on the court or in the stands—could be blamed for waiting for Number 22 to take over and lead the Dutchmen to victory. But without Jenkins, there’s no obvious go-to guy, which allows EVERYONE to be the go-to guy.

Moore looked like The Man in the boxscore—23 points, 10 rebounds and just one turnover in what might have been his best all-around performance at Hofstra; Moore’s high in points in his three double-doubles last year was 20—and had a trio of sequences in the second half in which he went all Jobu on the Dutchmen. With the Dutchmen down 52-49 midway through the half, Moore had rebounds on four straight St. Francis possessions and went coast-to-coast for a layup on the third one to pull Hofstra within one.

Less than two minutes later, Moore finally pulled down the Dutchmen’s first offensive rebound and put his own miss back to put the Dutchmen up 54-52. And with 2:38 to play, Moore rebounded a Dwan McMillan miss, set as if he was going to pass the ball back out, realized the shot clock was below five and drained a flat-footed 15-foot jumper from the left corner to extend the Dutchmen’s lead to 61-57.

“Coach looks to me as one of the leaders on the court, so when it’s crunch time, I feel I need to make a couple plays and my teammates put me in good position to do so,” Moore said.

3.) Cassara didn’t make a substitution after the 6:02 mark, yet as pivotal as Moore was during that stretch, the most valuable player on the court for the Dutchmen was someone who—SPOILER ALERT!—didn’t even end up among the 3 Stars Of The Game.

Shemiye McLendon—or, as he shall be known from now on, Ice Ice Shemiye—continued his uncanny knack for clutch play by hitting his first basket of the game to put the Dutchmen ahead for good at 59-57 with 4:21 left, pulling down THREE offensive rebounds in the final 1:59 and stealing the ball underneath the St. Francis basket as the Terriers tried to set up for the game-tying or game-winning shot with four seconds left. McLendon then drained two free throws to provide the final margin of victory, the third time he’s hit two free throws in the final five seconds to either force overtime or seal a win for the Dutchmen.

Ice Ice Shemiye took just two shots—none in the first half—before the game-ending stretch, but the Dutchmen don’t win without his last-minute contributions. “Big offensive rebounds, a tough shot and then obviously two free throws—he’s done that since he got here,” Cassara said.

4.) While we’re handing out nicknames, the most notable thing about the late game lineup may have been the presence of Dwan McMillan—i.e. the “Whirling Dervish”— at point guard instead of Stevie Mejia. While Mejia had nine points, he committed three turnovers and had no assists as his assist-to-turnover ratio dropped to 4:12. The hunch is that Mejia’s job is in no real jeopardy, but McMillan (eight points, two assists and two turnovers in 27 minutes) has certainly staked a claim to 25-plus minutes a night by continuing his early season audition to replace Joey Rodriguez as That Guy Who Drives Everyone Crazy Except The Fans Of His School, All Of Whom Think He’s The Bees Knees.

McMillan, three nights removed from getting booed every time he touched the ball in the second half at Oregon State, drew a flagrant foul when he absorbed an elbow from Dre Calloway late in the first half. McMillan reacted by bouncing off the floor and clapping his hands like he was a certain demographic at an afternoon screening of Twilight Breaking Dawn (that’s just to make sure my wife and Loyal Reader Missy are paying attention!). Said the aforementioned wife: “That’s not going to help him get that call the next time.”

Over the final four minutes, the Whirling Dervish forced a held ball at midcourt with 2:44 left and the Dutchmen clinging to a two-point lead. That preceded Moore’s putback of McMillan’s missed layup, which was one of two wild-looking layup attempts that missed the mark in the waning moments for McMillan.

“He was doing a good job of pushing the ball and I thought he could get by his guy and hopefully drop it off,” Cassara said. “He got by his guy a few times. He couldn’t get that extra pass tonight. Every loose ball was kind of tipped. I thought we had a layup and we didn’t.

“I like our bench, I think we’ve got some good pieces coming off the bench,” Cassara said. “We’ve got some scoring in Shemiye, some size in Stephen [Nwaukoni] and some energy in Dwan. I think any coach would be happy with those three characteristics coming off the bench….it was top to bottom today.”

5.) Nathaniel Lester and David Imes were generally quiet in the final few minutes, but each had key stretches earlier in the half and made pivotal contributions that might not show up in the boxscore as time wound down. Lester, who had 13 points and nine rebounds (including six in the first half), hit his first two shots of the second half to stem the momentum St. Francis had gained at the end of the first half, when the Terriers held the Dutchmen scoreless from the field in the final 3:20. Lester missed his final seven shots of the game, but gave the Dutchmen a boost by playing through an ankle injury in the final two minutes.

Imes had only six points and three rebounds, but his block with 5:25 left and the score tied led to McLendon’s go-ahead basket and his steal with 1:38 to play preserved the Dutchmen’s two-point lead. He also had a three-point play—his only points of the half—during an 8-0 run surrounding the first media timeout.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. St. Francis, 11/19)

3: Mike Moore

2: Nathaniel Lester

1: Dwan McMillan

SEASON STANDINGS

Mike Moore 6

Nathaniel Lester 5

David Imes 3

Dwan McMillan 2

Shemiye McLendon 2

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

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.