I reminded myself I grew up in Connecticut, where I could have begun rooting for a national power in real time without leaving my hometown until my junior year (UConn had a branch — past tense, it was closed long ago — 15 minutes from my parents’ house). I could have just jumped on the bandwagon after the Huskies’ run to the Elite Eight in 1990, or continued rooting for North Carolina, which is what I did during my junior college years.
I leafed through some of my more melancholy posts here, settling on this piece from June 2012 — just after the Flying Dutchwomen softball team came achingly close to making the College World Series — as the most proper and prescient thing I ever wrote and only partially because I opened it with a link to a Night Ranger song.
Someday, if my wife and I have done our job as parents, our unborn child will carry the burden of yesterday as his or her own. It is part of the collective experience, from newborn to ninety, that bonds Hofstra fans, allows us to absorb the stings of these crushing near-misses and unites us in the belief that someday, the result will be different.
Of all the things to be right about as a parent. Molly, now 10 years old (!!!), was miserable the night of the loss to UNC Wilmington, first because it was too stressful to watch (she ran into her room and asked my wife to text her updates) and then because the loss meant we weren’t going to pull her from school Tuesday to attend the CAA championship game in Washington, D.C.
From her iPad (the iPhone is coming for junior high, which is, Lord help me, fewer than five months away), she sent multiple texts to my wife describing how sad she was. She sidled up to me for a hug shortly after the game, and then asked for another hug before bed. Do you know how many hugs I got when I dropped her off with her great-aunt one day before I underwent surgery in November 2021? ONE!
Of course, no matter how morose we felt, the season wasn’t over, thanks to the Dutchmen earning the automatic bid to the NIT by clinching the CAA regular season championship with their win over Northeastern three weeks ago tomorrow. But even for #olds like us who appreciate what the NIT used to be and what it still represents, falling short of the NCAA Tournament still felt like the unofficial period at the end of the sentence.
The NIT, now run by the NCAA, isn’t in the business of giving decent draws to mid-majors. And the Dutchmen were one-and-done in their previous five trips to a postseason tournament, which served as a reminder of how difficult it is for even the most impressive of teams to reboot after coming so close to an NCAA Tournament berth.
So when we settled in to watch Hofstra face Rutgers on Tuesday night, we did so anticipating the encore would consist of a song which we didn’t love, but to which we knew all the words anyway.
Instead, we got to witness a beloved deep cut encore that reminded us why we began attending these concerts in the first place — right down to the final score:
Hofstra 88, Rutgers 86 (OT)
If you’ve been reading me for 14-plus years, a.) thank you for your patience and b.) you know nothing’s shaped my Hofstra fandom and the belief that quirky magic is always possible quite like the run to the 1994 ECC championship by the Flying Dutchmen (who really WERE the Flying Dutchmen back then!), who entered the conference tournament with a 6-20 record before winning it all with three victories in as many days.
These now 25-win Dutchmen would run laps around that team, and not just because most of them are getting AARP mailings. (That was a depressing sentence to type) But at various points Tuesday night over a two-plus hour period in New Jersey, the Dutchmen extending the 2022-23 season seemed as unlikely as the 1993-94 squad winning a title in Buffalo.
A mid-major hoping to make an NIT run usually needs to draw a power six foe that’s in mail-it-in mode in a mostly empty building. But Rutgers, the first team out of the NCAA Tournament field, raced out to a 14-4 lead fueled by a boisterous crowd of more than 5,000 at Jersey Mike’s Arena. Aaron Estrada missed his first five shots and was 2-of-7 from the field with four turnovers in the first half.
The Dutchmen briefly tied the game late in the first half and took their first lead a little more than seven minutes into the second. But Rutgers went on an 11-2 run, during which Estrada picked up odiously called fourth and fifth fouls, to take a 64-58 lead as Estrada took a seat for possibly the final time in his career.
The Dutchmen got within one point on a Tyler Thomas jumper with 1:30 left, but back-to-back baskets by Caleb McConnell left me lamenting how it was a good season. My wife left the room, but returned after Thomas hit a 3. Cam Spencer, an 89 percent free throw shooter, missed the front end of a 1-and-1 and Nelson Boachie-Yiadom’s putback forced overtime with two seconds left.
The extra session was played at an exhilaratingly high level in which the two teams combined to shoot 76.9 percent (10-of-13). The Dutchmen never trailed but never exhaled until Thomas hit a tie-breaking jumper with nine seconds left and a runner by Derek Simpson touched every part of the rim before bouncing out. Boachie-Yiadom tapped the ball and the buzzer sounded before it landed out of bounds, officially closing out a victory that ended with the same final score as Hofstra’s double overtime win over Northeastern Illinois in the 1994 ECC title game.
Then, like now, this one goes immediately into one of the collective experience that bonds us, but with a smile on our faces. We understand that near-misses and heartache are part of the mid-major experience, but it sure is nice to add a game in which a Hofstra team won to a list of instant classics that features the likes of the football team’s loss to and tie with Towson State and Delaware, respectively, in 1994 and the men’s basketball loss to William & Mary in 2015.
And then, like now, I turned down the opportunity to see an instant classic in person, even if the decision not to brave a two-hour trip at rush hour in the middle of a swirling snowstorm is a more defensible one than going to see Bryan Adams. (We did get to see him and Sting sing “All For Love” for the only time, though) So now Molly will know what it’s like to turn down tickets to an all-time great Hofstra win.
But unlike 1994, when there was no next game to be enjoyed because the ECC winner didn’t earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament or NIT, this victory yields a doubly unexpected pleasure. Not only do the Dutchmen get to play at least one more game, but thanks to renovations at Cincinnati’s arena, Hofstra gets to host a future power conference team (the Bearcats move from the American to the Big 12 after this season) as the lower seed tomorrow.
This allows us another chance to take more pictures and bank more memories of a special season — and to enjoy the collective experience in real time, instead of the hindsight I was already anticipating following the Northeastern game.
Since Molly was born, I’ve enjoyed seeing the continued evolution of how Hofstra fandom is shared with loved ones. I still ask my Dad about the line on a Hofstra game, and any disappointment at Molly outgrowing taking her stuffies to a game is surpassed by the delight my wife and I feel watching Molly and her best friend scream their lungs out for the Flying Dutchmen.
And the postgame sight Tuesday of Speedy Claxton — an America East champion at Hofstra and an NBA champion with the Spurs — wrapping Jaquan Carlos in a euphoric bear hug and the relief on Estrada’s face only confirmed how I felt watching players interact with fans after the win over Northeastern (full disclosure: Molly and her best friend got a picture with Estrada): That we get an opportunity here to watch players and coaches care about and savor this as much as we do, even of some of those responsible for this year’s success are likely to accept opportunities next season with programs at a higher level.
There’s no turning down an NIT bid because it’s not good enough, or players taking a seat for an NIT game because they’re already fully focused on their next destination. Right now, they care about Hofstra and the chance to keep winning together. This means a lot to them, and it’s always good, as fans, to feel like the investment is something close to being reciprocated. The 2022-23 team will be bonded as Dutchmen, regardless of how this season ends (it would be wonderfully quirky and magical to make the NIT final four the year it moves from Madison Square Garden to Las Vegas) and of where they play and coach thereafter.
The last few days of relishing the win over Rutgers and looking forward to Cincinnati have shifted my fandom-summarizing thoughts from those following the softball team’s elimination from the 2012 NCAA Tournament to those of the sheer unexpected joy of watching Charles Jenkins’ senior season in 2010-11. These are experiences that need to be cherished in real time, so that they can be properly reflected upon and appreciated later, regardless of how future editions of the Dutchmen fare.
I’ve also been reminded we are doing our job as parents by offering Molly the promise of tomorrow and an understanding of what the collective experience is like for Hofstra fans — in which the question we ask is why we never chose to root for someone else, but why would we ever consider it?
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