Bits and Bytes: The Conference Shuffle

Drexel in the Big 5! I'm such an idiot!

The headline to the article by Dick “best toupee in sports journalism” Weiss in the Sunday Daily News doesn’t leave much room for interpretation: “New conference home is what Hofstra needs to take hoops program to the next level.” Like the rest of us, Weiss doesn’t know exactly how this will happen, only that it should.

My favorite part of the article was the ancient photo of Pecora the News used. No, not one of him from Adelphi, but one in which Aurimas Kieza is in the background. I really would have been impressed if they managed to find one of Pecora with, say, Chris McRae in the background. Oh yeah. Bet you didn’t think you’d read that name today did you?

The most interesting part, meanwhile, was Pecora saying he worries the CBI and CIT will give the NCAA—which now owns the NIT—the excuse to turn the NIT into the JV tournament for the Big Six and relegate the mid-majors to the pay-to-plays.

That makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate Pecora still toeing the company line about why Hofstra didn’t accept a bid to either tourney. But still: Pecora still thought the CBI and CIT were good ideas for a team such as his in February. And if these fledgling tournaments that may admittedly be to college basketball what the Garden State Bowl was to college football were good enough for Old Dominion, then they should have been good enough for Hofstra.

Enough about that. A couple other bits and bytes about the conference shuffle we pondered last week:

—Thanks to Gonzo Hofstra Fan, a Loyal Reader who correctly points out that Drexel is not a member of the Big 5. Penn is, along with Villanova, Temple, St. Joseph’s and LaSalle. However, in my defense, Wikipedia—which is never wrong—states that Drexel has become something of an unofficial honorary (is that redundant?) member of the Big 5 and that it is part of the City 6, a term I’d never before heard. I hope Drexel does join the Big 5 and that the schools are still referred to as the Big 5. That would be very A-10ish.

—Isolated rumble or the beginning of the nationwide seismic conference changes? Campbell is leaving the Atlantic Sun for the Big South. Hmmm.

—The Patriot League going the full scholarship route in football in order to get back a school that never should have left sounds good in theory, but a closer read of Lehigh Football Nation’s excellent and in-depth post about the financial difficulties several Patriot League schools are experiencing makes me less certain that Fordham will be able to return. Schools that are pleading poverty can’t very easily add scholarships to football programs that are probably losing money already. An obvious compromise would be to accept Fordham back into the Patriot in everything but football, but does that solve anything for a school that looks as if it’s ready to make football its marquee sport? Might it be better in the long run for Fordham to find an all-sports home rather than going independent in football or trying to find a conference where it is not a geographic fit, a la Stony Brook in the Big South?

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com. And join the Defiantly Dutch group at Facebook today!

You down on the OOC? (updated)

Remember when people were actually unsure what O.P.P. meant? Ahh the innocent summer of 1991!

Been wondering for decades just how the Hofstra men’s basketball team would match up against Old Westbury, that Division III school off Route 106/107? Good news! This is your year!

Hoping to tune in to CBS on the second Sunday of March and see Greg Gumble, Clark Kellogg and Co. declare Hofstra earned an at-large bid because of an arduous non-conference schedule? Uhh…not so likely.

Hofstra finally released the out-of-conference schedule Monday. If you’re thinking to yourself “Self, wasn’t the entire schedule released a lot earlier last year?” you’re right, though I can’t seem to find a link to prove it.

And if you suspected the schedule would be light on March-worthy foes, well, you were right again. All caveats apply, of course, about how a team’s performance last year does not foretell its performance this year. But the eight Division I teams Hofstra is guaranteed to face posted a combined winning percentage of just .432 (108-142) last year.

That collective percentage is considerably boosted by the presence of OOC headliners Clemson (which lost to Villanova in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and finished 24-10) and UMass (which reached the NIT final and finished 25-11). The other six Division I foes went an anemic 59-121 (.328) last year. The news is a little better among the six teams Hofstra could face in the final two rounds of the Charleston Classic: They went 108-86 last year, a .557 winning percentage, and three teams (Temple, TCU and Southern Illinois) reached the postseason.

So why, three years after Hofstra’s OOC was blamed for its criminal omission from the NCAA Tournament, are the Flying Dutchmen seemingly content to participate in metro NYC’s version of the Big Five?

As a reader noted below (whoohoo! someone’s reading—and after midnight, to boot!), visiting Manhattan and Stony Brook and hosting Fordham, St. Francis and Iona might generate a little local interest and provide an attendance boost at Hofstra Arena. But it won’t do much for the Flying Dutchmen’s at-large candidacy—NCAA or NIT.

Maybe the meager OOC is just bad luck: In June, it was reported that Hofstra was going to play in the Puerto Rico Classic, which will feature national runner-up Memphis as well as Elite Eight participant Xavier, but that’s obviously not the case.

Maybe it’s the coaching staff hoping to avoid a repeat of last year, when the Flying Dutchmen—adjusting to the departures of Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera—were 2-8 (including a December loss to UNC-Wilmington) by New Years Day and didn’t begin to find their form until it was way too late. Of course, Hofstra’s out-of-conference slate last year—headlined by 2007 NCAA Tournament teams Holy Cross and Virginia Tech and featuring a collective winning percentage of .493—wasn’t exactly a Fang Mitchell special, either.

Perhaps it’s a way to make good on the goals expressed to season ticket holders in last week’s letter from Tom Pecora and Jack Hayes. A 20-win season would put the Flying Dutchmen in prime position to return to the postseason (and yes, the CBI counts, even if accepting a bid cost so much money that everyone this side of New Jersey Tech declined an invite last year). Only 12 of the 101 schools that won 20 games last season did not receive a postseason bid (UNC-Wilmington was one of the unlucky dozen).

I mentioned last week I’m no good at math, but I know enough to know that 8-3 in OOC play (7-3 before New Years Day and a win in the Bracket Buster) plus 11-7 in the CAA plus a win in the CAA tourney equals 20 wins.

Or maybe it’s more cynical: Hofstra fattening up on a schedule that would scare no one except maybe John Thompson because winning more games is good business sense…for the university as well as the Flying Dutchmen coaching staff. As we learned last week, it’s tough to raise ticket prices when you go 12-18.

And coaches on winning teams get lucrative raises or new jobs. I’d love to see Pecora finish his career at Hofstra as much as anybody else, but he’d be crazy not to try and parlay a 20-win season into another contract extension…or even a flirtation with the one local school that would really weaken Hofstra’s OOC and will almost certainly be looking for another coach by March. (Mocking St. John’s basketball—there’s a tradition we couldn't have envisioned 15 years ago)