Seven reasons Dutchmen are headed for seventh heaven

Seventh heaven isn't too far away...only need to win four games in four days...no matter what the haters say Hofstra will find a way yeaahhhhhh! Lay off me, a lack of sleep has made me delirious.

Here we are: The risk/reward weekend of the season. The odds are the Flying Dutchmen will head home disappointed, but how can we not spend the days leading up to the CAA Tournament pondering the awesomeness of the Dutchmen playing—and winning—on Monday? How can we not imagine what it’d be like if our beloved Dutchmen continue their sizzling second half by mounting the greatest Cinderella run in CAA history? How can we not daydream about how to storm the court and Tweet, all at the same time (OK, I won’t be storming the court)?

Pure euphoria or the poignant emptiness of knowing it’ll take an entire season just to get back to this point—there is no in between. Most awesome weekend of the year. Bring it on.

The games have already started and Towson is in the midst of its annual “Where the hell has this been all season” annihilation of its first round foe, so here are seven reasons why you should believe the Dutchmen will be dancing on Monday night, followed by tournament predictions. Stop back in a bit for a Q&A with Tom Pecora as well as a feature on the 1993 East Carolina team that won it all as a seven seed.

And if you like me, even just a little bit, root for the Dutchmen tonight, as my wife and I are VERY tentatively planning to head down tomorrow morning as long as the Dutchmen are playing. Either way, stop by here and visit our Twitter account all weekend long as we rant and rave about the Dutchmen and the CAA Tournament. And whatever you do, make sure to bookmark Litos as he provides his usual awesome coverage of the tourney.

1.) Charles Jenkins: No seven seed has ever had the player of the year. Jenkins is playing like a man possessed and became a true superstar with his effort against Northeastern in which he overcame a poor performance (by his standards) and willed the Dutchmen to a huge road victory. He’s been driven all year by the memory of missing the last shot against Old Dominion in the quarterfinals and knows his legacy is missing only one thing at this point.

2.) The supporting cast isn’t half-bad either: Jenkins scored more than half the Dutchmen’s points (27 of 51) in that loss to the Monarchs. Tom Pecora used 11 players, six of whom were on the court for 15 minutes or less—including senior starters Arminas Urbutis, Darren Townes and Greg Johnson. But these Dutchmen have had at least three players in double figures in seven of the last 10 games and have begun to roll with the tight seven-man rotation that has been the trademark of Pecora’s best teams.

3.) This sizzling run is sustainable: The Richmond Coliseum is the cooler—literally, according to Gary Moore—for hot-shooting teams, but the Dutchmen are well-positioned for a run even if they don’t continue to average 83 points a game. They rank first in both field goal percentage defense, 3-point field goal percentage defense, blocks and steals and second in rebounding margin. It’s worth noting the Dutchmen are only 10th in the league in defensive rebounding, but that is largely a product of their miserable January. In their last 10 games, the Dutchmen have had 148 more defensive rebounds than their opponents have had offensive rebounds. Also notable: The Dutchmen are first in the league in free throw percentage, a huge factor in any close tournament game.

4.) Pecora: Yeah, the critics are mad because he hasn’t led the Dutchmen to the NCAA Tournament, or because he doesn’t use a clipboard, or because he was in a bad mood one day and didn’t wave to the crowd, or because he coaches basketball and not football. But he is a flat-out great coach who is a master at getting his teams prepared and focused and playing their best ball at this time of the year. This is the third time in the last six seasons the Dutchmen have ended the regular season on a 9-1 run. The Dutchmen are 3-1 in Friday first round games under Pecora and 5-3 overall in their first game of the tournament. He is ready for anything that happens during a game this weekend and for any opponent the Dutchmen might face.

5.) Confidence: I’m a bit biased (no! really?) but it’s been at least four seasons since I’ve seen a Dutchmen team bursting with this type of good karma and mojo. Winning five straight league games by at least 10 points (only the 12^th time a CAA team has finished the regular season by winning at least five straight conference games) tends to do that to a team. Confidence is a weird, delicate thing, seemingly impossible to regain once lost yet seemingly impossible to lose once things get rolling.

6.) Blissful ignorance of youth: Halil Kanacevic and Chaz Williams will not be intimidated by the big stage nor by the long odds facing the Dutchmen. Kanacevic is fresh off an outstanding performance against Northeastern big men Manny Adako and Nkem Ojougboh and, if the Dutchmen get to Monday, won’t be fazed by facing a Gerald Lee or Larry Sanders. Williams may be the most important player for the Dutchmen this weekend. If he can revert back to his December/early January form and channel his inner Jason Hernandez by hitting threes while efficiently running the offense, the Dutchmen will be doubly dangerous.

7.) It’s destiny baby!: This Dutchmen team also reminds me of the 1993-94 team that couldn’t buy a basket for the first half of the season before it started lighting up the scoreboard (that team averaged 79 points per game in its final 11 games after reaching 79 points just twice in the first 18 games) on its way to an unlikely conference championship. Obviously the old ECC is a whole lot different than the CAA, but there’s just something about this team that has me thinking a deep run is possible and that the Dutchmen can finally become the Cinderella their conference has lacked since 1995 (a team seeded first or second has won the title every year except 2008, when our pals at Mason won as the three seed). Last year was about convincing ourselves that three or four wins were possible if A, B and C happened. Not this year.

The Northeastern draw is tough, but you can’t ask for more than a true neutral site game in the quarterfinals (see? Told you I’d come up with reasons why it was better to face Northeastern than ODU!). If the Dutchmen get to Sunday, they’ll face either William & Mary (against whom they had sizable second half leads in both January games), Drexel (whom they beat by 11 in Hempstead three weeks ago) or James Madison (whom they beat by 20 in Virginia at the beginning of February). And if they get to Monday, they’ll be running on more adrenaline and momentum than any finalist in memory. And if they don’t, I’ll be kicking myself all summer for hexing it!

***

Some blog bias-fueled tournament predictions that are sure to be wrong!

FIRST ROUND

8 Towson over 9 UNCW: You can check my Twitter, I predicted this before the Tigers sent the Seahawks back to Wilmington.

5 VCU over 12 Delaware: The Mike Pegues Bowl (look it up, kiddies!). This one may be even uglier than Towson-UNCW. Do you remember when Delaware was an elite program that hosted the conference tournament and seemingly had a bye into the semifinals every year? Yeah me neither.

7 Hofstra over 10 Georgia State: Duh. Boy will I look like a bigger jackass than usual if the Dutchmen get knocked out in the first round after I spent all week coming up with reasons why they’ll win it all. Will probably be closer than we prefer, since Georgia State is a nightmare on Friday (3-1 in first round games and should have beaten William & Mary as the 12 seed two years ago), but the Dutchmen hang on.

11 James Madison over 6 Drexel: This will anger my new friend and fello CAA Hoops contributor MetSox, but the Dukes are the scariest of tournament teams—a squad with high Division I talent but effort issues. Just the type of team to turn it on this weekend (hi Towson!). And Drexel, which lost to—IRONY THAT IS NOT REALLY IRONY ALERT!!!—Towson last year in the 6 vs. 11 game, is in the midst of another late-season fade.

QUARTERFINALS

1 ODU over 8 Towson: Another game that will probably be closer than we imagine, but with every win the Monarchs’ at-large chances increase. They’re not losing to the Tigers and Pat Kennedy’s awesome toupee.

5 VCU over 4 George Mason: Rams win by 75, paste eaters crash the CAA Zone complaining about how things would be different if the tournament wasn’t in Richmond. Honestly, is there anything funnier than Mason fans complaining about unfair advantages? (Can’t say this enough: They’re not all bad, swapping emails with the more intelligent ones is fun) Seriously, this will be the best and most entertaining game of the tournament, and given the history of Jim Larranaga-coached teams in the tourney, I won’t be shocked at all if the Patriots get their crap together and run off two or three wins. But it’s hard to make up for a season of foolishness in one weekend. Especially when the refs make it an 8-on-5 game, muahahahaha.

7 Hofstra over 2 Northeastern: Duh x 2. This matchup does scare me, because there is less than no chance the senior-laden Huskies overlook the Dutchmen. And I can easily foresee a scenario in which the Dutchmen are bussing back to Hempstead in silence around 10 p.m. tomorrow night. But here’s my favorite stat of the year: In the two games between the two teams this season, the Dutchmen pulled down 58 defensive rebounds while Northeastern had just 10 offensive boards. It’s another close one but Kanacevic has a monster game and Williams hits a couple huge threes in the second half.

11 James Madison over 3 William & Mary: Two straight years the 11 seed makes the semifinal!

SEMIFINALS

ODU over VCU: Another classic, but just like last Saturday, the Rams blow a late lead with sloppy play and the Monarchs eke out a win.

Hofstra over James Madison: Duh x 3. Honestly, if the bracket breaks this way, I may not be able to contain myself. Scorching Dutchmen blow out the tired Dukes.

CHAMPIONSHIP

Hofstra over ODU: Duh x 4. All of Virginia turns out to cheer on the Monarchs and razz the damn Noo Yawkers, but there is no stopping a team of destiny as the Dutchmen become the first squad ever to win four games in four days and the first northern school to win the CAA. Our Man Corny hits a bunch of threes in the second half as the Dutchmen create some distance in a close game. Charles Jenkins flings the ball skyward as time expires and all seven Hofstra fans storm the court. Watch for me. I’ll be the guy jumping on Pecora’s back and Tweeting with my free hand as he tries to make his way to Blaine Taylor for the post-game handshake.

As usual, I retain the right to say I was right if Hofstra loses in the quarterfinals and its opponent wins it all!

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

Bits and Bytes: CAA Tournament

The clock is ticking...

Cliches exist for weekends like this. There really is no tomorrow. It’s all on the line. Win or go home. The cream rises to the top. Four months of basketball come down to four games. Et cetera, et cetera.

There’s no more rationalizing a defeat with “they’re just a little flawed, it’s still good, it’s still good.” The season is officially a tightrope and one more defeat (at least if it occurs before Monday) likely sends the Flying Dutchmen into the abyss of the off-season (or, perhaps, the CBI or CIT…which, you know, may be abysses of their own).

It’s the cruelest—remember last year, when the Dutchmen were the first team to tip off and the first one to go home?—yet potentially most rewarding weekend of the season, and the mere math suggests the odds are the ride home to Hempstead will be a long one. But everyone’s facing the same 1-in-12 shot, so why can’t the Dutchmen be the 1?

Sure, it’s a lot to expect four wins in four days, but this is the season in which all hell will break loose in a tournament that typically goes according to chalk. I refuse to believe everything will unfold in fairly predictable fashion after a crazy regular season.

It’s largely a matter of apples and oranges, but I think back a couple months and how an unpredictable NFL regular season beget a playoffs in which both top seeds were wiped out in the conference semifinals and an afterthought no. 5 seed fell to a perennial contender in a thrilling Super Bowl. (Hmm…in that case, I guess the Dutchmen would fall to Mason in the championship. Aaaaaargh!)

So how do the Dutchmen end up the Arizona Cardinals, plus one? They need Greg Johnson—who isn’t Carlos Rivera and isn’t a 40-minute-a-game point guard—to mimic Rivera’s nearly perfect play in the 2006 CAA Tournament. Tom Pecora is right to presume the Dutchmen will need big performances from their big men, but a combined 20 productive minutes a game out of the inconsistent Dane Johnson and the still-healing Miklos Szabo is essential to any title hopes.

Nathaniel Lester needs to rediscover his form and confidence of early-to-mid February, when he was a consistent double-double threat and the wingman to Charles Jenkins. Speaking of Jenkins, he doesn’t have to shoot 50 percent four straight games for the Dutchmen to win, but he does have to remain productive in other facets of the game even if he’s struggling from the field. Like he did against Fairfield, when he was 4-of-17 from the field but had nine assists and three steals.

Cornelius Vines and/or Zygis Sestokas need to be hot all weekend, because it’s going to be very tough to win a game in which neither one of them is draining multiple 3-pointers. Tony Dennison needs to have a game in which he scores more points than he did all of February. Considering he scored three points in February, I figure that’ll happen.

I like the Dutchmen’s chances because they’re fundamentally sound, extremely well-tested in close games and deeper than any other team in the field. Also, Mike Francesa said in December he didn’t think they could do it.

And I’m fretful because this team is prone to slow starts on the road, and all it takes is 10 bad minutes in the first half to render the first 30 (or more) games meaningless. And I’m fretful because history not only suggests but screams that nobody’s ever done this—this being a northern-based team winning the CAA, this being a team winning on Friday as well as Monday, this being a five seed emerging as the champion.

But what the hell. Optimism this weekend is a lot like a gift card to a store that’s getting ready to close (I know, I know: What a concept). There’s no saving it, so spend it all now. Plus, it’s the 15th anniversary of the fifth-seeded Dutchmen storming to the ECC championship.

It’s serendipity, baby. And if it’s not, well, hopefully they make it interesting along the way.

It doesn’t look like we’ll be in Richmond, but we’ll have posts as long as the Dutchmen are playing, so please keep stopping by. Enjoy the ride, however long it is.

***

Blog-biased predictions that will probably be wrong:

FIRST ROUND
No. 8 Georgia State over no. 9 Delaware: Maybe it’s just the fresh memories of Georgia State’s thrashing of the Dutchmen, but I have a hard time seeing the Panthers lose to Delaware, which is 5-11 overall—and 0-9 in conference—away from the Bob.

No. 5 Hofstra over no. 12 UNC-Wilmington: Historical trends aside, this one still scares me, and I don’t expect the Dutchmen will enjoy their first blowout of the conference season now. But they’ll expose the Seawolves just enough down low to advance to the quarters.

No. 10 William & Mary over no. 7 James Madison: For precisely the reasons Litos described…plus the whole tree-falling-on-the-JMU-parking-spot thing. Sometimes you just can’t ignore the signs, you know.

No. 6 Drexel over no. 11 Towson: Biggest blowout of the first round. Pat Kennedy’s last game?

QUARTERFINALS
No. 1 VCU over no. 8 Georgia State: For a few days last week I was thinking Georgia State would pull off a shocking upset here. That 28-point loss Saturday put a kibosh to that, but the Panthers will still make the Rams sweat here before VCU pulls away late.

No. 5 Hofstra over no. 4 Old Dominion: Game of the tournament. Whomever wins here makes the final. ODU is clicking better than anybody else and it won’t surprise me at all if they escape with the victory, but my minor blog bias foresees Charles Jenkins taking this game over late and declaring to all of Virginia his arrival as a CAA superstar.

No. 2 George Mason over no. 10 William & Mary: Midnight comes a couple rounds earlier this year for William & Mary.

No. 6 Drexel over no. 3 Northeastern: I know I was all over the Northeastern bandwagon a few weeks ago, but Drexel’s season-ending skid seems more a matter of bad luck and more reversible than that of the Huskies.

SEMIFINALS
Hofstra over VCU: Oh sure, the tiebreaker here is blog bias, but the Dutchmen gave the Rams all they could handle twice this year and have the big men to give VCU fits if Larry Sanders gets into foul trouble (which, with an average of 3.7 fouls per game this year, he will).

Drexel over George Mason: In a season in which nothing goes according to plan, a team finishing the regular season in a 1-4 slump and then making the conference title games makes perfect sense. The Dragons, who were a couple decent breaks away from being 14-4, get revenge for the first of their four conference losses by a single point in a strength vs. strength matchup. I just foresee Mason’s free throw difficulties catching up to it at some point this weekend. Why not here?

ECC CHAMPIONSHIP
Hofstra over Drexel: Revenge for 1986! Plenty of good seats available.

(I’ll also take credit for being right if Old Dominion beats Hofstra and wins its final two games)

***

Newsday previews the tournament here. So does the Daily News. And the New York Post. And the New York Times. Everyone’s climbing aboard! Alas only the Times is down there, and birdies tell me the Dutchmen will need to win at least two games before the other papers even think of sending anyone down to Virginia. Yeah, God forbid the bean counters at Long Island’s newspaper cover a Long Island college in its conference tournament.

Once again: For the best coverage of the tournament, click early and often on Litos. He's going to kick all sorts of ass.

I wish I was still a college student. A hundred bucks for tickets, transportation to Richmond and lodging—and people are complaining? I like to criticize Hofstra’s bottom-line ways as much as anyone, but people, geez, you’ll never enjoy a deal like this again, especially in the Great Depression II: Electric Bankruptaroo. Hope you went if you had the chance.

If you’re like me, you’re just hoping the CAA webcast is worth the five bucks. See you there in a few hours. I’ll be the guy yelling about Darius Burton.

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