Welsh is the answer, but the questions are just beginning

Will the foundation of his new house be in place for Tim Welsh, or will he face unexpected structural issues over the next five years?

It’s officially official: Hofstra issued a press release announcing a press conference for tomorrow at 11 a.m. introducing Tim Welsh as the Flying Dutchmen’s new head basketball coach. But since it’s April 1, I can still hold out hope that Tom Pecora is going to step out from behind the curtain to the sound of thunderous applause and the thud of one guy fainting with joy, right?

While my first choice would have been Van Macon—mostly because of the stability and continuity he would have represented as well as the belief he has earned this opportunity, partially because it would have been cool if this hire was part of the Jay Wright tree—I can’t argue too much with hiring of Welsh, who has agreed to a five-year deal worth a reported $3 million (more on that eye-popping figure in a bit).

Welsh led Iona to one NCAA Tournament and two NITs in three years in New Rochelle and recruited the players that went to the NCAA under Jeff Ruland in 2000 and 2001. Welsh then spent 10 years at Providence, where he reached the NCAA Tournament twice and the NIT three times while compiling a 160-142 record. He was fired following the 2008 season and Providence attempted to replace him with, we kid you not, beloved George Mason coach Jim Larranaga.

Speaking of Larranaga: In a remarkable bit of coincidence, he just signed another contract extension today. Nope, not trying to remind everyone who he almost succeeded, or who the big dog is in the CAA, not at all. Maybe Mason is just going to ink Larranaga to an extension every time he has to suspend a player, in which case he’ll coach long enough to become the Connie Mack of the CAA.

Anyway, landing Welsh—who should be familiar to the local high school and AAU coaches and shouldn’t need much of a reintroduction to the scene—in such swift fashion is a feather in the cap of athletic director Jack Hayes. This was the first high-profile coaching search conducted by Hayes, and his ability to file through his rolodex (Hayes graduated from Providence and worked at Big East rivals UConn and St. John’s), quickly close a deal while multiple other local schools are all seeking coaches and get the approval—financial and otherwise—of Hofstra president Stuart Rabinowitz was impressive.

This is a potentially perfect fit for Welsh, who heads into what very well could be his legacy job (yes, I am overusing that term this year, sue me). Hofstra is a great spot for someone who still has the hunger but no longer wants to deal with the constant pressure and scrutiny of a BCS gig.

Welsh could be Hofstra’s version of American’s Jeff Jones—someone who was once the hip and hot coach at a big six school but who, after being discarded despite a successful track record, is content to finish his career at a lower profile school where he is appreciated and expectations are more reasonable.

Hofstra has had just three coaches in the last 20 years. Coaches don’t work under a great deal of pressure here. Just remain competitive (the second Butch van Breda Kolff era gets a bad rap because of the rough final two seasons in which the Dutchmen had no real conference affiliation, but he was eight games over .500 with a regular season ECC championship in his first four seasons), play by the rules, play well with others and you can stay as long as you want—even now, with Hofstra making a historic commitment to men’s basketball.

For that, Rabinowitz—the target of this morning’s blog—should be commended, albeit in measured, reserved and skeptical tones.

Some people will wonder if I’m just being cynical and contrarian just for the sake of being skeptical and contrarian. Who, me? Never! But as impressed as I am with the lucrative contract awarded to Welsh, I’m also wondering if the deal is more reactive than proactive—instinctual jabs aimed at Pecora for bolting for a lesser program for a lot more money as well as those who have criticized Hofstra’s since it extinguished football.

Giving Welsh $600,000—a 50 percent raise over what Pecora made in his most lucrative year—allows Hayes and Rabinowitz to effectively end any conversation about the future of Hofstra athletics. It also indicates the school thinks far higher of Welsh than it ever did of Pecora. And if you happen to think Pecora is really greedy and foolish because he ended up at a 2-26 school that only pays him $50,000 more than Hofstra is paying his replacement, well, my guess is Hofstra wouldn’t mind that at all.

But it must be asked: Why wasn’t Hofstra willing to pay its head men’s basketball coach $600,000 last week? If Hofstra is going to offer $600,000 to a coach, shouldn’t it reward the guy who turned this INTO a $600,000 a year job? Most importantly, after giving the head coach a dramatic raise, is Hofstra ready to make a commensurate re-investment in the program? If Hofstra is spending almost as much on its head coach as Fordham, is it ready to spend almost as much on the entire program as Fordham?

Yes, I know, Pecora never led Hofstra to the NCAA Tournament, and I understand it would have been difficult to spin a 50 percent raise for Pecora after nine straight years without a conference championship. But c’mon. This is Hofstra, where nobody ever knows about a “two-year study” to determine the future of the football program. If the school wanted to hike Pecora’s salary and redouble its investment in men’s basketball, it could have very easily done so behind the scenes.

And if Pecora thought Hofstra would be, at some point soon, ready to make a Fordham-type investment in men’s basketball, would he really have left a nice situation for a monstrous rebuilding job?

Maybe this was the plan all along once football disappeared and as simple as Hofstra doing what Kyle Whelliston says all non-football schools should do: Allocate more resources to men’s basketball than any other sport.

And hey, maybe Pecora was gone no matter what. Maybe he had stars in his eyes and didn’t want to wait any longer for the A-10 to invite Hofstra, or for Hofstra to join an entirely new conference that is on par with the A-10. Maybe he wanted the royal welcome he got at Fordham. Maybe he likes maroon. Maybe it was just time for a divorce. Pecora was inherited by both Rabinowitz and Hayes. Maybe they were saving the big payday for their guy.

But still, today, this feels a lot like the Mets responding to the criticism generated by the 2002 firing of Bobby Valentine by overpaying for Art Howe. After signing Howe to a four-year, $9 million contract—a longer and more lucrative deal than Valentine ever had—the Mets spun a yarn about how they got a guy who “lit up the room” during his interview. No offense to Howe, one of the nicest men to ever occupy a manager’s office, but the night light in a bathroom has more wattage than Howe.

That is not to compare Welsh to Howe, AT ALL, or to declare Welsh will be a disastrous hiring. Just saying it feels like Hofstra is consumed with winning the press conference and quieting critics.

Paying a head coach a sky-high salary is the equivalent of slapping some sharp-looking siding on a house. It’s no good unless the foundation is in place. Is Hofstra willing to make the investment necessary to make this hire worth it? The school will win the press conference tomorrow, no doubt about that. But is it ready to win the next 1,826 days, as well?

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

This guy was right!

Words I know I'll never have to warble to my wife: "I want you...I need you...but there ain't no way I'm ever going to love you if you continue to call Hofstra the Pride."

Back in the day as a pup reporter, I admit it: I was That Guy, the one who asked a manager or a coach if he thought a pivotal, dramatic regular season victory was going to be a turning point for his team.

Looking back, it makes me cringe, and I’m sure it made the grizzled vets around me laugh and made the manager or coach cringe, too. (Especially this guy). I mean, unless it’s Game Seven of the World Series, how can you recognize a turning point in the moment? Momentum is a fluky thing, on both the winning and losing side.

For every example of the 1994 Jets, who responded to the Fake Spike by losing their final four games of the season as well as 28 of the next 32 after that (for a good laugh, read the linked story and absorb how confident the Jets were of their ability to bounce back), there’s the 2001 Yankees, who looked like mortal locks to win their fourth straight World Series after consecutive stunning extra-inning victories over the Diamondbacks in Games Four and Five…yet ended up falling in Games Six and Seven in Arizona.

With all that said, old habits are sometimes tough to shake. So I’ve wondered over the last day or so if the Flying Dutchmen defined their season at the Charleston Classic by following a lopsided 98-69 defeat at the hands of Clemson with a 71-68 overtime win over Western Michigan (here’s the Newsday recap) and a dramatic 76-75 victory over East Tennessee State.

Sure, it’s early and sure, it doesn’t appear very likely that wins over Western Michigan (which finished last in the eight-team tourney) or ETSU will provide much of a boost to the RPI. And sure, Tom Pecora called this weekend a separate season for his still developing club—three games that counted in the standings, but a trio of contests that would not necessarily be a reflection of what to expect from the Flying Dutchmen.

But maybe these games did exactly that. In terms of its pacing and competition, the rest of the non-conference schedule will provide the Dutchmen plenty of opportunity to gel without suffering too much damage. But they may not make as many strides over the eight non-conference games before New Year’s as they did in three games in Charleston.

In addition, last weekend was almost certainly the best chance this season for Pecora to learn about his team’s character and intestinal fortitude—how it responds to getting knocked down and how it can handle multiple games on consecutive days.

The Dutchmen won’t play games on consecutive days again until the CAA tournament (if, of course, they get beyond their first game). And Hofstra will play two games in a three-day span just once the rest of the regular season—Jan. 3-5, when it hosts Drexel and visits Northeastern.

So if Hofstra gets throttled in every aspect of the game again, just as it did when the entire Clemson roster contributed to a 98-69 rout late Friday, it’ll have multiple days to recover and adjust. This weekend, it had 17 hours before it took on Western Michigan. And after the Flying Dutchmen got 67 points from their starters in beating WMU, they had a whole 19 hours before coming back to beat ETSU.

Does that mean the Dutchmen would be irreparably soft and lacking resilience had they gotten swept in South Carolina? Not at all. But it also means that Pecora may not have to worry about spending time this season figuring out if his team can summon that extra something in the waning minutes of a game.

Again, it’s early, but to see the Dutchmen win a game with what amounted to a seven-man rotation and then come back to beat ETSU by scoring the final five points of the game—all by Charles Jenkins, the CAA player of the week, I think it’s pretty safe to say it won’t be the last one he wins this year—to win a game in which they had trailed for the previous 18 minutes reminds me of the days when a lean rotation and a late deficit wasn’t cause for concern but a reason to believe.

Remember when the Dutchmen scored the final 12 points to stun Vermont, 74-69, in 2001? Or when Carlos Rivera scored the final six points in overtime as Hofstra shocked Drexel, 76-75, in Philadelphia in 2006?

Obviously, those were conference games, and a little more vital to the team's long-term hopes. But still: Those wins occurred during Hofstra’s two best seasons since it moved to Division I.

Here’s something else to chew over regarding the importance of these three games: Last year, after a lopsided loss to Holy Cross in the opener, the Flying Dutchmen played five straight games that were determined in the final possession (or went into overtime). They were 1-4 on their way to 12-18. The year before, Hofstra lost to Manhattan by two points (79-77) and Hawaii (80-79) in its second and third games of an oddly flat 22-10 season.

Now this admittedly small sample size of not always indicative of how a team will fare. For instance, in Pecora’s first season in 2001, the Flying Dutchmen (back when they actually were the Flying Dutchmen) beat Florida Atlantic and Kent State by nearly identical scores (67-64 and 67-65, respectively) to open the season and edged Illinois State 82-80 in overtime in the fourth game—and finished 12-20. And while 2006-07 was disappointing on the heels of the great screw job and subsequent appearance in the NIT quarterfinals the previous season, the Dutchmen did make the NIT again and won eight games by three or fewer points.

But if the Dutchmen play deep into the first weekend of March, I think we may look back at the first weekend of the season as their defining moment. More on that first weekend tomorrow.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.