Let them play! Let them play!

Can't you see Our Man Corny running around and refusing to leave the gym until the Dutchmen are allowed to play another game?

On the off chance the Flying Dutchmen didn’t win the CAA Tournament, I knew I’d sit here at some point in the week leading up to Selection Sunday and write that the Dutchmen should seek an invitation to either the CBI or the CIT, the two newer and admittedly second-tier tournaments, because the team deserved another game (or four) after turning its season around in such remarkable fashion.

What I did not expect was to have an ally in Tom Pecora, who was pretty adamant last season in declaring that to participate in the CBI or CIT was to aid the NCAA in the further marginalization of mid-majors.

But there was Pecora at the podium in the basement of the Richmond Coliseum Saturday night, informing the two tournaments the Dutchmen would be glad to accept a bid if one were extended. The Dutchmen returned to practice yesterday with the hope that there will be at least one more game to play early next week.

“I feel fairly confident about it—I think that we’re worthy of playing,” Pecora said in his office after practice. “Last year I turned down the opportunity because we had six seniors. This year with all the freshmen, I think it’s important for us to play. If we got one more game, that would be great. If we can get two, even better. Keep on winning, you know?”

Hofstra athletic director Jack Hayes responded today to an interview request about the CIT and CBI with the following statement: “We are interested in playing in the postseason and would be thrilled to receive an invitation from any of the four postseason tournaments.”

The best way for Hofstra to assure itself another game is to offer to host it—almost surely in the CIT, which charges schools just under $30,000 to host, less than half as much as the CBI. Money talks with these new postseason tournaments (well, with the old ones too), which is why a certain friendly CAA rival with a worse overall record and lower RPI than Hofstra has already locked up a CIT home game.

Of course, nobody at Hofstra ever listens to me, and probably with just cause, so I don’t expect to be at the Arena next Tuesday or Wednesday night watching the Dutchmen take on a regional foe. My guess is if Hofstra wanted to host a CIT or CBI game, it would have already announced plans for ticket sales. Plus, the opportunity is fading as I type, with Creighton joining George Mason in revealing it will host one of the eight first round CIT games.

But despite the likelihood it would be a money-losing endeavor for the school—the two preseason NIT games that weren’t listed on the schedule in November drew barely 1,500 combined, well short of the 2,800 or so Hofstra would need to break even with a CIT game—the school should consider it part of a continued investment in the program.

The season began with a game at top-ranked Kansas and four games in the preseason NIT. Participating in the CIT or CBI won’t be as prestigious, but what if further solidifies the foundation for an NCAA Tournament run next year?

The administration need look no further than Monday night for proof it’s possible. Freshly minted CAA champion Old Dominion won the CIT last year (and had three home games before beating Bradley on the road in the title game). Hard to argue that the feeling and experience of winning a title, no matter how secondary, didn’t have something to do with the Monarchs returning to the big dance this year.

I wrote last spring that it looked bad when Hofstra—one of just seven 20-win teams who didn’t participate in a tournament—declined to participate in the CBI or CIT. I think, with skidding George Mason hosting a game, it’d look even worse if Hofstra had a chance to get a bid this year, but missed out because it wouldn’t host a game. (Note to Mason Nation and particularly those who eat paste and like to start fake Twitters: I’m not actually blaming Mason for this)

Despite the Patriots’ lousy stretch run (2-7 in their last nine games), and their obvious chemistry and maturity issues, I applaud Mason for extending its season. (That sound you just heard was the world spinning off its axis) With 10 freshmen or sophomores, it makes sense for Mason to do whatever it can to hasten the growing up process.

I also applaud Mason’s decision because that’s what schools without football do: They make a commitment to basketball, even if it means playing in the hoops version of the Tangerine Bowl. If Hofstra isn’t going to pour extra resources into the basketball programs now—with football gone and the men’s team having earned the opportunity to keep playing with 10 wins in its last 12 games—then when will it?

Plus, the brief history of the CIT downright demands Hofstra host a game. George Mason finished fourth in the CAA, just like Old Dominion last year. James Madison finished seventh in the CAA last season with almost the exact same record (19-14) as the Dutchmen this season but hosted a first-round CIT game and made it to the final four (sorry, I’m not capitalizing final four when it refers to the CIT or CBI, at least not until the Dutchmen are among the Final Four teams playing in one of the tourneys), where the Dukes lost to ODU.

Maybe history can repeat itself, except this time the seventh-place team beats the fourth-place team. Make it happen, Hofstra, and let the Dutchmen play at least one more game.

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

UConn 76, Hofstra 67 (Or: Stand up and face the enemy)

Long Island's own Pat Benatar has penned multiple songs about the 2008-09 Flying Dutchmen.

I can’t tell you exactly where I was in the trip from Gampel Pavilion to my Dad’s house last night—it might have been Burlington; if you’ve heard of it, I was probably the designated driver at the kegger we hit in northwest Connecticut in 1992 or so—when it occurred to me the theme of the Flying Dutchmen’s compelling 76-67 loss to 12th-ranked UConn could not be summarized in one or two of the many memorable images the Dutchmen snapped Tuesday.

Let’s sift through the shoebox, shall we? (Nobody stores photos in a shoebox anymore, but I like the analogy so work with me here)

Cornelius Vines jumping up and down in front of the Hofstra bench before the tip-off, and later staring at the UConn student section and pointing to the words across his chest after hitting a 3-pointer. Nathaniel Lester, Chaz Williams and Charles Jenkins driving the lane at will despite giving up many inches and many more pounds to the Huskies’ big men. Jenkins doing against UConn what he does against a whole bunch of opponents UConn fans have never heard of: Emerging from a quiet first half (four points) to take the game over late and hit big shot after big shot in a 21-point second half.

Halil Kanacevic, eight months removed from starring in the basketball Siberia that is Staten Island and becoming the last of this year’s five scholarship freshmen to sign a letter of intent with Hofstra, collecting 10 rebounds and scoring eight points. There’s the Dutchmen outhustling and outworking the Huskies down low and enjoying a 43-39 rebounding advantage.

There’s Jenkins, Kanacevic and Vines combining to drain five 3-pointers in six attempts during a span of 2:24 midway through the second half in which the Dutchmen took a 54-45 lead and threatened to turn the seemingly impossible into the probable.

Vines fouling out with 1:39 left and refusing to be the chum for the student section, which serenades disqualified players with a chant of “Left…right…left…right…SIT!” Vines continued to stand, until play finally resumed and he had to sit down.

Williams was even more defiant 80 seconds later, when he drew his fifth foul and continued to stand in front of his chair. Vines even put an arm on Williams’ elbow, as if to tell the freshman he supported him, and Williams might still be standing there if Van Macon hadn’t motioned for him to take a seat (at which point, it should be noted, the student section shouted “SIT!”).

After participating in the post-game handshake, Jenkins turned around, as if to get a glimpse of what could have been, and pulled his jersey over his head. Vines came along and the two draped an arm around each other as they walked off the floor and out of sight.

Take these images, spread them out on the floor in front of you to create a collage—or, if you must, display them one after the other in a slideshow on the laptop—and absorb them in the collective in order to understand the meaning of an evening in the sticks of Connecticut:

The Flying Dutchmen belong.

This is usually the point in the conversation where I riff on a cheesy ‘80s song, but for the first time in the last 14 months I’m not going to make a pizza here. Last night was about Tom Pecora and the Dutchmen refusing to be the round peg in the little round hole in which mid-majors are expected to reside without complaint—and expecting greatness even as they agree to play by the ever-shifting rules that are devised to favor the UConns of the world.

The powers that be—the NCAA and its broadcast partners—want to marginalize those who don’t sit at the BCS table and make the mid-majors grateful for any morsel of food thrown their way. Look no further than the Monmouth-Saint Peter’s game that aired at 6 am Tuesday as part of ESPN’s 24-hour college basketball marathon.

Do I love the idea of watching basketball as the sun rises? Hell yeah. Do I love the concept of a school doing something funky like this and also hosting an all-night party in advance of it? Sure. As long as it’s the school’s idea.

But what transpired Tuesday morning was so damn condescending. “Aww, isn’t it cute, the widdle mid-majors are so eager to appear on ESPN, they’ll do so at 6 am on a Tuesday!” Next up: A 4 a.m. game in which players wear pajamas and the fans play truth or dare during the TV timeouts.

I thought often yesterday of Hofstra’s decision not to pursue a bid to the CBI or CollegeInsider.com Tournament last season. My disappointment in the choice is well-known, but you know what? I’m starting to get Pecora’s reasoning behind it, and beginning to believe it’s a lot more than a convenient excuse for the administration’s tight purse strings.

As Pecora told the New York Daily News’ Dick Weiss in May: If the mid-majors leap at the CBI or CIT, then what is to stop the NCAA and NIT—both of which are now run by the NCAA—from completely ignoring the mid-majors as at-large candidates? And in regards to yesterday: How can the national perception of mid-majors change if they acquiesce to ESPN and play a gimmick game as the roosters crow?

The Powers That Be want little to do with the mid-majors in the NCAA Tournament. But until they drop all pretenses and officially slam the door on the Hofstras of the world, the NCAA Tournament is still the ultimate destination for every Division I player and coach.

To get there, the Flying Dutchmen must play by the rules established by those who are actively trying to come up with ways to not invite them to the party. And the rules, this year anyway, say that a team like Hofstra has to play a rigorous non-conference schedule in order to boost its RPI.

Pecora will speak well of the boost in profile Hofstra gets from these games, because it’s a good talking point and it’s important to the people who sign his checks. But the goal of trips to Kansas and, particularly, Storrs isn’t to end up on SportsCenter or to generate a couple bullet points within the literature Hofstra distributes to potential students and in the annual reports distributed by the athletic department and president’s office.

It’s to win. There is no joy in how close the Dutchmen came to turning UConn’s 61-4 record against non-conference foes at Gampel into 60-5, no ultimate satisfaction in having a chance to take the lead in the final minute.

Victory is the objective, even in a game that is tilted to favor your opponent. When you agree to play Texas Hold ‘Em with a five-card stud hand, there can be no complaints when the three of a kind is trumped by the full house on fifth street.

UConn was 30-of-36 from the line Tuesday while the Dutchmen went just 10-of-12. Purely coincidental that 24 hours earlier, Jim Calhoun called it “despicable” that the Huskies went to the line just 10 times against Colgate Monday.

Pecora’s reaction immediately after the game? “That’s a big-time crew, they’re all good officials. We had the opportunity to take the game and we didn’t…I don’t think the officials made a big difference in the game.”

And if the Dutchmen go 27-7, lose in the CAA finals, possess an RPI in the top 40 and are still denied an at-large bid this season? Then Pecora and Jack Hayes will ask what they need to do differently to improve Hofstra’s candidacy next year, and The Powers That Be will recommend something different than they recommended last year, and the Dutchmen will do it, and just like last night, any complaints about the process will not be made for public consumption.

Because that’s what teams do when they belong.

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

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!