Davidson 61, Hofstra 52 (Or: The New York state of mind is not a very good one)

Even Long Island's own Billy Joel is ready to take aim at the Flying Dutchmen after back-to-back losses in the Holiday Festival.

Bob McKillop wasn’t very comfortable coaching against Hofstra and one of his protégés, Tom Pecora, during the consolation game of the Holiday Festival Monday night. So after Davidson beat the Flying Dutchmen, 61-52, in front of tumbleweeds, McKillop was only too happy to immediately revert back to the familiar role of dispensing advice to the fans of the school from which he graduated and the head coach to whom he gave his first job.

“Nothing’s as good as it seems, nothing’s as bad as it seems,” McKillop said. “Somewhere in between is reality. I heard Lou Holtz say that once, and boy it’s ever so true. As I walked the streets of New York last night at 2 o’clock after that loss, now I’ll be walking the streets of New York at 2 o’clock in a different frame of mind.”

For the second straight year, the Christmas frame of mind is not good around the Flying Dutchmen, who, once again, enter the holiday with a two-game losing streak that has negated much or all of the goodwill and positive momentum created during the first four weeks of the non-conference schedule.

The natives are restless with Pecora, who was almost rendered speechless Monday after the Dutchmen played in strangely dispassionate fashion until a too-little, too-late burst of energy in the final seven minutes. The Dutchmen tied the score six times but never led (the first time this season they’ve failed to lead in a game), were outrebounded 47-34 and took just five free throws, their fewest attempts since Feb. 2, 2006 against Old Dominion.

As disgusted as he was Monday, Pecora was neither surprised by the outcome nor likely to head out for a post-midnight stroll to try and figure out what went wrong, “I had individual meetings with all the guys today, and coming out of the meetings afterward, I met with my staff [and] I said ‘We’re going to have a rough time tonight’ because from the neck up, we’re not in a good place,” Pecora said. “We’ve got guys who have lost a little bit of confidence. We’ve got guys who are not playing with the energy that they need to play with, night in and night out.”

Pecora sounded more proactive than ever Monday, willing and ready to revamp his approach and overhaul the rotation after a game in which the two best players on the court for the Dutchmen were, by far, freshmen Halil Kanacevic and Chaz Williams.

Kanacevic had 10 points and led the Dutchmen with nine rebounds and a career-high four blocks while Williams, who made his first start, set career highs and led the Dutchmen with 14 points in 38 minutes.

“We’re in a transition right now as a team,” Pecora said. “I thought our young guys, Chaz and Halil Kanacevic, played with great energy. I was disappointed in our veterans. I didn’t think they played with much of a sense of urgency. I don’t make excuses, but maybe they were emotionally or physically drained from last night [the 72-60 loss to St. John’s], such a big game.

“I don’t buy that. You’ve only got so many in you and you’ve got to play every game like they’re going to put the balls away at midnight and you’re never going to play the game again.”

The basketballs won’t disappear anytime soon for the Dutchmen: Pecora said he originally planned to give the team Tuesday off but that it would practice every day until Christmas.

“And depending how I feel, maybe Christmas night,” Pecora said. “And then we’re just gonna keep practicing until we get better. And if we go down and we win a game in Florida the right way and we start playing the right way, maybe we’ll get a day off. We’re on break so I don’t have to take any days off. And I love practice.”

So does the person whom the Dutchmen have to worry about following in McKillop’s footsteps and wandering the streets searching for answers. Charles Jenkins had a second straight subpar game Monday, when he scored 11 points on 5-of-14 shooting, and seems to be falling into a trying-to-do-everything funk for the second straight year—even if Pecora played semantics in saying this season is different than last.

“I think last year he was tired because he was coming in every night and shooting and I had to take the key away and tell him ‘You can’t come in the gym anymore at night,’” Pecora said. “I think he was leg weary last year. I think this is more of him just feeling responsibility, the trickle-down. We’re not getting a lot from the seniors. He knows that.”

But he knew that last year, too, when he was the youngest player on the roster but also someone whose talent demanded he become the leader of a team with six role-playing seniors and three juniors who were all new to the program. As December morphed into January, Jenkins seemed overwhelmed by the duality of his tasks and endured a nine-game stretch in which he shot just 27 percent from the field (35-for-129) as the Dutchmen went 3-6.

Serving as a leader now, as a junior and the most experienced player on the team, is a far more natural experience for Jenkins, but the challenges are just as plentiful. He is literally the middle man in this transition, the only holdover who is assured of being part of the next Dutchmen core, yet he must also boost the likes of seniors Miklos Szabo and Cornelius Vines, both of whom seem on the verge of slipping out of the rotation, as well as fellow juniors Nathaniel Lester and Greg Washington, each of whom has yet to play to expectations this year.

Lester’s block with 7:15 left jump-started a 15-9 run that pulled the Dutchmen within five with just over a minute to play, but he scored a season-low two points Monday, the fifth straight game he has fallen short of double figures, and pulled down four rebounds, only the fifth time this year he’s had fewer than five boards. He also played just 18 minutes, the second time in the last three games he’d played fewer than 20 minutes. He played at least 26 minutes in each of the Dutchmen’s first 10 games.

The 6-foot-10 Washington, meanwhile, remained a non-factor underneath with just four points and two rebounds. It was the third time this year Washington has recorded two or fewer rebounds in a game.

Very recent history suggests Jenkins (who earned first-team All-CAA honors last year despite his midseason swoon) and the Dutchmen (who won 21 games last year with a team that was not nearly as talented as this one) will emerge from their slumps in plenty of time to salvage the season. But very recent history—as well as Monday night—also suggests the path there will be a painful one.

“Think about it, man,” Pecora said. “You’re 18, you’re 20, whatever it is, you’re playing at Madison Square Garden. If you can’t go out and play your ass off, then something’s really, really wrong. So it’s my job to figure out what that is and to come up with a game plan.”

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Davidson 12/21)

3: Halil Kanacevic

2: Chaz Williams

1: Charles Jenkins

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 19

Chaz Williams 12

Nathaniel Lester 12

Halil Kanacevic 10

Greg Washington 7

Cornelius Vines 7

Miklos Szabo 5

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

VCU 68, Hofstra 60 (Or: In which beggars suddenly become choosy)

Chester Lampwick isn't greedy. As long as he's got his health, his millions of dollars, his gold house, his rocket car and victories by the Flying Dutchmen basketball team, he doesn't need anything else.

What would you have thought, last Tuesday morning in the aftermath of one of the most discouraging losses of the Tom Pecora Era, if you were told the Flying Dutchmen would lose by eight points at VCU on Saturday? My guess is you would have been satisfied with a competitive defeat that provided the Dutchmen something to build upon, as opposed to the I-don’t-even-know-where-to-begin-fixing-this vibe of the Northeastern loss.

Well, that’s what I would have thought, anyway. The wife reports that she would not, in fact, have been willing to accept an eight-point loss to VCU. Which is probably why she’s a better poker player than her risk-averse husband, but that’s neither here nor there.

So why, then, did it feel as if a precious opportunity had slipped through the Flying Dutchmen’s hands during a 68-60 loss? Given the way the week started for the Dutchmen, there is no shame in losing by eight to the pre-season favorites in an arena in which Hofstra has never won. In fact, it was the second-closest game a Pecora-coached team has played at VCU: The 2001-02 team fell to the Rams by two, but the next five regular season defeats at VCU were by a combined 66 points.

The Dutchmen didn’t lead once in the second half and didn’t get closer than four points in the final 13 minutes, so there was no reason to wonder what could have happened if not for a bad bounce here or a bad call there.

Yet after the win over Delaware Wednesday that fixed everything—or at least coaxed a lot of us off the ledge—and an encouraging first half Saturday, it didn’t seem unreasonable to believe the Dutchmen could pull off the upset.

The Dutchmen avoided the first half fade that ruined their chances against Drexel (which jumped out to a 14-4 lead and never trailed) and Northeastern (which jumped out to an 11-0 lead and, you guessed it, never trailed) and would have carried a lead into the locker room if not for Eric Maynor driving the length of the court and hitting a buzzer-beating jumper with Charles Jenkins and Greg Johnson in his face. Hofstra looked much more cohesive and patient on offense and Jenkins hit as many field goals (four) in the first half as he did against Delaware—and he only needed eight shots to do it, not 24.

And hey, this is the CAA, where it would make sense for the Dutchmen to open the week with a 23-point loss at Northeastern and end it with an upset win at VCU.

Instead, the unpredictability of the CAA was summarized hours later and 250 or so miles to the south, where UNC-Wilmington—whose porous defense seemed to give the Seahawks a real shot at going 0-fer-the-conference—surprised the Blue Hens, 75-72. That’s right. In the span of seven days, the Blue Hens beat the preseason favorites, lost to a team that literally could not shoot straight and lost to a team that hadn’t won since the day after Thanksgiving and whose 10 straight defeats had come by an average of 21 points. Trying to project this stuff is for the sadistic, I tell you.

The second half proved the Dutchmen are still the work in progress that Pecora described during a conference call last week. The pieces are there and the box score looked pretty good, but it’s just not a complete puzzle yet.

Jenkins continues to emerge from rock bottom, led the Dutchmen with 15 points and five assists and added eight rebounds, but his slump is still a 7 or 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, as he proved by shooting 1-for-8 in the second half and finishing with a team-high five turnovers. Maybe, Pecora figures, the answer is shooting less instead of more.

The Dutchmen are deep, but not yet deep or strong enough to withstand a sputtering Jenkins and a non-existent Cornelius Vines, the latter of whom fouled out after setting season lows in minutes (17) and points (six). In addition, all four shots Vines took Saturday were from beyond the arc.

Nathaniel Lester’s role keeps growing—he tied a season high with 28 minutes played and had seven boards, the third time in four games he’s had at least that many rebounds—yet his eight points came on 3-of-10 shooting.

Speaking of work in progress, to watch Larry Sanders (16 points, 13 rebounds) dominate down low was a reminder that Greg Washington is still the biggest work in progress—literally—on the Dutchmen roster. It’s one thing to be 6-foot-10, it’s quite another to be a freaking behemoth like Sanders. Washington’s suddenly stellar play in December wasn’t a fluke, but it wasn’t necessarily a sign of things come this season for the still-spindly Gee Dubs. Washington made his fifth straight start Saturday, but his minutes in that span are as follows: 29, 23, 23, 18 and 14.

He played only seven minutes in the second half Sunday, during which VCU outscored the Dutchmen 24-8 in the paint. At some point, Darren Townes will have to escape from Witness Protection to provide more depth in the front court. In the meantime, I once again humbly offer Washington my extra 25 pounds. I’m even willing to negotiate it up to 35 pounds.

Anyway, what we went through Saturday is a pretty good idea of what’s to come over the next seven weeks: Jumping back and forth between trying to minimize expectations and hoping the Dutchmen can shoot the moon—and the ball, too. Litos was impressed with what he saw in the defeat and wrote Sunday that he projects a 9-9 conference finish for the Dutchmen—and as many surprising victories as unexplainable defeats. It’s sadistic, I tell you.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Hofstra 66, Delaware 61 (Or: Emotional Rescue)

Austin Powers raises a glass to the Flying Dutchmen, even if their win wasn't quite as beautiful as Vanessa Kensington.

A starving man will eat anything and think it’s the greatest thing he’s ever consumed. Liverwurst, gruel, even a Hofstra Burger that’s been sitting under those heat lamps since the library only had 500,000 volumes.

It won’t take until a little later, when his stomach is full and maybe barking a little bit, that he’ll realize that liverwurst or gruel or Hofstra Burger from 1973 was actually not nearly as good as he thought it was. But no-longer-starving man is still grateful for the food, since, you know, eating something that Emeril or even Rachael Ray (don’t worry, I resisted the urge to post a not suitable for work picture…barely) would scoff at is still better than going hungry.

I mention this not because I’m hungry (though my wife made a great pot roast in the slow cooker) but because at around 9 p.m. last night, the Flying Dutchmen’s 66-61 win over Delaware (a game covered by, be still my beating heart, at least four daily newspapers—the Daily News, the Post and the News-Journal in Delaware, link to Newsday story further below) was the greatest tonic ever for a team starving for a win after dropping two straight conference games and four of five contests overall.

Better than the two America East championship game victories over the Blue Hens. Better than the NIT win over St. Joseph’s. Better than beating St. John’s for the first time (and the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time, too).

Greg Johnson was outstanding at the point, racking up seven assists and no turnovers (that’s a ratio of infinity, you know). Slumping Charles Jenkins scored 18 points. Nathaniel Lester, who for so long has seemed to be the very definition of a tweener—just a little too big and unpredictable on offense to be a guard, not big enough or forceful enough down low to be a small forward—led the Dutchmen with eight rebounds, including a pure effort grab that led to a key late lay-up by Cornelius Vines. It’s the second time in four games Lester has collected eight boards.

The Dutchmen looked like a complete team during a 15-2 run that turned a 22-17 deficit into a 32-24 halftime lead. They hit five of 10 shots and outrebounded the Blue Hens 9-5 during the stretch.

A team whose performance from the free throw line is not for the faint of heart was, shockingly, almost perfect—24-of-26, including 20-of-20 in the second half. That’s got to be the Dutchmen’s best performance from the line since at least 1956 (give or take a couple decades, of course).

Two days after Tom Pecora had to take some air out of the tires, Vines played with his familiar swagger as well as the good kind of emotion in scoring a game- and career-high 23 points. He shot and missed at will to open the second half (0-for-6) but hit three of his last four shots, including a pair of rare lay-ups. Vines set a season-high by attempting 11 shots inside of the 3-point line, a pretty notable shift for a guy who took two or fewer shots from inside the arc seven times in his first 14 games.

After hitting the second lay-up to extend the Flying Dutchmen’s lead to 58-54, Vines ran down the court with his arms in the air, extorting a predictably small Intersession crowd to make the type of noise that filled the Arena with an atypical roar—for a few seconds, at least.

The Dutchmen seemed to follow Vines’ lead. Dane Johnson did the arms thing when he came off the court after he drew a charge that negated a potential game-tying basket by the Blue Hens. And the bench—full of downcast, morose expressions most of the last five games—was so lively in the final minutes that Pecora had to threaten to turn the bench around and drive back home.

In retrospect, of course, the win wasn’t THAT good. As my wife sang to the tune of “We Are The Champions”: “No time for Blue Hens, because we are marginally better than you!”

The issues that have dogged Hofstra since mid-December haven’t been solved. The Dutchmen endured another terrible game from the field in shooting just 29.7 percent (19-of-64), their second-worst performance of the season. The Dutchmen were fortunate that Delaware shot just 30.5 percent (18-of-59) and that Marc Egerson, Jawan Carter and Alphonso Dawson, who averaged a combined 49.6 points entering the game, were a combined 6-of-37.

Jenkins led the way again—so to speak—for the cold-shooting Dutchmen by making just four of his season-high 24 shots, many of which barely grazed the rim. On the bright side, Jenkins at least got his shots Wednesday—he set a season-low in shots in each of the previous two games—and he displayed some of his Loren Stokes-like ability to fill up the boxscore even when he’s not filling the basket.

Jenkins was 10-of-10 from the free throw line, tied a season-high with a team-best three steals and committed just two turnovers after turning the ball over 15 times in his previous three games. And as the lede to this Newsday story indicates, at least Jenkins is smiling about his struggles instead of torturing himself (more on the latter in a bit).

After opening that eight-point halftime lead, the Dutchmen let Delaware hang around and eventually take the lead. The game was a one-possession nail-biter for most of the final five minutes before Monte Ross did his best Bruiser Flint imitation and got T’d up with seven seconds left.

And the depth that appeared so promising in November continues to be a mirage. Only seven players saw at least 12 minutes of playing time and Miklos Szabo, Darren Townes and Tony Dennison—who were expected to be regular starters—played a combined 19 minutes.

So it wasn’t a thing of beauty. But the rebuilding of the overall psyche couldn’t begin until the Dutchmen got a win, no matter how ugly and lacking in style points it was. And 2-2 in the CAA going into VCU looks a whole lot better than 1-3, which would have bordered on disastrous given the hot start enjoyed by the Dutchmen and the resultant raised expectations.

Jenkins, the symbol of the Dutchmen’s recent struggles, also summarized the relief of Dutch Nation. Seconds after the final buzzer, Jenkins—who spent most of the previous 40 minutes expressing his frustration by banging his right hand on the floor or on the padding attached to the basket—kneeled down at midcourt and gently tapped the “H” twice.

Hunger satiated. Mojo stirring. Bigger and more satisfying feasts, hopefully, to come.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.