Fiery freshmen fuel Dutchmen

If I was better at Photoshop (and by that, I mean if I knew it at all) I would have put together a graphic with the head shots of Halil Kanacevic and Chaz Williams. Alas, I am not, so you get a movie poster!

Chaz Williams is a 5-foot-9 dynamo of a point guard who gave a verbal commitment to Hofstra as a high school sophomore. Halil Kanacevic is a 6-foot-8 power forward who specializes in the grunt work in the interior and who didn’t receive a scholarship offer from Hofstra until late in his senior season.

The differences between the two are obvious, but after impressive rookie seasons, so are the similarities. Playing with an intensity palpable from the stands and driven by their humble basketball upbringings, Williams and Kanacevic quickly proved ready for and not intimidated by Division I basketball as they emerged as core members of the Dutchmen.

Both players were named to the CAA All-Rookie team last night, only the third time since the conference expanded in 2001-02 that a school has had multiple All-Rookie members. Kanacevic led all freshmen in rebounding (7.6 per game) while Williams ranked second in scoring (9.8 per game).

“It’s been amazing,” Charles Jenkins said after a practice earlier this week. “For them to take the roles that they have on this team is big. They’ve both had stellar games this year where they led us to victory—the veterans didn’t play well and they came out and played well and got us a victory. It’s been very exciting to watch both of them grow as freshmen."

Tom Pecora has often said this season he was forced to rely more than expected on Williams and Kanacevic due to the unexpected absence of Brad Kelleher (thank you very much, Clearinghouse) and the early struggles of Miklos Szabo and Greg Washington. But it was also immediately clear he trusted the freshmen duo, each of whom played more than 30 minutes in the season opener at Kansas.

“Where I played [in high school], it was a small gym,” Kanacevic said Wednesday. “It was nothing compared to Kansas. That’s like a section of Kansas, my gym. It was great. Coach said ‘baptism by fire.’ It was a great experience, it helped me out a lot.”

“Playing against the number one team in the nation, playing in a place like that, it was a tremendous place to start,” Williams said. “Because now I look at it like ‘Hey, we played against two All-Americans. We should be [putting up] the same numbers we did then. Let’s go play.’”

Such passion has become a trademark for both players, who have an uncanny knack for flipping the switch just before the opening tip. During the introduction of starting lineups, Williams greets each player with an individual handshake, ending with a LeBron James-like exchange with Jenkins. But as the rest of his teammates stroll to center court, Williams walks to the basket nearest the Hofstra bench, gazes upward and performs the sign of the cross.

Then he goes out and mixes it up with players far bigger and heavier than him, appropriate actions for someone who has spoken often of how he feels he has something to prove every time he takes the court due to his height. Last week, Williams became tangled for a rebound in mid-air with Georgia State’s Ousman Krubally, who only had nine inches on Williams.

Kanacevic, meanwhile, said he remains relaxed all day long (“I could sleep the whole day before the game”) but sharpens his focus the moment the ball is tipped. He tied for fifth in the conference with five double-doubles and had perhaps his best game of the year in the upset of Northeastern 10 days ago, when he had 16 points and 11 rebounds while minimizing Huskies big men Manny Adako and Nkem Ojougboh.

Such performances are particularly impressive given how lightly recruited Kanacevic was out of Staten Island, which is the forgotten borough when it comes to city basketball. Kanacevic had some interest from low mid-majors before he led Curtis High School to the Class A championship—the first title ever won by a Staten Island school—last year. (Williams led his alma mater, Bishop Ford in Brooklyn, to its first state title as a junior)

Kanacevic admits he plays with a chip on his shoulder and expects perfection out of himself every time he takes the court. “Other than my family, basketball is basically the only thing I care about,” Kanacevic said with a laugh. “So if you lose a game or you make a bad play out there—coaches tell you forget about it, move on to the next play. It’s hard for me to forget about it. I still remember plays from my sophomore year, freshman year of high school. I just don’t like it. It drives me nuts, making mistakes.”

It hasn’t been a perfect season for either player, each of whom hit the freshman wall following the New Year. Kanacevic shot just 35 percent and didn’t record a single double-double over the seven games from Jan. 19 through Feb. 13.

He’s emerged from his funk as Williams has slumped. Williams is shooting just 26 percent (22-for-84) in his last eight games, a notable tailspin for someone who shot an almost unconscious 63 percent (26-for-41) from 3-point land over a 13-game span from Dec. 9 through Jan. 27. He was benched briefly by Pecora against Georgia State for taking a bad shot early in the first half.

Even as he has struggled, though, Williams has contributed in other areas. He tied a career high with 10 assists Saturday, has pulled down seven or more rebounds in four of his last six games and recorded more turnovers than assists just once in his last 13 games.

“I never felt tired at any point, I just wasn’t making shots,” Williams said. “I just felt like, OK, I guess this is the wall everybody talks about. Let me just get in the gym and make extra shots and get over this hump. Hopefully I get over it by this weekend.”

Despite their youth and the likelihood the Flying Dutchmen will be CAA contenders for the duration of their careers (unless of course Hofstra joins the A-10!), Kanacevic and Williams are both approaching the CAA Tournament with a sense of urgency.

“Like coach always says: ‘We’re not practicing to win, you’re practicing to win championships,’” Williams said. “That’s been coach’s motto all year, because at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all here for. Me and Halil are both trying to get Mikey Szabo and Cornelius Vines a championship.”

“We’ve just got to go with the mindset that no one is going to give us anything, we’ve got to take it,” Kanacevic said. “We’ll go in there with that approach, play hard, keep up what we’ve been doing and maybe [make a] little bit less mistakes. One and done situation—basically try to see [how] far we can go. Hopefully we win.”

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

The envelope please...

Twenty-three years later, will Matt Janning or Gerald Lee get revenge for Ozzie Smith over Andre Dawson?

Tom Pecora has high hopes for tonight’s CAA awards banquet.

“I’m hoping that Charles is the player of the year,” Pecora said after the Flying Dutchmen beat Georgia State in the regular season finale Saturday. “I’m hoping that Greg Washington and Cornelius Vines are on the all-defensive team and that Halil and Chaz are on the all-freshmen team. I think that would be the right thing, if it played out that way.”

My guess is Pecora won’t be too disappointed tonight, which speaks volumes for just how far the Dutchmen have come from their 2-7 start. Here are my picks for the Player of the Year, All-CAA teams, Rookie of the Year and All-CAA teams. Like Litos, I find it almost impossible to pick an all-defensive team. I think defense is something you have to see to appreciate, and I don’t watch nearly enough CAA games in person to make a pick there. My guess is Washington makes the team, Vines doesn’t and that Robert Nwankwo, who led the league in rebounding and blocked shots, wins defensive player of the year. (Edit: I apparently forgot the existence of Larry Sanders. Make it Sanders)

PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Who should win: Charles Jenkins, Hofstra

Who will win: Matt Janning, Northeastern and Gerald Lee, ODU

Who will win the more I think about it: Jenkins

The closer we get to the awards ceremony, the more I think Jenkins is going to win it. He led the league in scoring, was almost two points per game ahead of his nearest competitor and was absolutely monstrous down the stretch (24.9 ppg in his last 10 games) in lifting the Flying Dutchmen to the greatest second-half run in league history (it’s true, I looked it up!). Whether he wins tonight or not, he is the best player in the league.

But whenever I ponder the MVP race in baseball, I almost always think it should go to a player whose team made the playoffs. Over the last 23 years, I’ve gone from thinking Andre Dawson and his 49 homers were a slam-dunk as the 1987 NL MVP to believing Ozzie Smith got robbed for .303 with 75 RBI (and NO HOMERS!), 43 steals and more than twice as many walks (89) as strikeouts (36) while playing his usual Gold Glove defense for a Cardinals team that won the NL East and finished 18 ½ games ahead of Dawson’s cellar-dwelling Cubs.

Blog bias aside, I can’t blame anyone who votes for Lee, Janning or Chase Allen because Old Dominion and Northeastern finished 1-2. Janning’s stats don’t jump off the page (15.1 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 3.1 apg) but he’s the glue of a smart, focused, senior-laden team. Tom Pecora’s quote about Janning being the Wayne Gretzky of Northeastern—the guy who makes the pass that leads to the pass that leads to the basket—was great, and telling. I hope enough people have watched enough Northeastern games this year to realize that.

I think Lee will benefit most from name recognition, even though he had a lesser season this year (14.3 points and 5.1 rebounds per game) than last year (15.5/5.7). Southern bias helps too! I imagine voters will lean towards the senior in a tiebreaker scenario, which is understandable.

Honestly, I’m starting to really think Jenkins wins it. I just realized he has more Player of the Week awards (four—three shared and one solo) than Janning and Lee combined (one shared honor apiece). Screw it. Jenkins wins. And if he doesn’t, I may be right anyway!

FIRST TEAM ALL-CAA

Charles Jenkins, Hofstra

Matt Janning, Northeastern

Gerald Lee, ODU

Larry Sanders, VCU

Chase Allen, Northeastern

SECOND TEAM ALL-CAA

David Schneider, W&M

Joey Rodriguez, VCU

Jamie Harris, Drexel

Denzel Bowles, JMU

Jawan Carter, Delaware

THIRD TEAM ALL-CAA

Robert Nwankwo, Towson

Joe Dukes, Georgia State

Quinn McDowell, W&M

Julius Wells, JMU

Cam Long, Mason

You have no idea how much I wanted to leave Long off, just to annoy the paste-eaters in Mason Nation. But as poorly as he finished, he’s the most reliable player on a team that earned a bye and the closest thing the Patriots have to a mature, calming presence.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR

Who should win: Halil Kanacevic, Hofstra

Who will win: Chris Fouch, Drexel

No denying here my blog bias is the tiebreaker. Kanacevic was fifth in the league in rebounding as a rookie, finished tied for fourth in the league with 10 10-rebound games and, like Jenkins, has been at his best during the Dutchmen’s sizzling run (9.6 points and eight boards per game). His emergence has been doubly impressive considering how much fellow freshmen Chaz Williams has struggled in the last few weeks.

However, I won’t argue with anyone who prefers Fouch, who certainly has the better nickname (F-Bomb, so awesome), led all CAA rookies in scoring and has scored in double digits in nine of the last 10 games in which he was healthy (he was limited to five minutes in the Dutchmen rematch and missed the subsequent two games). I also think Fouch will benefit from Kanacevic and Williams splitting the ROY vote.

CAA ALL-ROOKIE TEAM

Halil Kanacevic, Hofstra

Chris Fouch, Drexel

Chaz Williams, Hofstra

Luke Hancock, Mason

Darren White, JMU

COACH OF THE YEAR

Tony Shaver, W&M. Picked 12th in the preseason, Tribe fans are wondering what could have been after finishing third. Pretty remarkable. Wonder how Pecora places in the balloting after overseeing THE GREATEST SECOND HALF RUN IN LEAGUE HISTORY!!

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

Of ambitiously fake tiebreakers and the ambiguousness of Barone Bowl II

Hey honey! Come look at what I figured out!

Before we get into the really relevant business of pondering how tonight will determine the Flying Dutchmen’s potential second opponent in the CAA Tournament (which begins in 10 days, holy hell, where did the time go), let’s get really goofy and ponder what the final week of the regular season might have meant for the Dutchmen if the first two games of January turned out just a little bit differently.

By little bit differently, of course, I mean had the Dutchmen beaten William & Mary and George Mason on Jan. 2 and Jan. 4 instead of suffering gut-wrenching last-minute losses. A few of us blogger/broadcaster types were chewing this over after the Dutchmen defeated Rider Saturday and I declared I am convinced (CONVINCED I TELL YOU) that had the Dutchmen held on to beat William & Mary—whom they led for the first 39 minutes and 43 seconds—they also would have beaten Mason in Fairfax.

That’s admittedly a pretty big leap to take—even for someone like me, with the most pronounced blog biases in all of the CAA!—given Mason’s success at Patriot Center (the Patriots had won 18 straight CAA home games until William & Mary won there last Tuesday). But the Dutchmen had a six-point lead with less than eight minutes to play and twice closed within two points in the final minute. I really think beating William & Mary would have fueled the Dutchmen with the confidence and momentum necessary to close out the Patriots.

Of course, at that point the Dutchmen would have been 3-0 with a home game against Towson coming up on Jan. 6, so it’s fairly inconceivable that they would have fallen apart as badly as they did the rest of the month. It’s also impossible to assume that the rest of the season would have played out as it has for William & Mary and Mason.

But for the sake of this blog, let’s just assume that the first two games of January were the only ones to turn out differently. Because to do so is fun. Because if that was the case, the standings today would look like this:

Northeastern 13-3

Old Dominion 13-3

William & Mary 10-6

VCU 10-6

Drexel 10-6

Hofstra 10-6

George Mason 10-6

Ohhhh yes. That’s like the tiebreaker version of Viagra. I could go all night…figuring out those permutations!

And I did. OK fine I didn’t spend all night, but I still spent more time than anyone should on a completely fictitious possibility. The five-way tie is listed in the order in which it would be broken. William & Mary would be 5-2 against the fellow 10-6 teams, followed by VCU (3-3), Drexel (3-4), Hofstra (3-4) and Mason (2-3). Drexel gets the fifth spot ahead of the Dutchmen by virtue of its sweep of Northeastern. There are no more games scheduled between the 10-6 teams that aren’t really 10-6, so this would be good to go if there was an actual fictitious tie come Saturday night.

The Dutchmen would have an uphill climb towards one of the byes in this scenario, since William & Mary, VCU and Drexel combine to play just one team with a winning record in conference this week (VCU visits Old Dominion Saturday). But can you imagine the fun we’d have tonight, tomorrow and Saturday watching the Dutchmen, tracking the other relevant games and hoping for an ODU win over VCU and an upset by someone like UNC Wilmington (over William & Mary or Drexel), Towson (over William & Mary), James Madison (over VCU or Drexel) or Delaware (over George Mason).

I’m not complaining: There’s not much fluky about an 18-game season and the old Bill Parcells saying really does apply here. And the Dutchmen are perhaps the most perfect .500 team ever—not good at all for a few weeks and then really good for a few weeks.

That they’ve managed to turn tonight’s game into something meaningful says a lot for how far the team has come. But still…man, those tiebreaker scenarios for the five-way tie for third would have been FUN.

***

Battling for a first-round bye also would remove the ambiguity attached to tonight’s Barone Bowl II in Boston. Obviously, we should root for a Dutchmen win, because momentum is a delicate, finite thing and Tom Pecora and crew would love to enter the CAA Tournament on the hottest second-half run in the history of the conference. (Also, we should root for a Dutchmen win because rooting for the Dutchmen is what we do here)

But a loss would not be the worst thing in the world. As I wrote last week, Northeastern scares the hell out of me as a potential quarterfinal opponent. The last-time-around Huskies are too experienced and too mature to get caught flat-footed next Saturday.

Beating Northeastern tonight would likely drop them to second place for good—while the Huskies visits Mason in the season finale, ODU hosts VCU. (ODU hosts Georgia State in the only other CAA game tonight and wins by both the Huskies and Monarchs assure they will finish in the top two)

And to beat Northeastern—which thoroughly dominated the Dutchmen in Hempstead 17 days ago to hand them their only loss in the last eight games—on its Senior Night would certainly build a bigger buzz around the Dutchmen and quiet much of the skepticism that their recent hot streak is simply a matter of fattening up on the league’s bottom-feeders.

“I feel we can beat anybody now,” Pecora said Saturday. “I think we can go and play anyone and beat them. So whether we win or lose Tuesday, I’m going to feel like we can beat Georgia State Saturday and then whoever gets in our way the rest of the way. Tuesday won’t dictate that.”

But it probably will for the rest of us, for whom tonight will largely determine the mindset we’ll possess next Friday. While Dutch Nation (snort) is beginning to believe again, it is also exercising caution. Things were going so sour in January, it was impossible for even the most optimistic of people to avoid looking ahead to 2010-11.

But now this season matters again. Do we dare to believe? Do we dare to ignore the looming likelihood of heartbreak and invest, once again, in the hope that the Dutchmen can make a Cinderella run at the CAA Tournament?

Of course we do. A win tonight and nobody’s fretting about who the Dutchmen might face a week from Saturday. Even a close loss won’t necessarily send people back to the CAA Zone to call Pecora the worst coach to call Hofstra home since Rich Kotite. Another lopsided defeat though, and that bandwagon will be empty except for the blogger in the driver’s seat.

I can’t see Northeastern losing a second straight home game, especially on Senior Night, but this one will be far more competitive than the one at Hofstra. Any hopes the Dutchmen have of pulling off the upset rest on Chaz Williams, whose recent slump (he is shooting just 26 percent in his last six games and had more turnovers than assists Saturday for the first time in 11 games) has been mostly concealed by the Dutchmen’s red-hot play. But any chance the Dutchmen have of winning multiple games in the CAA Tournament are reliant on Williams finding his earlier form and doing a passable impersonation of Carlos Rivera circa 2006.

Greg Washington needs to continue his resurgent play and combine with Miklos Szabo, Halil Kanacevic and maybe even Nathaniel Lester to limit the damage of Northeastern big men Nkem Ojougboh and Manny Adako, the latter of whom scored 12 second half points in Barone Bowl I.

It should be a good one, either way, and I wish I was up there to see it in person. As is, we’ll be hitting Applebee’s for the ESPNU game (thanks again, Cablevision!). Tune in and follow along with me on Twitter as I wreck my fledgling diet by attacking the half-price appetizer menu!

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

Tonight's the night (to win the ECC)!

The champagne is on ice at the Beach household as we prepare to celebrate an ECC championship!

How well are things going for the Flying Dutchmen? So well that Chaz Williams won the CAA Rookie of the Week last week despite earning a tongue-lashing from his head coach Saturday night.

Williams had seven points, seven assists, two steals and just two turnovers in the Dutchmen’s 87-70 win over UNC Wilmington, but was just 2-of-13 from the field, picked up four fouls and just two rebounds and seemed to annoy Tom Pecora when he hoisted a 3-pointer with time still remaining on the shot clock in the final minute (urge to make a snarky comment rising…rising…).

“Everyone for the most part played well, except Chaz,” Pecora said afterward. “He didn’t have a good game. Sometimes you forget you’re still playing with a freshmen point guard. It’s a process, and to still be able to win by whatever we won by on the road and your point guard doesn’t have a great game speaks volumes.”

The Saturday performance was a rare blemish for Williams, who wasted little time this season in becoming the point guard the Dutchmen have lacked since the graduation of Carlos Rivera in 2007. Williams won the Rookie of the Week (his second such honor in three weeks) on the strength of a brilliant performance against Drexel Wednesday, when he almost recorded the first triple-double in school history (20 points, nine assists, eight rebounds) in leading the Dutchmen to a 75-64 upset win over the Dragons.

Williams’ track record—he is averaging more than 11 points per game and shooting better than 50 percent from 3-point land in CAA play and hasn’t had more turnovers than assists in a game since Jan. 9—suggests he’ll get back on track tonight, when the Dutchmen will attempt to clinch the mythical ECC championship (oh, and also improve to .500 in conference) against Delaware.

The Dutchmen won’t need a perfect effort against the reeling Blue Hens, who are alone in last place in the CAA, but their performance tonight will tell a lot about how far this team has progressed over the last three weeks. Back-to-back road games with a stop back at campus are a challenge regardless of the opponents. To perform as well tonight as the Dutchmen did Saturday would be another sign they are primed to at least make some noise in the CAA Tournament in two-and-a-half weeks.

In addition, tonight presents the Dutchmen with the chance to gain a huge psychological boost by evening their conference record after a 2-7 start. Since the CAA expanded in 2001-02, no team has ever climbed from 2-7 to .500.

A resurgent February is nothing new for the Dutchmen, who are 41-12 in regular season games played after Feb. 1 since the 2003-04 campaign, and continuing that trend the rest of this month is a major source of—wait for it!!—pride for Pecora.

“That’s huge—very, very important to me,” Pecora said. “I kid around and say that it’s because they stop listening to me and that’s why they win. But I’m very impressed with the fact that they’re doing it and hopefully it continues. I don’t want to lose another game this month.”

No idea if perfection awaits for the Dutchmen, but they should remain on that track tonight. I’ve been projecting nail-biters all month and a close game has yet to materialize, so I think I’ll go ahead and hex everything by predicting a double-digit win tonight.

I’ve been projecting nail-biters all month and a close game has yet to materialize. So I’ll go ahead and hex tonight by calling for a double-digit win by the Dutchmen. Expect a three-star worthy outing from Williams as well as another impressive performance from Greg Washington, who had a breakout game at Delaware 368 days ago and was on his way to one of his best games ever Saturday before he got into foul trouble.

Delaware supposedly offers free live video (love those Blue Hens!) so check out the feed here and follow along as always on Twitter. And if Hofstra wins, meet me at the Student Center for a night of rioting up and down Hempstead Turnpike in celebration of the ECC championship!

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

Bits and Bytes: Previewing ODU…and chewing over some stats, suspensions & stupid network tricks

Conan O'Brien only LOOKS as tall as Gerald Lee.

Quick apology for the sporadic posting this week. Just have not been able to get back into the usual Monday-Friday flow after the super duper car crash and the subsequent weirdness, which I will do my very best to put into words over the weekend because there needs to be a written account of the sheer lunacy of it all.

In the meantime, let’s get back into the flow of things by breaking down today’s big game at pre-season favorite Old Dominion. Unfortunately, this marks the third straight season in which the Dutchmen and Monarchs play just once, which is too bad since ODU has earned Favored Rival status here at Defiantly Dutch.

Since Hofstra joined the CAA, seven of the 18 games between the two teams have been decided by a basket or less—including perhaps the most exciting regular season game ever played at the Arena, the 65-63 win over Old Dominion in 2006 in which Aurimas Kieza drained a 3-pointer as the buzzer—while another was decided by four points and another was decided by five points.

The Dutchmen handed Old Dominion its only home loss in both 2004-05 and 2005-06, but the Monarchs have eliminated the Dutchmen from the CAA Tournament three times in the previous six seasons—including last year, when Gerald Lee scored 30 points and pulled down 10 rebounds and Charles Jenkins’ 3-pointer at the buzzer fell shy as the Dutchmen lost to the future CIT champions 52-51, and yes, that was a passive-aggressive swipe at Hofstra for being too good to play in the CIT—and knocked Hofstra out of the NIT with a quarterfinal win at Hofstra (arrrrrrgh) in 2006.

This may be the most challenging game of the taxing early January schedule for the Dutchmen, who took a bus down to Norfolk yesterday—their second bus ride to Virginia in five days—and will return tonight in order to get two practices in before VCU visits Tuesday to cap the 5-in-10 stretch.

“I don’t ever remember, in all my years of coaching, having a stretch like this—we’re playing five games in 10 days and trips back and forth to Virginia in the course of it,” Pecora said after the Dutchmen’s 77-61 win over Towson Wednesday.

And in between bus rides the Dutchmen have the task of playing at one of the CAA’s toughest venues. “I said to the guys ‘Hey, Old Dominion is why you came to play in college, Hofstra at Old Dominion,’” Pecora said. “It’s going to be 8,500 people, the place is going to be rocking, they’ll all hate us. It’s awesome. And there’s nothing better than going there and winning. And we’ve had the opportunity to do that.”

The key is seizing the opportunity today is very, very simple: The 3 Stars of the Game must—MUST—include someone other than Jenkins, Chaz Williams, Nathaniel Lester and Halil Kanacevic. More specifically, that someone has to be Greg Washington and/or Miklos Szabo. The Dutchmen cannot win if Lee is a one-man wrecking crew again.

As good as Kanacevic has been thus far—and as timely as his ascension to the starting lineup appears to be, right before back-to-back games against teams with dominant big men—it’s not fair to expect him to single-handedly contain Lee, who has three years of experience and at least two inches on Kanacevic. Washington and Szabo don’t have to shut Lee down, either, just minimize the damage he wrecks down low. That said, it would be a huge help if one of them could channel Darren Townes, who had the best game of his oddly quiet senior season in collecting 10 points and seven rebounds against ODU in the Dutchmen’s wire-to-wire 60-51 win Feb. 10.

At the least, Washington and Szabo have to carefully distribute the 10 fouls at their disposal. The Dutchmen are in trouble if one (or both) of those players picks up two fouls in their first couple minutes.

Limit Lee to a merely human effort and the Dutchmen have quite a shot at pulling off the upset and recording the get-over-the-hump win they have not recorded since, let’s be honest, 2005-06. Either way, it’ll be a sludgefest determined in the last minute again.

And regardless of the result, enjoy the game, because we must appreciate the opportunity to watch Hofstra against Old Dominion on MSG while we can, since Hofstra is leaving the CAA as soon as humanly possible and leaving both Old Dominion and DD-era Favored Rival Delaware behind in The Land Where They Still Play Football and since MSG is no longer the network most likely to televise a Hofstra game.

This is the second of the Dutchmen’s three schedule appearances on MSG. The Dutchmen have appeared twice already on FIOS, which about 17 people get here on Long Island, and their next two television appearances will be on ESPNU, which Cablevision doesn’t carry. You know, like HGTV and the Food Network.

A couple other quick bits and bytes for the weekend:

—A real interesting stat courtesy of some detective work by Loyal Reader John K., who read Jeremy Kniffin’s typically outstanding game notes and did the math to figure out that the Dutchmen’s leader in assist-to-turnover ratio is…we kid you not, Cornelius Vines, whose 1.54 mark is just ahead of Williams (1.43) and Jenkins (1.39).

Now, granted, Vines’ place atop that category is largely a result of his work in the non-conference schedule as well as Williams’ recent sloppiness. The last time Vines had at least two more assists than turnovers was Dec. 20 against St. John’s. Still, it’s proof Vines—much-maligned among Dutch Nation (snort) for his errant long-distance shooting—is deserving, on both sides of the ball, of the pivotal role he’s playing even after being benched for Williams.

—Speaking of Williams and stats, the freshman has hit his last seven 3-point attempts, just two shy of the school record set by Mike Radziejewski in 2002-03. Neither Williams nor Pecora were aware of the streak when informed of it Wednesday night.

“I wish you hadn’t told him that,” Pecora said, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

—And speaking of behemoth big men, VCU star center Larry Sanders was suspended for the Rams’ game today against Delaware for committing a flagrant foul against Drexel Wednesday. Oh sure. He couldn’t have waited until TODAY to earn a one-game suspension, could he?

Interesting only to me was that VCU coach Shaka Smart declined comment beyond a canned quote and had his players off-limits yesterday. Booo. That’s BCS stuff out of a guy who is supposed to be different than the typically controlling head coach. Or maybe I’m just a grump, I don’t know.

—Lastly, and only tangentially related to Hofstra: I’ve been a big fan of Conan O’Brien since I caught his debut show on NBC during my first month at Hofstra in 1993, so I’ve been following with a good deal of interest the eminently predictable shenanigans at NBC, which is apparently trying to correct the mistake it made in giving Jay Leno the 10 p.m. hour five nights a week by returning him to 11:35 and pushing O’Brien—who took over The Tonight Show last June—to 12:05.

TV critic David Bianculli—who, in a bit of irony that is not really irony, has also been my favorite TV critic since I discovered him upon his debut with the New York Daily News in the fall of 1993—nails the insanity taking place at NBC in writing that the network is “…shattering a TV tradition older than any of the executives making this bone-headed decision.

“NBC is strangling The Tonight Show, and burying its own history and heritage.”

Hmm. Sounds familiar.

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

Hofstra 77, Towson 61 (Or: The Kids Are Alright)

Halil Kanacevic apparently wasn't the only freshmen exhausted Wednesday night.

The most revealing sequence of the Flying Dutchmen’s 77-61 win over Towson Wednesday took place in the final five minutes with the game well in hand. Towson’s Josh Brown missed a 3-pointer and a group of players tussled for the rebound. Halil Kanacevic emerged from a scrum of several players with his 10th board of the night as fellow phenom Chaz Williams went crashing to the floor.

Kanacevic, who had passed the ball to Cornelius Vines, paused and went back to help up Williams while Vines stopped in his tracks as well. Once Williams was back on his feet, Vines resumed moving up court.

The message: As the freshmen go, so go the Dutchmen.

Kanacevic and Williams were the Dutchmen’s top two scorers for the second straight game. Kanacevic, for the second straight game, established a new career high in points (18) and recorded a double-double. He also added a career-high five blocks. Williams cooled off after a red-hot first half in which he drained all four of his 3-pointers but still finished with 16 points, the fifth time in six games he’s scored at least 10 points.

“I think this is the first press conference we’ve had with both of the freshmen here,” Tom Pecora said as he sat down, flanked by Kanacevic and Williams. “I know it won’t be the last.”

They also were the Dutchmen’s most reliable players at the most pivotal time of the game. The freshmen combined to score 24 of the Dutchmen’s final 31 points of the first half, during which the Dutchmen twice came back from five-point deficits to take a 45-36 lead at intermission. Williams hit three of his 3-pointers during a 20-6 run that ended the half.

“I hope these two guys battle each other for rookie of the year in the conference,” Pecora said. “But for them to do that, we’ve got to win. And some nights, it’s going to take a little bit more than others.”

The Dutchmen would be in pretty good shape if they could bottle their performance Wednesday. In addition to the continued breakout of the freshmen, Charles Jenkins had 13 points, seven rebounds, three assists and no turnovers while Vines (10 points, three rebounds) and Miklos Szabo (eight points, eight rebounds) and produced the type of numbers Pecora wants to see out of his lone seniors.

Of course, certain caveats apply, such as this is the last time the Dutchmen are scheduled to face Towson this season (and maybe ever, if Hofstra is successful in getting the hell out of the CAA). Towson brings the best out of the Dutchmen, offensively and otherwise: The Dutchmen are 15-5 against the Tigers since the two schools moved to the CAA and have scored 77 or more points eight times in the last 12 meetings.

Both Szabo and Vines have enjoyed their best games against Towson: Szabo had a career-high 22 points and added eight boards against the Tigers Dec. 5. He’s had as many as eight rebounds in a game just once in his other 13 games this year. Vines, meanwhile, had six 3-pointers against Towson and enjoyed the first of his three 20-point games with the Dutchmen in the first meeting between the teams last season (a career high he tied against UConn).

And as impressive as Kanacevic and Williams were Wednesday, they still had plenty of freshmen moments. Kanacevic appeared to be dragging for much of the game, so much that we thought he might actually get sick on the floor.

“I was kidding with Halil—he was dragging up and down the floor before he came out, like ‘Oh my God, I can’t run,’” Pecora said. “Then we go the ball [and] he pop shot a 3. I said ‘It’s amazing how much energy is in that round ball. It’s like an energy sphere.’”

Williams finished with three assists and seven turnovers, the fifth straight game in which he’s had at least as many turnovers as assists. In that span, he’s collected 12 assists while turning the ball over 27 times as his assist-to-turnover ratio, which was once just shy of 3:1, has fallen to just 1.43:1 (60/42).

“He got confused for a while there, he thought it was dodge ball,” Pecora said. “He had seven turnovers, you can’t do that. I just said to him ‘You’re a New York City guard. I was a bad New York City guard. You take pride in not turning the ball over. That’s one thing you don’t do.’ So they’re still [a] work in progress.”

If the growing pains are this promising, though, imagine what the final product might look like. “These guys are going to be here for the rest of this and three more years,” Pecora said. “So we’re excited about that. We’re very excited about [it].”

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Towson 1/6)

3: Halil Kanacevic

2: Charles Jenkins

1: Chaz Williams

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 24

Chaz Williams 18

Nathaniel Lester 18

Halil Kanacevic 16

Greg Washington 8

Cornelius Vines 7

Miklos Szabo 5

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

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.

Chaz already providing quite an assist

Chaz Williams may accomplish something as a freshman that even Speedy Claxton didn't do in four years.

Halil Kanacevic is the reigning CAA Rookie of the Week, but as well as Kanacevic played in the wins over Manhattan and New Hampshire, the most impressive performance by a Flying Dutchmen newcomer last week was the one authored Saturday by Chaz Williams.

The freshman point guard did something no player has done at Hofstra in the 16 years Tom Pecora has been associated with the program by collecting 10 assists with no turnovers. Speedy Claxton came closest to pulling off the feat twice during the 1997-98 season, when he had nine assists and no turnovers against Drexel and 13 assists and one turnover against New Hampshire. Major props to men’s hoops SID Jeremy Kniffin for doing the impressive amount of legwork to discover those facts.

Williams’ performance Saturday marked only the seventh time a player has collected at least 10 assists in a game in Pecora’s nine seasons as head coach. And no one was more efficient in doing so than Williams, who, unlike his predecessors, came off the bench and played just 31 minutes, the fewest of any of the players to rack up double-digit assists. Here’s the list of the six previous 10-assist games under Pecora:

Charles Jenkins: 13 assists/4 turnovers in 48 minutes vs. James Madison, 2/18/09**

Carlos Rivera: 10 assists/3 turnover in 34 minutes vs. St. Francis, 12/22/05

Carlos Rivera: 10 assists/2 turnovers in 46 minutes vs. UNCW, 1/3/07**

Gibran Washington: 12 assists/2 turnovers in 36 minutes vs. St. John’s, 12/2/03

Woody Souffrant: 10 assists/3 turnovers in 40 minutes vs. Delaware. 1/26/02

Woody Souffrant: 10 assists/3 turnovers in 37 minutes vs. Drexel, 12/23/01

**double overtime

This may just be the start of unprecedented feats from Williams, who enters the Holiday Festival with an assist-to-turnover ratio of just shy of 3:1 (41 assists, 14 turnovers). Since Pecora took over as head coach, no player has even produced an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2:1. Carlos Rivera came closest in 2005-06, when he had 117 assists and 60 turnovers (1.95).

The last Hofstra player to have an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2:1 was Jason Hernandez, who had 124 assists and 51 turnovers as a senior in 2000-01 (2.43). Speedy Claxton also had one season with a 2:1 assist-to-turnover as a sophomore in 1997-98, when he had 224 assists and 104 turnovers (2.15).

In addition, the CAA leader last season in assist-to-turnover ratio was Towson’s Brian Morris at 2.11.

That said, the presence of Souffrant on the list of Pecora-era players with 10 assists in a game serves as a cautionary tale. Souffrant was a freshman when he had his 10-assist games and had his first 10-assist performance in his first collegiate start, which further fueled the hype machine that had him pegged as the successor to Claxton and Hernandez.

But after a fast start, Souffrant faded: He started 50 games in his first two years—including all 28 in which he played as a sophomore—and averaged 4.5 assists per contest but made just four starts his last two years, during which he averaged 1.7 assists per game. So while restraint should be exercised with Williams, it’s not too early—a mere 10 games into his career—to wonder just how high a ceiling he possesses.

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

Kansas 101, Hofstra 65 (Or: That 101-63 run was a bit much to overcome)

ESPN, realizing it does not want the full fury of Dutch Nation (snort) unleashed upon it, makes sure to air on SportsCenter a highlight of Hofstra's early dominance of Kansas!

For a variety of reasons, the Flying Dutchmen’s 101-65 loss to top-ranked Kansas—in which the Jayhawks made a dramatic comeback from an early 2-0 deficit, look, the picture doesn’t lie!—didn’t lend itself to the recap all nine of you Loyal Readers grew accustomed to last season.

With a million TVs (give or take a few) and a menu that’s as tasty as it is affordable, Miller’s Ale House is a great place to watch a game (look at me, selling out!). But sitting atop bar stools about six inches from one of the big screens—the wife most accurately described it as sitting in the front row of a movie theatre—put us so close to the telecast that the players were actually blurry and it took an extra second or two to digest whatever we were seeing.

Hopefully, with tickets procured to at least the next three games—that’s right, we’re going to the NIT baybee—we’ll be able to provide the type of thorough recap I’d like to think I produced with regularity last season.

In addition, too much should never be read into the season opener, regardless of how it turns out—especially when it goes according to script like it did last night. It was a lopsided loss—the biggest margin of defeat for Hofstra since a 79-43 loss to Xavier in 1996-97—yet nowhere near the type of soul-crusher that inspires great, wordy angst.

This was Kansas, after all, and the Jayhawks are really freaking good. That number one ranking isn’t a fluke, and there was little to no chance they’d be caught off-guard in the season opener. All my razzing of Kansas and mean, bullying fans like Loyal Reader Tommy aside, it’d be cool if the Jayhawks win the very last game of the season, too.

The Flying Dutchmen didn’t suffer any injuries, the players and coaches got to open the season in one of the best environments possible and the school got the burst of priceless publicity it expected. The highlights of the game aired during the first segment and before the first commercials on this morning’s SportsCenter and the final score was the first men’s basketball score displayed along the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

The evening was a pretty neat one for Hofstra fans as well. To be standing in a restaurant and see the words “Your receiver will autotune to Hofstra @ Kansas on 721 ESPN at 8 p.m.” appear on multiple screens is to realize just how far the basketball program has come in the last 15 or so years. And to actually see people showing up at a restaurant to watch Hofstra on TV and to hear them cheering wildly when the Dutchmen made their best run late in the first half? Awesome beyond words.

All that said, there were some actual basketball observations worth noting. Like these!

—I realized after getting to Miller’s Ale House that I couldn’t remember how to spell Halil Kanacevic. That’s not going to be a problem for long. Kanacevic had perhaps the most impressive debut of the Tom Pecora Era with 12 points and 12 rebounds in 31 minutes. He almost single-handedly made things interesting for a brief period of time in the first half, when he had five points, two rebounds and a steal during an 8-0 run in which the Dutchmen closed to within 31-22 and forced Bill Self to burn two timeouts.

Kanacevic is the first Hofstra player to put up a double-double in his debut since Kenny Adeleke had 13 points and 10 rebounds against Florida Atlantic Nov. 17, 2001. Let’s hope the similarities end there, shall we?

Again, nobody should jump to conclusions after the season opener, but putting up a double-double against the best team in the country is pretty damn impressive.

—That said, I’m going to gush a bit here, but let me preface it by saying (or writing) that I don’t think I properly expressed my enthusiasm over another freshman, Chaz Williams, in Friday’s season preview. But this guy is going to be really good really soon, and may have already officially become the point guard the Dutchmen have lacked the last two years.

Williams didn’t start but played 37 minutes—the most by a Dutchman in his debut game since Antoine Agudio played 38 minutes in the 2004-05 season opener—and did a pretty good Loren Stokes impersonation by doing a little bit of everything (seven points, six assists, five rebounds and one steal) and driving the lane with the type of fearless regularity unbecoming of such a slight frame.

Most importantly, and most impressively: He didn’t commit a turnover. That, too, is worth noting when it occurs in a season opener against the top-ranked team in the land.

—The players whose spots in the starting lineup would be most endangered if Kanacevic and Williams continue to emerge had mixed results Friday. Miklos Szabo scored the seismic basket that gave the Dutchmen the early lead and hit all three of his field goal attempts in the first half, but foul trouble limited him to just 18 minutes and he fouled out with nine points and five boards.

Life With Corny, meanwhile, evoked memories of last season, and not in the good way, by missing all but one of his nine field goal attempts and all six of his shots from 3-point land. He finished with two points, the seventh time in his last nine regular season games he failed to reach double digits. I wouldn’t expect to see him pulled from the lineup in the first couple rounds of the NIT, but is he already on the hot seat?

—Charles Jenkins didn’t have a classic game, but he acquitted himself well on the big stage after a rough first half (2-of-9 from the field). Jenkins scored 18 points in the final 20 minutes and led the Dutchmen with 23 points and four steals while also adding five rebounds. This just in: He’ll be fine.

—The other two juniors were considerably quieter. Greg Washington drew four fouls in the first half and fouled out in just nine minutes. Fun fact: He started in his Hofstra debut Nov. 10, 2007 and fouled out in seven minutes. Nathaniel Lester, whose newly shorn hair and more muscular build makes him look about 10 years older than he did a year ago, had just six points and one board.

— Yves Jules was scoreless in eight minutes as the eighth and final member of the rotation. David Imes missed the game with an ankle injury and Brad Kelleher is at the mercy of the NCAA’s idiotic Clearinghouse (but hey, John Wall missed a game last night too, hooray fairness!).

THREE STARS OF THE GAME

(I’ll further explain this Monday, but rest assured it’s a concept I’ve shamelessly ripped off from others!)

3: Halil Kanacevic

2: Chaz Williams

1: Charles Jenkins

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

Shirts...Skins! Shirts...Skins! (Or: You’re going to like this Chaz Williams kid)

If I'm recapping the Blue/Gold Scrimmage then it must be time to pull out the Just One Of The Guys photo! If only I could come up with multiple reasons per season to reference the second-greatest film ever made.

For 23 minutes and change Saturday the Blue/Gold Scrimmage was as important as it was devoid of long-term meaning. As pivotal as it was for the Flying Dutchmen to play in a competitive atmosphere and in front of a crowd for the first time this season, it was also just the ninth day of practice for a team that is still, much like the other 345 Division I programs, a work in progress.

And then, with the final seconds of the scrimmage ticking away, it happened. Freshman Chaz Williams stole the ball, went the length of the court and dunked for Blue’s final basket. The few dozen fans cheered wildly for the 5-foot-9 Williams, who is viewed as the answer to the point guard problem that has plagued the Dutchmen the last two seasons.

The dunk capped an impressive afternoon by Williams, who effectively ran the point and displayed a fearless offensive approach. He twice drove the lane on the 6-foot-9 Miklos Szabo while also displaying some accuracy from outside. He made his final four attempts from the field in the first 12-minute half and missed just one shot in the second half.

“He’s a great point guard,” Charles Jenkins said. “He’s got great vision for the game. His court vision is amazing. He makes the right plays. He’s still learning how to get shots because of his size…[and] he’s going to have to learn what passes not to make, but once he polishes those things off, he’s going to be a great addition to this program.”

Williams is far from the only newcomer on the roster. There will be more players making their debut for the Dutchmen this season (six) than holdovers (five), and there’s two more additions who will sit out the season in Fordham transfer Mike Moore and freshman Paul Bilbo.

Like the practices that preceded it, the Blue/Gold Scrimmage was predictably unpredictable. “We still made a couple mistakes up there that are going to get brushed up,” Jenkins said. “We’ve got two or three more weeks to polish those up.”

“Some possessions we looked very good, some possessions we looked very young, depending on whose hands the ball was in,” Tom Pecora said. “We’ve got to get them old quickly.”

Much of the responsibility for aging the new Dutchmen will fall on the shoulders of Jenkins, who isn’t exactly old himself. But serving as a leader is nothing new to Jenkins, who was the Dutchmen captain as a sophomore last season even though he didn’t turn 20 until February and was the youngest player on the roster.

“It’s like a new environment,” Jenkins said. “Last year we had a lot of veterans on the team that were already adjusted to the program. This year, you’ve got a lot of freshmen that are going to take a little bit more time than it took the veterans to mold, just as far as the offense and the defense and how physical the nature of college basketball is. But I think as time progresses, we’re going to be a very good team.”

Some other Bits and Bytes from the scrimmage:

—One potentially encouraging sign Saturday: The smaller lineup that took the court for the Blue team in the second half of the scrimmage—in which Nathaniel Lester is the small forward in a quintet that also features Jenkins, Williams, Cornelius Vines and Greg Washington—beat the Gold 40-22. The Blue team in the first half featured 6-foot-8 freshman Halil Kanacevic instead of Vines.

“We do that all the time—we get Lester minutes at both spots,” Pecora said. “You want him to get those minutes in a live setting.”

—Lester and Jenkins seemed to find their shooting touch in the second half. According to our unofficial stat book (I’ll freely admit I didn’t capture everything between all the Tweeting and the frantic Googling of Freddy Asprilla, the sought-after transfer from Florida International who was in attendance and making an official visit to Hofstra one weekend after visiting Kansas State), Lester missed his final four shots of the first half but was 3-for-5 from the field in the second half. Jenkins missed his final five shots of the first half but was 4-of-7 from the field in the second half.

—And Life With Corny proved just as unconscious as ever (in that inimitable, he’s-fun-to-watch-when-it’s-not-your-patience-he’s-testing way) by going 1-for-7 in the first half and missing his first three shots of the second half before draining three of his final four attempts. Remarkably, none of the baskets were from beyond the arc as Vines drove the lane multiple times and tipped in a miss and hit a layup on consecutive possessions late in the second half.

Vines also, I kid you not, ran the point at times in the first half. Yes, please, make this happen. The trigger-happy Vines at the point: It’ll be the 21st century version of the cop movie about two mismatched partners.

—With a long jumper from just inside the 3-point line in the first half, a steal near midcourt in the second half and a couple buckets inside the paint, Greg Washington provided a performance reminiscent of his breakout outing in the win at Delaware in February. Understandably, he didn’t roam on the perimeter nearly as much in the second half, when he was the lone big man on the court for the Blue team.

—Other than Williams, the newcomer who made the biggest impression Saturday was Brad Kelleher, a 6-foot guard from Australia who played the last two seasons at Midland College in Texas. Kelleher, a Jeff Fox lookalike, hit three 3-pointers in the second half and scored 13 points overall in the final 12 minutes. He also effectively ran the point a few times.

—In addition to Williams and Kelleher, Pecora was also impressed with Kanacevic as well as 6-foot-2 freshman guard Yves Jules, who had a steal and a subsequent dunk early in the second half. David Imes, a 6-foot-7 freshman, had a handful of rebounds in the first half.

—Interesting to note that Miklos Szabo played with the Gold team—comprised largely of newcomers and likely reserves—in both halves. He and Kanacevic—separated by an inch and five pounds—tussled for position throughout the first half. How will Pecora distribute the minutes between Szabo, Kanacevic and Imes when he goes with the smaller lineup?

—If Saturday is any indication, the scoring drought for Dutchmen walk-ons is about to end. Matt Grogan, a 6-foot-5 guard from Middle Village, drained two 3-pointers in the second half and converted a four-point play. The last Dutchmen walk-on to score was Ryan Johnson, who hit a free throw against Dartmouth Dec. 17, 2005. David Vallins, who was a walk-on the last two seasons, missed the only attempt of his career against Longwood Jan. 28. 2008 and memorably broke our hearts by passing the ball as time expired against Northeastern Jan. 5.

—And finally, Jenkins’ take on scrimmaging at the end of the first FanFest. “[It] was just a practice where we had more viewers than usual.”

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