Hofstra 57, Northeastern 52 (Or: In which I become the Drew Bledsoe to Sully Ray’s Tom Brady)

I know how you feel, Drew.

I’ve figured out what was missing for the Flying Dutchmen. Or, actually, what wasn’t missing.

Me.

Two weeks ago today, I went to Boston to watch the Flying Dutchmen play unbeaten Northeastern. The Dutchmen trailed from start to finish and lost by 23 in one of the bleakest performances of the Tom Pecora era. So Saturday, I was in Boston to not watch or listen to the Flying Dutchmen play unbeaten Northeastern, and with Sully Ray pinch-blogging (and, he says, catching a T-shirt while holding two hot dogs in his other hand…absent any photographic evidence, I’ll have to declare he’s full of it and I maintain my 2-0 lead), the Dutchmen win, 57-52.

(You know what I did watch though? VCU-ODU. Apparently, you can watch two Virginia-based schools on television in Boston, but not a Boston-based school vs. a New York-based school. OK then. Hopefully I can see New Hampshire vs. Maine once I get home)

(Second parenthetical tangent: You want uncanny, go check out Litos’ predicted final score for Saturday)

Furthermore, I realized, in typing this, that the Dutchmen are actually 3-0 in games when I do not watch or listen to them. They won the final two games of the Charleston Classic. So the guy who has written tens of thousands of words wondering what might be wrong with the Dutchmen is actually the reason WHY something might be wrong with the Dutchmen. Coming soon: Sully Ray waxing nostalgic about the days when he used to sniff chemicals in The Chronicle darkroom and re-telling stories of how I snored the entire time during our road trip for spring break ’95.

Anyway, before the Dutchmen ride Sully Ray all the way to the CAA championship and I follow in the footsteps of another Bostonian and get traded to upstate New York—where I figure I’ll blog about Tom Parrotta and Chris Gadley—I will say I got at least one thing right: The whole gotta-prove-the-disgusted-parent-wrong thing. I never figured Pecora and Van Macon were giving up on the Dutchmen after the uncompetitive loss to Drexel Wednesday, but they had to figure that speaking as strongly as they did would make the Dutchmen particularly mad and prideful.

Hey, with the knowledge my you-know-what would be grounded as soon as the report cards arrived, I followed the failing of Algebra II during the second marking period of my junior year of high school by getting an A-minus on the mid-year exam. Oh, that’s right. I was an equal opportunity flunker.

Where was I? Oh yes.

The Dutchmen also provided another reminder Saturday why they are the perfect symbol of an unpredictable conference. Litos wrote last week Hofstra would come up with as many head-scratching wins as losses, but I doubt even he thought he’d be proven right IN CONSECUTIVE GAMES. The Dutchmen, in a span of three games, have thrown a scare into the preseason favorite, trailed wire-to-wire for the second time this season against a team picked to finish 11th in the conference and knocked off the unbeaten—and previously unchallenged—co-leader. This stuff is for the sadistic, I tell you.

Anyone who says he pegged how the playing time would shake out Saturday is either a liar or the only person on the planet who predicted a Cardinals-Steelers Super Bowl. Darren Townes, on a milk carton for weeks, started and played 28 minutes, one more minute than he’d played in the last four games combined. Arminas Urbutis played 31 minutes and pulled down nine rebounds after playing 32 minutes and collecting eight rebounds in the first five games of the month.

Greg Washington, who’d started the last six games, didn’t start and played a season-low three minutes. Dane Johnson, who’d started four straight games, didn’t play at all.

Nathaniel Lester made his first start of the season, shot just 1-of-9 from the field yet played a season-high 36 minutes and led the Dutchmen and set career highs with five assists (half as many assists as he had in the first 17 games) and three steals (one more than he had in his first 17 games). Greg Johnson had two assists, one steal and no turnovers, but played just 18 minutes (his minutes this month, by the way: 34-37-38-40-22-18).

Tony Dennison, who entered the game shooting 33 percent from the field and 58 percent from the line, hit both his field goal attempts and was 4-of-6 from the line in scoring nine points. Cornelius Vines, who was one of only two players to start the first 17 games, came off the bench and played a season-low nine minutes—none, according to the in-game thread at the CAA Zone, after he chucked up an ill-advised three.

And Charles Jenkins, whose field goal percentage lately (27 percent—35-for-129—in his previous nine games) has been somewhere south of the outgoing president’s approval ratings, finally came back and played his most complete game in weeks. Jenkins bounced back from a 3-of-9 performance over the first 20 minutes to make five of his seven shots in the second half and five of his six free throws in a clutch performance straight out of November.

Jenkins scored seven straight points for the Dutchmen and nine overall in a 12-1 run that turned a 32-28 deficit into a 40-33 lead and hit two free throws to give Hofstra the lead for good at 52-51 in the final minute. In addition, he was also credited with shutting down Northeastern’s biggest weapon, Matt Janning.

The win wasn’t a thing of beauty: The Dutchmen didn’t hit a field goal in the final 6:41 but held on by hitting 11 of their last 13 free throws. Nor did the Dutchmen escape unscathed: Miklos Szabo hurt his arm in the second half and was wearing a sling on the bench.

In addition, Sully Ray reports, via text, that it was a “…great game by none, good game by all.” That’s why I like Sully Ray: He’s a calm, collected sort whose approach to life is a cliché. Had I been there Saturday, I probably would have come up with multiple reasons why the Dutchmen are now headed for the Final Four. Except, of course, Northeastern would have won by 74.

And sure, the Dutchmen might have taken advantage of a wiped Northeastern team. Oh well. Fair is fair. Playing the Huskies in Boston 53 hours after facing Drexel on Long Island wasn’t a whole lot of fun, either.

So where do the Dutchmen—now 3-4 and a mere game out of a first-round bye, it’s never too early to look too far ahead!—go from here? The hell if I know. The last three games have proven how impossible it is to project three weeks ahead, but I will say the schedule lines up nicely for Hofstra to make a charge over the next 22 days—something I’ll blog about in the next day or two.

If I were a betting man, though, I’d bet all Pecora wants for his birthday is me not paying any attention Wednesday night. And I’d also wager the Dutchmen would be in great shape if I sold the blog to Sully Ray. My asking price begins at one million dollars.

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

Bits and Bytes: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Home of many a snow day dinner. I actually took this picture a few weeks ago after I could not find a photo of Hofstra USA for my post-Election Day post. So to aid other bloggers who are searching for Hofstra USA photos in the future, here you go: Hofstra USA Hofstra USA Hofstra USA Hofstra USA

That the first snowstorm of the 2008-09 academic year occurs on the very last day of the fall semester—and the day after graduation—is even more ironic (in that it’s not really ironic at all) than rain on your wedding day. Snow days as a kid were gifts from the weather gods. Snow days at Hofstra were unspeakably joyous occasions.

After all, as a kid, a snow day usually meant some shoveling of the driveway. No fun, that. And if you had a mother who freaked out at the sight of snow (hi Mom!), you needed a ride to go sledding. (Of course, no matter what, there was The Price Is Right at 11 a.m.)

But there was no shoveling at Hofstra (If I recall correctly, most shoveling and plowing of campus grounds was usually put off until the temperature hit 60 degrees…just like every apartment complex I’ve lived in since graduation). There was, however, hiking over to the field across the street from the Netherlands to play football. That’s no longer possible, as most—if not all—of that land has been turned into dorms. Damn you progress! Damn you!

After football, there was dinner at the only warm and open place on campus…Hofstra USA. Sure, the wait was epic and the food really not all that great, but what else were you going to do?

Most of all, there was the feeling you were getting away with something. I mean, my wonderful mom and dad were spending a lot of money to get me a great (snicker, snicker, snort) education. Yet here I was on a school day—not shoveling, playing football, feeding my face at a packed sports bar and not cracking open a single book—all WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE SCHOOL!

Anyway, with that odd bit of snow-covered nostalgia out of the way, here are some bits and bytes heading into the weekend:

—We’re deep into basketball season here, but we’ll be rooting tonight for Richmond against Montana in the I-AA National Championship Game. After all, it’ll be a pretty exclusive group of people who will get to say they saw the future national champs throttle Hofstra in the driving rain…even if we were only there for a half.

—Big game tomorrow at UMass, or, as Michael Litos prefers it to be called, Massachusetts. On the abbreviation for a moment: It’s a New England thing. We’re busy up there in the middle of nowhere, shoveling snow 13 months a year, so we don’t have time for elongated school names with more than three syllables. Connecticut is never referred to as Connecticut. It’s always UConn. Conversely, Central Connecticut State University is always just Central and not CCSU. Syllables are for people who aren’t multi-tasking 25 hours a day.

Where was I? Oh yes. UMass. With four losses by four points or less, the Minutemen are the anti-Dutchmen, who have won four games by five points or less. But UMass is fresh off a 61-60 win over defending national champ Kansas and Litos believes this will be a huge barometer game for a Hofstra squad that has won eight in a row against some less-than-stellar competition.

Today, Litos suggests Dane Johnson will be the key player as the Dutchmen try to neutralize a deep and big UMass lineup that features four players averaging at least 11 points per game and three players 6-foot-7 or taller averaging at least 14 minutes per game. (Litos also has the line of the year in preaching caution with Greg Washington, or, as we call him here, Gee Dubs: “…[H]e is still so skinny he doesn’t have a sideways.”)

In addition, the Minutemen will welcome back 7-foot-1 Luke Bonner, who has missed the last month with a knee injury. However, UMass fans say he is more likely to chuck 3-pointers than bang underneath the basket. Hey! That sounds familiar!

UMass is led by Boston University transfer Tony Gaffney, who ranks among the nation’s top three in both rebounding and blocks. His emergence from anonymity to stardom is the subject of a feature in today’s Boston Herald. Says teammate Ricky Harris: “A lot of people don’t know about him. He’s coming in and sneaking up on guys and guys are like ‘Whoa, who the hell is Tony Gaffney? Where’d he come from?’ That’s good for us.”

Hmm. Maybe the Minutemen aren’t the anti-Dutchmen after all.

—As for the most pivotal player Saturday, I’m going to guess it won’t be Johnson but Miklos Szabo, who is today’s pick to click (yes, that’s an oft-used phrase, but it sounds better than Guy Who Will Be A Big Contributor or something else awkward like that).

Szabo’s minutes the last five games have gone 31-30-28-15-8. That’s a trend inconsistent with his promise and one that obviously can’t continue much longer. Nor can this: Szabo had 28 rebounds off the bench in his first three games and only 17 in four games as a starter. At the Blue-White scrimmage in late October, I saw a Szabo who was a big and annoying pest down low. He’ll have to be that guy again and produce a double-double if the Dutchmen are going to win Saturday.

—Dick Weiss wishes the Flying Dutchmen were in the Holiday Festival instead of Massachusetts this weekend, especially since there won’t be much written about them once the conference season starts. Uhh, Hoops, you know you can help change that, right? Anyway, Weiss also thinks Hofstra’s long-term home should be the A-10, albeit after at least two of the 14 schools in the A-10 (I guess A-14 sounds like a youth basketball league or something) move elsewhere.

—I’m no good at predictions, but outside of getting blown out by 30 or suffering a key injury, there’s no real downside to this game for the Dutchmen. There would be some value in a competitive loss on the road against an A-10 school fresh off beating the national champ. And a win? That’d get a whole lot of people believing. If you’re like us and not heading up there, you can get information on watching a webcast here. Hopefully the quality is better than Towson’s snuff film.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Hofstra 68, St. Francis 52 (Or: Gee Dubs arrives!)

Greg Washington + a breakout game against St. Francis = an excuse to post a photo from a criminally underrated early '90s gem.

The most pivotal moment of the Flying Dutchmen’s 68-52 victory over St. Francis Saturday barely showed up in the box score and really had no impact on a game that was not nearly as close as the final score indicated (to borrow from this guy, you know you’re a lot better than the other team when…you get 12 players on to the floor in the first half).

But with 5:45 left, Greg Washington blocked a shot by Justin Newton—and then smiled and briefly hammed it up for the cheering student section. It symbolized a revelatory game by Washington, who racked up a career-high 12 rebounds and added nine points in 22 minutes and was particularly interesting because it came from someone who usually plays with a poker face and a bit of self-consciousness.

Again, just like with my analysis of Nathaniel Lester Friday, this is purely amateur shrink territory. But Washington has struck me as someone who realized that everyone THOUGHT he should be a Grade-A stud, because he’s 6-foot-10, but also knew his game didn’t yet match the expectations. It’s hard enough to play the game as is, I can imagine how tough it is when someone feels he’s not living up to the hype he had nothing to do with generating.

Guys who stand 6-foot-10 don’t land at Hofstra unless they’re raw, and Washington’s rawness was evident in his reed-thin stature (I’ve never actually seen a reed, BTW). His listed weight of 210 pounds inspired this quote (scroll down to October 30) from Tom Pecora (and now that Chris Gadley is gone, I’ve got 30 spare pounds if Washington wants ‘em).

It didn’t help Washington when he, through no fault of his own, turned into a near-mythic figure before he ever suited up for the Flying Dutchmen. The thought of a 6-foot-10 guy landing on campus—the year after Adrian Uter’s graduation left a huge hole in the middle and the year after George Mason made the Final Four with a plodding wanna-be NFL tight end at center—left Hofstra fans salivating at the thought of a Big East-type talent lurking in the paint.

The legend grew even larger when the NCAA declared Washington ineligible as a freshman and Dutchmen subsequently struggled to make the NIT in a season in which they were supposed to win the CAA and make a Mason-type NCAA Tournament run. If we only had an inside presence, the fan base thought, leaving unsaid the thought that the inside presence was supposed to be Washington.

The savior talk was quieted last year, when Washington averaged three rebounds, 1.6 blocks and 12.2 minutes per game for a team that was clearly more than one player away from contention. And when he opened the season by playing 25 minutes in his first four appearances (he was in street clothes for the Old Westbury game), it seemed as if he might forever be more curiosity than building block, the 6-foot-10 guy who could accidentally rack up a few boards and blocks per game yet was more comfortable shooting 12-footers.

But he posted consecutive double-doubles against Fordham and Towson, and even in a quiet performance against Stony Brook, he contributed by swishing a pair of free throws to seal the game with less than 10 seconds left. That, too, represented progress for a guy who was 3-of-17 from the line all of last year.

Washington will never have the build of a Dane Johnson or even a Uter or Darren Townes, but there he was Saturday, before the Big Block, muscling with his back to the basket against two defenders and converting a lay-up. While the Big Block was a pivotal symbolic point in his development, the ability to score down low will come

Washington has played more than 20 minutes in four straight games, a mark he reached just five times last year. Now that said, he played 20 minutes or more in three straight games last December before falling deep into the bench and recording three consecutive DNPs at midseason. So chances are there will be some more hiccups along the way.

But for now, as a 6-foot-10 sophomore on a program bursting with potential, the optimism is endless. And as a result, I think he’s surged past Miklos Szabo and right into First Guy To Get A Nickname territory.

How’s Gee Dubs (an obvious homage to Litos) sound? And should we call his blocks GWBs? These are the things I ponder with a week between games. Get here soon, conference season.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.