Of the three likely number twos, who works best for the Dutchmen?

"Hey pardner, just relax, don't force it! Use some creative visualization in trying to project the number two seed and potential quarterfinal opponent for the Flying Dutchmen!"

The Flying Dutchmen are a picture of calm surrounded by chaos as the final lap of the CAA season begins. Whether the Dutchmen crane their heads northward or take a glance downward, they see teams scrambling for seeding in the upcoming CAA Tournament.

The six teams ahead of the Dutchmen are separated by three games and battling for the ever-so-valuable four first-round byes. Their current perches are so precarious—Northeastern, for example, would be the top seed if the season ended today but could still finish as low as fifth—that any misstep could deliver a lethal blow to their CAA Tournament hopes.

Expending any energy pondering potential tourney matchups is foolish, since the landscape will likely look much different Thursday morning than it does today—and much different again next Thursday morning and next Sunday morning. There could be a two-, three-, four-, five- or even six-way tie for first place, or a three-way tie for second place, or a four-way tie for third place, or…you know what, just trust me, it’s complicated. Best for Northeastern, Old Dominion, George Mason, William & Mary, Drexel and VCU to just concentrate on the next game on the schedule.

The five teams below the Dutchmen, meanwhile, are separated by just a game and are not vying for the prestige of a bye but merely to save some face and gain some momentum for a slightly better matchup as an eighth, ninth or 10th seed. The same sentiments apply: There may be a simply magnificent three-, four- or five-way tiebreaker to be untangled after the final conference game is played, so all the teams involved can do is focus on trying to make things as uncomplicated as possible.

And then there’s our beloved Dutchmen, who are so comfortably ensconced in seventh place that there is a better chance of the Powerball six-team tie for first at 12-6 happening than Hofstra moving up or down. One more win by VCU eliminates the Dutchmen from the race for sixth. And one more win by the Dutchmen (winners of five of their last six) or one more loss by Georgia State (losers of three in a row, six of seven and nine of 11) clinches the seventh seed.

And even if the Dutchmen lose out and Georgia State wins out, the Dutchmen would finish no lower than eighth thanks to their tiebreaker advantages over James Madison, Towson and UNC Wilmington.

So while everyone else lives by the boring-ass philosophy of one game at a time, we have the luxury here of looking ahead 17 and 18 days to the opening and quarterfinal rounds of the CAA Tournament and to the possible opponents for the Dutchmen.

This project actually began with me pondering the Dutchmen’s quarterfinal opponent, but nothing would be more embarrassing than to have all this work go for naught because I screwed with the karma by assuming an opening round win. So for the sake of keeping the basketball gods at bay, the 10th-place team if the season were to end today would likely be UNC Wilmington.

I say likely because there is currently a wild four-way tie for eighth. James Madison would fall to 11th because of its 1-3 record against the other 4-11 teams. Towson would be the eighth seed by virtue of its 2-1 record against Georgia State and UNC Wilmington, the latter two of whom split the season series. But I believe Georgia State would get the ninth seed because it beat George Mason (I think the next tiebreaker, after head-to-head, is performance of the two teams against the first-place team, then the second, and so on, until someone has an advantage). Hence, another opening round Hofstra-UNC Wilmington matchup.

Of the four most likely opening round opponents, James Madison—fresh off an upset of VCU and with the 6-foot-10 behemoth Denzel Bowles patrolling the paint—is one I’d like to see least. The Dutchmen won their four games against Towson and UNC Wilmington by a combined 92 points, so a third game with either team—despite urban legends to the contrary—shouldn’t make us fret too much. Of course, we will anyway.

Anyway, regardless of opponent, the Dutchmen—who are 6-0 against teams below them in the standings with tonight’s game against Delaware and the season finale against Georgia State still on the docket—should win that first game. So let’s look ahead to the quarterfinals. Who, among the six teams vying for the top four seeds, would the Dutchmen most likely to be face on Saturday?

For all intents and purposes, let’s eliminate William & Mary, Drexel and VCU from the discussion. It’s certainly possible one of those teams would finish second, but William & Mary and Drexel are two games back of Northeastern and Old Dominion and VCU is three back with three to play.

So the overwhelming likelihood is that either Northeastern, Old Dominion or George Mason will finish second. Alas, unfortunately for the Dutchmen, the team that presents the best—and most delicious—matchup is George Mason, which is also the one least likely to finish second.

The Dutchmen had Mason down seven more than midway through the second half in Fairfax Jan. 3 and would certainly be revved up for a rematch following the embarrassing loss at the Arena Jan. 19. Northeastern, meanwhile, outscored the Dutchmen by 33 after falling behind 15-2 Feb. 6 while Old Dominion never trailed in a 57-46 win Jan. 9.

The Patriots are also far more immature than either of the senior-dominated squads at Northeastern and Old Dominion, both of whom have a last-time-around feel to them and won’t be lacking for focus or motivation in the tournament. I’m sure that negative characterization of Mason will once again fail to endear me to the less likable segment of Mason Nation, but don’t shoot the messenger. It’s not my fault you’ve had four players suspended this season.

And if you want some knee-slapping laughs, check out Jim Larranaga’s comments about Mike Morrison’s suspension as well as the spin doctoring by the most sycophantic of Mason fans at the CAA Zone and elsewhere. Nothing I write here can put it any better or in any more entertaining fashion.

Now, that said, Mason under my good friend Larranaga has played some of its best ball in the CAA Tournament, reaching the final the last three seasons and four of the past six overall. So it’s entirely possible that the knuckleheadness would stop and Mason would run the Dutchmen all the way back to Hempstead.

Anyway, the simplest way for Mason to finish second is to end up in a three-way tie for first with Northeastern and Old Dominion at 14-4. Northeastern would be the one seed based on its 2-1 record against the other two teams while Mason (2-2) would be second and ODU (1-2) third.

But Mason has to sweep its final three games to finish 14-4—a bit of a challenge, considering the Patriots will be without the hot-headed Morrison tonight against William & Mary, play Northeastern in the season finale, have lost three of their last four and recorded the only win in that span following an epic comeback over VCU.

In addition, the toughest game left on Old Dominion’s schedule is the regular season finale in which it hosts VCU. So it’s fair to project 15-3 for the Monarchs. And Mason would lose the tiebreaker for second place with Northeastern by virtue, again, of the unbalanced schedule (the Huskies went 1-0 against Old Dominion while Mason went 1-1).

Another possibility: ODU and Mason win out and Northeastern goes 1-2, falling to the Dutchmen as well as Mason. Given how easily the Huskies handled the Dutchmen at Hofstra this year and in Boston last year, I’m not exactly counting on that one. But if this were to happen, the Patriots would finish second and the Huskies third.

There is also a wild scenario in which a four-way tie for second place would be created when William & Mary and Drexel win their final three, Mason goes 2-1 and Northeastern goes 1-2. In that case, William & Mary would be the two seed by virtue of its 4-0 record against the other 13-5 teams. The Fighting Bill Lawrences swept the Dutchmen and are another mature, veteran team, but the Dutchmen led for the first 39 minutes in the first game at Hofstra and led by seven in the second half of the rematch in Virginia, so the matchup is another potentially appealing one.

The most likely scenario is that ODU runs the table and wins the top seed outright when Northeastern drops its finale at Mason. That would present the Dutchmen with a quarterfinal game against the Huskies, which is a doubly tough assignment given Northeastern’s skill level and the inherent likability of your Twitter friend and mine Matt Janning and crew. Of course, the good news is that I’ve got 18 days to come up with reasons why Northeastern is a far better quarterfinal opponent than Mason.

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

Arrrgh. We still passionately loathe you, Seth Meyers

This is about Hofstra's football nightmare, not one endured by Fake Seth Meyers. Sigh.

If you’re like me (I’m sorry) then you spent your childhood wolfing down the Matt Christopher sports books and learning that hard work and humility triumphed over the bad guys every single time. The Christopher books eventually beget various good-guys-win books purchased via the East School book club which eventually beget a real-life appreciation of the underdog.

I didn’t see the U.S. Olympic ice hockey team shock the big, bad Russians in 1980—actually, nobody saw it live, imagine that—but I remember walking around school chanting “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” One of the great memories of my youth is begging and pleading my parents to let me stay up and watch the 1983 NCAA Tournament championship game between North Carolina State and Houston, won, of course, at the buzzer by N.C. State when Lorenzo Charles dunked Dereck Whittenburg’s air ball. Two years later, Villanova truly scored one for good over evil by shocking Georgetown with The Perfect Game.

Of course, as you get older, you realize that life isn’t as neat and tidy as it is in fiction and that the bad guys quite often win. And if you didn’t know this, dear Hofstra fan, you sure as hell learned it in 2006.

(Of course, if you’re a fan of the Tampa Bay Rays, you’re thinking today that reality does match fiction. But you’re probably also a front-runner. Once baseball season is over, you can start watching the Tennessee Titans!)

The point of all this: We were reminded again this weekend, at Defiantly Dutch HQ, that the bad guys win most of the time as injury-wracked Flying Dutchmen football team lost to Maine 41-40 in double overtime (recap from the Bangor newspaper), Northwestern destroyed Purdue 48-26 and moved into the top 25 in the coaches poll and Big Fat Stupidhead Seth Meyers continued to raise his profile on a suddenly resurgent Saturday Night Live.

It’s not right, you know. Hofstra should have begun its inspiring, let’s-do-it-in-spite-of-Fake-Seth-Meyers run to the I-AA national championship by knocking off Maine, especially after the Flying Dutchmen fell behind 13-0 less than three minutes into the game and came back to take a 17-13 lead before a spate of injuries—including the worst-case yet almost unavoidable scenario involving Cory Christopher—forced Dave Cohen to rebuild the offense on the fly.

Christopher, who had taken every snap this season because his only backups were freshmen Steve Probst and Joe Sidaris, both of whom Dave Cohen hoped to redshirt, was hurt in the second quarter and replaced by Probst (who can probably now look forward to a redshirt season in 2009). Running backs Brock Jackolski, the freshman whiz kid, and Justine Buries, the grad student and former New Mexico State player, were also hurt.

Yet Probst (135 yards and three TDs passing, 63 yards rushing) directed a game-tying drive early in the fourth quarter and the Flying Dutchmen created a miracle turnover in the final minute—freshman Chris Edmond, who made a team-high 13 tackles, stripped Maine quarterback Mike Brusko of the ball at the six-yard-line following an 18-yard gain and Ray McDonough recovered it—to force overtime.

Probst threw two TDs in overtime, but Roger Williams missed the PAT following the second score and Maine scored on the first play of its second possession and nailed the subsequent PAT to win it for the Black Bears.

The loss was doubly disappointing for the Flying Dutchmen because a win would have catapulted them into a tie atop the CAA North with New Hampshire. Of course, there are no playoff berths for winning one half of the CAA. Nor do I have any misconceptions of Hofstra’s season lasting beyond Nov. 22, especially with three top 20 teams still awaiting the Flying Dutchmen in November. But still, to be in first place in the North more than halfway through the season—and with a winnable game against reeling Delaware coming up Saturday—would have been a pleasant surprise given the given the rebuilding nature of this season.

The rebuilding just got a little steeper, as well, if Christopher is out for an extended period of time. While it was encouraging to see (or, in this case, read) Probst acquit himself well off the bench, Dave Cohen and offensive coordinator David Patenaude have a pretty big challenge in figuring out what to do over the final five games.

The Flying Dutchmen haven’t really established an identity on offense. The only player to carry the ball more than 20 times in a game has been Christopher, and we all saw how that worked out. Yet the staff has been reluctant to overwork Jackolski (understandable, since he appeared headed for a redshirt year himself two months ago) and Everett Benjamin, who played well after moving to tailback from fullback Saturday and scored the go-ahead TD in the second OT, has exceeded 11 carries just three times in his first 19 collegiate games.

Cohen surely doesn’t want to burn another redshirt, so the goal should be to keep Probst upright (and, perhaps, to scour campus to see if someone wants to walk on and hand the ball off if something happens to Probst) and hope that he develops chemistry in a hurry with receivers Ottis Lewis and Anthony Nelson, who caught 11 of Probst’s 14 completions.

It probably won’t result in a return to the Gardi-era shootouts, or allow us to get the last laugh at Fake Seth Meyers. But at this point, the goal for the Flying Dutchmen should be to get into 2009 in one piece—or as close to it as possible.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Let’s debate the impact of the debate

Because this is about the debate and how a Cinderella run in the NCAA Tournament would have a more tangible effect on the University...and I just can't stomach posting a picture of a George Mason Final Four ring.

So admitting this will probably mean either a.) a sudden raise in my Hofstra Pride Club membership or b.) a painful administration of a Hofstra Pride tattoo on my left bicep (still saving money to get a Starland Vocal Band tattoo there) by The Powers That Be, but here goes:

A little less than 24 hours before John McCain and Barack Obama take the stage at Hofstra Arena, I’m already tired of hearing about the debate—specifically all that jazz about the sustained boost Hofstra will get in publicity, name recognition and new applicants.

Don’t get me wrong: As someone who went to school there when the key athletic building on campus was the Physical Fitness Center, I think it’s really cool that Hofstra has advanced to the point where it can host a presidential debate. I’m not sure the dusty, bleacher-seated, once-was-the-home-arena-of-the-Long-Island-Surf PFC could have handled hosting a Student Senate presidential debate, never mind The Real Thing.

It blows my mind that America’s eyes will be trained on Hofstra Wednesday. I’ll also admit the wife and I go “whoo hoo” every time some talking head mentions the debate will be at Hofstra. Yes. We are dorks. I’m also insanely jealous of the Chronicle staff writers who get to cover this—as well as the earlier debates and the conventions.

And the University should be proud of hosting the debate and should be thumping its chest over all the publicity it’s receiving. From now until the end of time, the boilerplate on all Hofstra press releases should include something about the 2008 presidential debate.

I hope Educate ’08—the year-long series of events designed to, you guessed it, educate students about the election and politics—has resulted in campus-wide enlightenment. “I actually think there is an obligation for universities to try to inspire their students to be active participants in the democratic process,” Stuart Rabinowitz told the Associated Press in this article.

But let’s not be naïve enough to believe that Hofstra is doing this for the greater good. Hofstra’s hosting the debate because it’s good for Hofstra. It lends an unmistakable air of exclusivity and prestige to the school that will come in handy when The Powers That Be are raising funds—and tuition. Which is fine. That’s the name of the game on campuses nationwide.

The New York Daily News wrote today that “…Hofstra has received the kind of publicity money can’t buy,” in hosting the debate. Not quite true: Hofstra did indeed buy this publicity—it’s costing the University $3.5 million to put on the debate, according to the Daily News—and it plunked down the coinage because it realized the debate would provide an impressive return on a relatively minimal investment.

But that return won’t necessarily include a sizable increase in post-debate name recognition or applications. I understand the theory that Hofstra will get a bigger publicity boost than most debate hosts because the election is occurring at such a pivotal time in American history and because McCain and Obama will be discussing the economy and domestic policy, two incredibly timely topics, at the debate.

I just don’t buy it. I don’t believe the general public will correlate Hofstra with the debate at any time after, well, tomorrow. After all: Do you know where the first two presidential debates and the vice presidential debate were held? Do you know where the 2004 presidential debates were held? And do you know which university has hosted the most presidential debates?

I put my theory to the test with my good friend JG (I can’t call him a loyal reader, since he’s a Syracuse grad…should have seen the look of concern on his face as we sat in the nosebleeds of the Carrier Dome as the Flying Dutchmen nearly beat the Orangemen in 2004). He’s the biggest political junkie I know. Dude’s got bookcases full of books authored by people on both sides of the aisle.

And even HE doesn’t remember where the 2004 debates were held. “I’m sure you can look it up online,” he wrote.

Nor am I convinced that high schoolers around the land will watch the debate and suddenly start filling out Hofstra applications. Arizona State and Miami, the two schools that hosted presidential debates for the first time in 2004, experienced only minimal increases in applicants from 2005 to 2006. Arizona State had 19,914 applicants in 2005 and 20,702 in 2006 while Miami had 18,812 applicants in 2005 and 19,040 in 2006.

(I tried finding 2004 application information online but couldn’t…but I figured the 2005 to 2006 numbers would be telling as well since most people applying for 2005 would already be well into the process by the time the debates took place. Except for procrastinators like me, of course)

In addition, M. Frederic Volkmann, the vice chancellor for Public Affairs at Washington University, told The Chronicle (no, not that one) Of Higher Education in 2004 that he’s “…never seen any data that shows a change in enrollment or a fund-raising bounce” following a debate at Washington.

The lede of the Daily News story Tuesday, meanwhile, unintentionally sums up just how minimal a long-term boost Hofstra will enjoy from the debate: “Outside of scoring a Nobel Prize or having a basketball team play Cinderella in the NCAA Tournament, the fastest way for a college to leap onto the national stage is to host a presidential debate.”

It pains me to type this, but two days, two weeks, two years and two decades from now, many, many, many more people will remember George Mason for its Final Four run in 2006 than Hofstra for hosting a presidential debate. If you try to go toe-to-toe with a George Mason fan with “Yeah? Well, whose school has hosted a presidential debate lately?” you’ll be laughed out of the room.

Is that a reflection on America’s out-of-whack priorities? Sure. But I also long ago came to grips with the fact that a guy like Carl Pavano can make nearly 250 times as much money per year for barely throwing a baseball as my wife does for teaching.

Robert Baker, the director of the Center for Sport Management at George Mason, penned this interesting article for Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal in which he revealed that freshman applications increased 10 percent in both 2006-07 and 2007-08. And his conservative estimate of the value of the media exposure George Mason received for its run? How’s $677,474,659 sound?

Again: Hofstra’s earned the right to tout the debate as often as it wants. But after Wednesday, the impact of the debate will be about as wide-reaching as the WRHU signal.

“To me, this is priceless advertising,” Rabinowitz told the New York Times in August. But probably not as priceless or as valuable as $677,474,659, unfortunately.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.