All these changes taking place…

Do...do...do you remember when the Flying Dutchmen beat Towson? That was awesome. Do...do...do you think it can happen again today?

The Flying Dutchmen have changed by not changing at all (oh yeah, I always wanted to find a way to work into a story my favorite line from my favorite Pearl Jam song). Nine weeks ago today, the streaking Dutchmen met Towson in a game that had the potential to foretell their fortunes for the rest of the season and their ability to exceed modest pre-season expectations.

Today, the streaking Dutchmen meet Towson in a game that has the potential to foretell their fortunes for the rest of their season and gauge their ability to meet or exceed modest mid-to-late season expectations.

These Dutchmen, of course, are streaking in a different direction with two straight losses than those Dutchmen, who had won four in a row. And these Dutchmen need to make a statement like the one those Dutchmen made in Towson, where they knocked off the Tigers 90-81 in perhaps the program’s most impressive win since the graduation of Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera.

It wasn’t a perfect game, but it’s the one that got me to declare the Blue Beetle Bandwagon was up and running and it’s the one that Tom Pecora throws into the VCR (or the DVD player, or the Blu-Ray player, or the Laser Disc player, or the Beta Max, or film strip machine, or whatever device coaches use these days to break down game film) whenever he wants to remind the Dutchmen that they haven’t always been inconsistent, haven’t always battled self-confidence issues and haven’t always been unable to fall out of a boat and hit water.

Five players scored at least nine points, Cornelius Vines hit six 3-pointers and the Dutchmen made 25 of 31 free throws in scoring 90 points in regulation for only the fourth time in the Pecora Era (ironically, in that it’s not ironic at all, Towson is the only venue in which the Dutchmen have twice exceeded 90 points in regulation). The Dutchmen out-rebounded the Tigers 39-30, set a season high with 19 assists and committed just 11 turnovers, one shy of their season-best mark.

The loss to George Mason Tuesday is one suitable for viewing, as well, albeit only for interrogation purposes, and even then only if everything else has failed and you’re running out of time. At 6-6 and in seventh place in the CAA, the Dutchmen are right where everyone figured they’d be back in October, but that hot start raised expectations and the subsequent slumps have lent a particularly frustrating air to the season.

Fortunately for the Dutchmen, perpetually disappointing Towson—which is one loss away from locking up its eighth sub-.500 conference record in as many seasons in the CAA—is in even worse shape. Hofstra has to win this game if it hopes to regain some momentum over the final lap of the conference season, and the Tigers could be the perfect tonic for whatever ails the Dutchmen—and in particular Charles Jenkins, who is 18-of-38 shooting in his last three games against Towson.

Four Towson starters stand 6-foot-6 or taller, so finding the right mix of Darren Townes, Arminas Urbutis and Greg Washington (who had a double-double against Towson in December) is key. The guess here is Townes, fresh off a season-high nine rebounds against Mason, will approach 30 minutes for the first time in more than two months.

It’ll also be interesting to see if Vines and Tony Dennison, each of whom set a season-high in minutes off the bench Tuesday, see the same amount of time following their brutal shooting efforts against Mason. My guess is we’ll see more of Zygis Sestakos, who missed all five 3-pointers against Towson in December and has taken just 14 3-pointers since.

Anyway, see you there. I’ll be the one dribbling a basketball, sporting socks that are too high, shorts that are too short and the faded and shrunken Miller T-shirt I won at Bogart’s for being able to identify where Eddie Vedder was living when he joined Pearl Jam (Answer: San Diego. Honest to goodness. How’s that for tying it all together nicely?) Hey, I’ve got to be prepared just in case there’s an Alumni Day scrimmage and alums are pulled out of the stands to play.

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

In which I research the CAA one year at a time

Even Jack Bauer can't get someone to tell him how the CAA season will shake out.

I have to admit: Whenever I write something about how competitive and unpredictable the CAA is, I cringe a little bit. Such traits have been standard for the CAA for years—the first- and third-place teams in the CAA have been separated by two games or less 14 times in 26 seasons and last year marked only the fourth time the regular season champ has finished three games ahead of the runner-up—so I’m not exactly breaking any news there.

To wax poetic about the unpredictability of the league is to skirt dangerously close to what Litos calls clee shay territory. And let’s face it: Most of the coaches in the league bathe in clichés. No need for the rest of us to do so. (Fortunately, Tom Pecora lapses into coach-speak far less than his rivals. And that’s not blog bias talking, other guys ‘round the Interwebs are impressed with Pecora’s candidness, too)

Plus, it’s early in the season. Has there ever been a year—in any league, going all the way back to the ECC, OK, maybe not in my case, since the 1993-94 conference season was five games long and nobody even knew it was going on—in which we didn’t spend the first quarter of the conference slate marveling at the balance of the league?

It’s not the same sport, but along the same lines, it annoys me every September when I read columns after the first week or two of the NFL season about how it’s so unpredictable and wacky. Uhh, isn’t that the point of a salary cap, to create parity and make it impossible to predict who will rise and fall? Marveling at that is like marveling at mall traffic the weekend before Christmas.

But as I scanned the CAA results and standings Saturday night, I thought to myself “Self, this is REALLY unpredictable and balanced, even by CAA standards.” Georgia State began the week 2-0 and ended it 2-3. James Madison began the week 0-2 and ended it 3-2. And as noted Monday, Delaware beat the pre-season favorite on the first Real Saturday of the conference season and lost to a team that had lost 10 in a row on the second Real Saturday.

And look at those standings: Two teams at 5-0, one at 4-1, one at 3-2, FIVE at 2-3 and three at 1-4. Only one-third of the league is over .500, yet three-quarters of it is no worse than a game away from breaking even.

So I wondered: Is this just par for the course, or is the CAA really even more competitive than usual this year? A pretty good case can be made for the latter.

This is the second straight year nine teams have had at least two wins through five conference games. However, it’s the first time since the CAA expanded to 12 teams in 2005-06 that only four teams have had at least three wins through five conference games. There were six teams that were at least 3-2 at this point in the schedule last season.

(Special thanks to the Hofstra site, which archives game notes back to 2003-04, for its invaluable role in researching this entry)

In 2006-07, there were five teams with at least three wins and eight teams with at least two wins through five games. In 2005-06, there were seven teams with at least three wins and eight teams with at least two wins through five games.

Every team has reached the five-game point at the same time in each of the last three seasons. The unbalanced schedule was really unbalanced in 2005-06, when there were six teams with five conference games through Jan. 11 and six teams with four conference games. Hofstra and Drexel were among the latter teams, but both were 3-1. And each of the bottom four teams already had four losses through Jan. 11.

This is also the second straight season in which every team has at least one win through five games. There was at least one 0-5 team in each of the preceding four seasons.

Going back a bit further into the final two years of the 10-team alignment: Every team reached the five-game point at the same time in 2004-05, at which point five squads had at least three wins and seven had at least two wins. Another really unbalanced unbalanced schedule in 2003-04 makes it difficult to figure out how many teams were 3-2 or better through five games—four teams had at least three wins through Jan. 15, but Drexel and Delaware, two of the four teams with only four games played, were each 2-2—but eight of the 10 teams had at least two wins at that juncture.

So what’s all this suggest? Will there be a bigger gap between the top quarter and the rest of the conference, yet a bigger logjam between four and 12? Or will this be a year that the NFL would love?

Northeastern is too scary good—and UNC-Wilmington’s defense too scary bad—to expect something similar to 1996-97, when Old Dominion and UNC-Wilmington tied for first in the nine-team conference at 10-6 and American and Richmond tied for seventh at 7-9.

Yet very recent history suggests that at least one of the 5-0 teams will come back to the pack and make the middle of the league an even bigger mess than it is now. Remember the only team to get off to a 5-0 start last year? It was Delaware…which finished 9-9 and was the seventh seed come March.

All these numbers mean, for now—and, I imagine, for the foreseeable future—that the perception is once again the reality, and that the CAA is tighter than ever. Remember: Cliches are clichés because they’re true. Which, ironically-but-not-really, is a cliché in and of itself.

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