A Christmas Story: Jenkins’ Hofstra family ready to share in his NBA debut

For a few weeks this fall, Charles Jenkins Sr. and his wife Patricia were like any other parents of a recent college graduate who welcome their child back into the fold as he searches for his first “real world” job in a tough economy.

Speaking with a hearty laugh and tongue planted firmly in cheek, Charles Sr. said last week that “….my wife enjoyed having him around—I did too, I wouldn’t tell him that. We were anxious to see him get a job and leave. It’s the same. No different.”

Their son finally got that job and moved out—3,000 miles to the west, where tonight Charles Jenkins will punch a clock as a professional basketball player for the first time in front of a national television audience when the Golden State Warriors host the Los Angeles Clippers at 10:30 on ESPN.

Jenkins’ NBA debut on Christmas night is the culmination of a dream come true not only for the Jenkins family but also for the extended Hofstra family, all of whom will watch its favorite son with an uncommon sense of—wait for it—pride as well as an uncanny sense of connection shared by those who watched him for four transcendent years as well as the Flying Dutchmen basketball alumni who helped him prepare for and find his NBA opportunity.

“It doesn’t get any bigger than Christmas Day,” said Speedy Claxton, the former Hofstra superstar and current Warriors scout who was in the Warriors’ draft room and implored his team to draft Jenkins with the 44th overall pick of the draft in June. “I played 10 years, I played on Christmas Day once.”

“Watching Charles will be my Christmas present,” said Jason Hernandez, the former star Hofstra point guard and Claxton teammate who trained Jenkins throughout the summer and fall.

“The Hofstra connections—it means a lot,” Jenkins said from Warriors camp last week. “I’m a part of Hofstra for the rest of my life. That goes from the new guys that come in to the alumni that are here for me. The Hofstra family is a big one—once you get into it and you meet everybody, you build a friendship that lasts forever. That’s the friendship that I built with Jason Hernandez and Speedy Claxton.”

***

While the Warriors drafting Jenkins was the bit of unforeseen serendipity needed to give his NBA journey a storybook ending, the pairing of Jenkins and Hernandez was a natural and predictable fit. Hernandez opened the training facility Pro Hoops after the end of his professional career in Puerto Rico and often worked out with Jenkins during the latter’s stellar career at Hofstra. Shortly after his senior season ended, Jenkins teamed up with Hernandez and his staff, which put Jenkins and other NBA Draft prospects through rigorous two-a-day workouts.

Prior to the Draft, Jenkins’ schedule on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday consisted of basketball workouts at Pro Hoops from 9 to 10:30 a.m., followed by strength and conditioning from noon to 1:30 p.m. and skill specific workout (such as shooting or ball handling) from 3 to 4 p.m. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, Jenkins’ basketball workout went from noon to 2 p.m., immediately followed by an hour of core flexibility exercises.

Hernandez also introduced Jenkins to his sports nutritionist, Wendy Meyer-Sterling, who put him on a diet that allowed the already sculpted Jenkins to shed 16 pounds and record the third-best body fat percentage at the NBA Combine.

Once the lockout dragged into October, Jenkins left the apartment he was renting on Long Island and headed back home to Queens. Like most parents with a college graduate back in his or her old bedroom, the Jenkins didn’t give Charles a curfew. Unlike most parents with a college graduate back in his or her old bedroom, the Jenkins didn’t have to worry about where their son was in the late night hours or if he was doing everything possible to find a job.

“I knew I had the opportunity to play in the NBA and I just wanted to stay focused,” Jenkins said. “I know so many people in the world that would love to be in the position that I am. I didn’t take anything for granted. I just want to go and be the best player I can every day when I wake up.”

On the weekends, Jenkins went bowling or to the batting cages with friends and was home by 2 a.m. During the week, he was in bed well before the late news and out the door to work out at Pro Hoops before his Dad, a noted early riser even in retirement, was awake.

“I admire his work ethic,” Jenkins Sr. said. “He works extremely hard and I admire that. Even now I admire the fact that he gets up and goes to work hard and works hard everyday. I’m very proud of that. I think it’s a good representation of the family as well that he works hard to accomplish his goals.”

“I was always impressed with Charles’ work ethic and willingness to listen and then implement what he learned,” Hernandez said. “I was not surprised though. His parents are great people who work hard and they obviously instilled this into him. At Pro Hoops we always talk about training as a lifestyle and Charles believes that as well.

“We would be in the gym regardless of a season because this is what we do and who we are.”

***

The fate of the 2011-12 NBA season was uncertain long before the Draft. Of course, uncertainty is nothing new for Jenkins, who was lightly recruited out of high school and endured two coaching changes and the transfer of two starters prior to his senior year at Hofstra.

Still, an uncertain draft day was unexpected for Jenkins, who was expected to go in the second half of the first round but remained the top available prospect for the first hour of the second round. Yet even as other players flew off the board in the second round, Claxton never considered the possibility he and the Warriors might end Jenkins’ long wait.

“Most of the mocks had him in the first round and we had him in the first round,” Claxton said. “I really didn’t think about it until it came down to the last pick before ours.”

Claxton officially scouted Jenkins just once, at Manhattan last December, but saw most of his home games from his courtside seat at Hofstra Arena. And when the 44th pick arrived, and Jenkins was still available, Claxton wasted no time making his pitch for his fellow Hofstra alum.

“You always look at who is the best available and his name was first for a long time,” Claxton said. “I told [fellow executives]—I forget who else was the other option—but I told them this is somebody that is a great kid, that can really play and he’s a position that we need. He fits. That’s kind of a no-brainer. Everybody jumped on board and we just went with it.”

While the small but boisterous crowd at Bar Social celebrated Jenkins’ selection, a pair of former teammates began texting one another and marveling over the wild turn of events that linked a trio of Hofstra basketball legends and how the one team employing a Hofstra grad was able to give Jenkins a well-earned opportunity to play in the NBA.

“It was very, very, very exciting,” Claxton said. “Not only did I help him, but I helped the program to still keep their name out there and to show people that we’re producing pros.”

“I think the Hofstra connection is very cool,” Hernandez said. “[Claxton] scouts for a living and played in the NBA so he isn’t going to just vouch for anyone because his credibility and job are on the line.

“We texted each other the night of the draft and the sum of the conversation was that this is what it’s all about. Speedy and I were able to get to a NCAA Tournament together and now as professionals we were able to connect again and not only see an individual succeed, but Hofstra succeed once again.”

***

Jenkins’ success continues to unite Hofstra as well. His magnificent senior season turned him into an Internet superstar, earned him the honor of having his number retired by Hofstra while he was still wearing it and made a Flying Dutchmen basketball ticket an unusually hot item.

The two men who coached Jenkins at Hofstra appreciate how his success yields dividends at two different schools and marvel at how Jenkins, Hernandez and Claxton ended up intertwined.

“When you look at the bloodlines with Charles and then all the way down through Speedy and Jason and Norman Richardson—[and] Carlos [Rivera] and Loren [Stokes] and Antoine [Agudio] in the middle of that—we’ve always had great help from our alumni in recruiting and always been able to use our former players as points of reference for the guys we are recruiting,” Tom Pecora said this summer. “It’s good to see this continue at that level.”

“I think it’s incredible, it speaks volumes about the Hofstra basketball family—Jason Hernandez, Speedy Claxton and Charles Jenkins all tied together in this thing,” Mo Cassara said. “Part of what makes Charles so great is the Hofstra connection. These former players have been around him and influenced him so positively over the last couple years. And Charles embraces that too, which is really great.”

Hofstra, meanwhile, remains Jenkins’ foundation. He remains in constant contact with his ex-teammates and either watches Flying Dutchmen games online or gets reports from his Dad, who has season tickets. On his Facebook last week, Jenkins wrote “solid weekend for sports…both Hofstra men & women’s basketball won…and so did the Warriors!!!”

“I just want to thank everybody for their support—the Charles Jenkins Facts to the athlete page to the new 'Section 22' that they made [at the NBA Draft], I just want to thank everybody for staying with me,” Jenkins said. “I’ve got a big fanbase on Long Island and I hope everybody’s watching on Christmas.”

While Patricia Jenkins celebrated Christmas with her son today and attends her first NBA game tonight, the rest of Jenkins’ Hofstra family—spread out from his living room in Queens to thousands of other households nationwide—will be checking their watches during dinner and willing 10:30 to arrive.

“Such a short time ago he was running around with a Hofstra jersey on, helping us out last year,” Cassara said with a laugh. “I’m obviously going to be thrilled. It’s a great moment not only for Charles but for Hofstra basketball.”

“Watching Charles is like watching me—I’m reliving my career watching him,” Claxton said. “I wish him the best of luck. I hope he doesn’t get hit with the injury bug like I did once I got there and he can have a stellar career.”

And if you’re looking to get out of the house and can get to the Jenkins home in Queens, well, Jenkins’ Dad and at least one of his ex-teammates would welcome extended members of the family.

“Every Christmas I’m usually at his house,” said Nathaniel Lester, Jenkins’ co-best friend the last five years along with Greg Washington. “So I’ll just continue with that routine.”

“My son-in-law is going to spend the day with me [at] the house,” Charles Jenkins Sr. said. “Come by if you want.”

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

First SJU win was just the start for HU

It took Jay Wright six years to end one epic drought at Hofstra. But even after the Flying Dutchmen reached the NCAA Tournament in 2000 for the first time since 1977, the other dry spell that defined the program seemed as deep as ever.

Local rival St. John’s continued to dominate Hofstra by cruising to double-digit victories in 1996, 1998 and 1999. Those wins extended the Red Storm’s lead in the all-time series to 19-0 and their average margin of victory to nearly 18 points per game.

Hofstra lost by less than 10 points just four times, and the nearest of the near-misses—a 58-56 loss in 1992 in which St. John’s won at the buzzer—ranked, with little sense of irony, as one of the finest moments in Flying Dutchmen history.

Relief for Hofstra finally arrived on Dec. 16, 2000. And all the Dutchmen had to do to end 60 years of misery against St. John’s was walk 100 yards across the street.

The Dutchmen, playing as the road team at Nassau Coliseum so that St. John’s could have a “home game” that allowed it to serve as the host school when the Coliseum hosted the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament the following March, mounted a second half comeback to knock off the Red Storm, 86-80, in front of 8,771.

Norman Richardson scored 22 points to lead five players in double figures for the senior-laden Dutchmen, whose experience proved to be the difference against a young St. John’s squad that featured precocious freshman guard Omar Cook but just one senior in Reggie Jessie.

“I felt good about the game because I knew we had a very mature team,” said Tom Pecora, who was in his final season as Wright’s assistant. “Jason Hernandez was a transfer, so he was in his fifth year. Norman Richardson had gone to prep school, so he was in his fifth year. Greg Springfield was a transfer from Western Kentucky, he was in his fifth year. And Roberto [Gittens was a senior].

“I felt good about it. It fell right into that formula of experienced mid-major versus young BCS conference team.”

The formula seemed awfully familiar in the first half, when St. John’s maintained a small but steady lead on the Dutchmen and entered the locker room up 42-36. But the seniors, who were confident of their chances against St. John’s after losing by 12 a year earlier and determined to end the program’s losing streak against the Red Storm, gathered at halftime for a pep talk.

“We always had to play them on the road—we had to play them at Carnesecca and [in] real, real tough environments,” Hernandez said. “Coming in we [felt] we could do some good things, especially them coming through us at kind of a home game at Nassau Coliseum. We were a senior-laden team who had been to the tournament the year before and we just felt like it was a good time for us to get one.

“At halftime, the seniors and the captains really got after it and said ‘We’ve got to take this game.’ We didn’t want to leave Nassau Coliseum without that victory.”

The seniors did plenty to back up their words in the second half. The Dutchmen went on a 25-9 run to turn an eight-point deficit into an eight-point lead about midway through the half before St. John’s crawled back to tie the game 68-68 with seven minutes left.

But a pair of free throws by Gittens gave the Dutchmen the lead for good and the Dutchmen responded with multiple big stops on defense and clutch shots on offense down the stretch. Hernandez scored all 13 of his points after intermission and hit a pivotal jumper with 1:32 left that extended the Dutchmen’s lead to six, while Richardson scored 14 points in the second half, including a pair of 3-pointers that gave him the program record (159).

“We just had to keep grinding it out and play our type of defense in the last six minutes of the game,” Hernandez said. “We prided ourselves, really, on wearing teams down and just grinding out wins. I think we did a good job of taking good shots at the end of the game—and what we did best that year was really defend.”

The victory turned out to be a season- and decade-defining one for both programs. The Dutchmen were struggling to establish some chemistry following the graduation of Speedy Claxton and had already suffered narrow losses to rivals Delaware and Iona.

But the win over St. John’s lit the fuse on a sensational run by the Dutchmen, who won 21 of their next 23 games. They ended the regular season on a 15-game winning streak and won three more America East tournament games to win the conference crown and the automatic NCAA berth for the second straight season.

Hofstra has not been back to the NCAA Tournament since (insert snarky comment about Tom O’Connor here), but the Dutchmen have nonetheless become the premier program in the metro area. St. John’s is just emerging from the wreckage of created by Mike Jarvis, who had a non-existent relationship with local AAU and high school coaches and who presided over a program that had to forfeit 47 wins due to NCAA violations earlier this decade.

Pecora, meanwhile, has regularly brought Big East-caliber players to Hofstra, which has won 20 games four times in the last five years and has beaten St. John’s five times in seven meetings this decade, including four straight heading into today’s game in the Holiday Festival.

“It’s great to set the tone and kind of pave the way and let guys know that Hofstra is a very viable basketball program and one that is always going to be tough to contend with, regardless of the year,” Hernandez said. “It’s great to see the guys now going to those games [and feeling] that they can win, where early on in the Hofstra years, we kind of went into [the St. John’s] game [thinking] ‘Man, hopefully we can keep it close.’ Now it’s a different mindset, where guys are coming out to win the game. To see that shift in attitude is really what’s the best thing about it.”

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.

In which I make a rare departure from commenting solely on Hofstra sports to wish my wife a happy anniversary

The most momentous day in Defiantly Dutch history occurred exactly 14 years ago tonight, and it had nothing to do with sports on campus. I was pacing around my tiny corner dorm room at Vander Poel Hall, watching this thing that used to show music videos and looking for decent clothes to wear for an impending first date, when Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” appeared on my screen.

And at that moment, I thought to myself, holy smokes, this might be my last first date ever. I might end up marrying that really cute news writer from The Chronicle named Michelle.

Sure, the bolt of lightning should have hit me while I was listening to something terribly cheesy, like this. But for some reason, the unabashed ebullience of the “Buddy Holly” song and video—the best and most brilliant video ever made, in my modest opinion—summed up how I was already feeling about Michelle.

I mean, geez, she liked sports as much as me. Our unofficial introduction occurred when she won the weekly football pool at the office and I grouched about how I couldn’t believe I lost to a girl. And our unofficial first date was the result of a bet: I bet my favorite NFL team, the then-godawful Tampa Bay Buccaneers, would cover the spread against the equally crappy Seattle Seahawks. The loser had to buy the winner lunch at the Student Center. A girl who understood gambling? Sign me up!

She thought Jay Wright was really cute, but found the beauty in the subtle games of Darius Burton and Jason Hernandez. She thought spending Arctic-type “spring” afternoons watching the Hofstra baseball team was a great idea, not a sign she should immediately dump me. She agreed that going to North Carolina to see Hofstra play UCLA in 2001 was something we had to do, even though I was unemployed and she was in grad school.

She doesn’t wonder why I spend so much time playing fantasy sports, she’s the competition. She’s the yin to my yang, the one who sat sadly silent on Selection Sunday 2006, opening her mouth only to say how bad she felt for the Flying Dutchmen, while I unleashed a stream of profanity that would make Eddie Murphy, circa 1983, blush.

Her favorite baseball player is Derek Jeter. I think he’s hilariously overrated, and love her anyway.

I’d like to sit here and tell you I took her to a five-star restaurant and then the opera 14 years ago tonight, but that’d be a lie. Like thousands of young Long Islanders doing the mating dance, we went out for pizza and then went bowling, and I managed to get through the night without my heart exploding out of my chest.

A month later, she met my best friends from back home. During the first minute or so in the car on the way back from Long Island, something along the line of “She’s the one, Beach” tumbled out of their mouths. But the words I remember most came from Chronicle editor-in-chief Jeff.

“Don’t screw this one up,” he said.

I like to think I didn’t. Happy anniversary, dear. Hanging out with Sully Ray is fun, but I’d still rather sit next to you at basketball games.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.