In which I compare the 3-0 CAA start to young lust, thereby once again invoking Aerosmith, and hope our Boston brethren don’t end the honeymoon today

Fun fact: The actual video for this song is X-rated. Who knew? Good thing I checked! Also, yes, I will apparently craft a headline around every Aerosmith song from Pump and Get A Grip

They don’t pay me good money here (and by “they” I mean “I”) to come up with new and more profane ways to declare how much I don’t like George Mason, or to find a different and helpful way to look at Hofstra basketball, or to come up with witty and original descriptors.

But for the longest time (that’s to see if new reader Missy is still reading) following the suck it Mason win over Mason, I couldn’t come up with the proper way to describe what it’ll be like going from playing Mason to playing Northeastern tomorrow.

I mean, Hofstra and Northeastern, we’re as close as Hofstra and Mason are contemptuous—certainly tighter than either school is with anyone else in this conference in which we are now so obviously misplaced. We’re obvious Northern Bias schools. Ten days after Northeastern exterminated football, Hofstra followed suit (but that’s just coincidence, snort).

Tom Pecora’s favorite coach in the league he so loathed was Northeastern’s Bill Coen. The two teams couldn’t stop complimenting each other after the Huskies edged the Flying Dutchmen 74-71 in a classic double overtime duel in last year’s CAA Tournament,

Personally speaking, approximately three-quarters of my followers on Twitter are from Northeastern, and about half of those went to Hofstra before embarking upon grad school at Northeastern. (Mild exaggerations) I worked in Boston for four years, and loved every second of it. (No exaggeration) I’d be one happy guy if I could figure out a way to blog about Hofstra from Boston. In fact, when I win the lottery, I’m going to piss away my winnings by moving to Boston, starting a Red Sox website and getting limousine service to and from Hofstra games every winter. (My wife doesn’t know this yet, so don’t tell her)

And I almost forgot: Long Island and Boston are home to two of the greatest musical acts to ever grace the Earth, Billy Joel and Extreme. So yeah. I like Boston, and can’t wait to head into Matthews Arena tomorrow (unless the useless meteorologists of the world screw up another forecast and it takes me 18 hours to go 120 miles, but I digress and will rant about that in the Five Pregame Thoughts).

Oh, and finally, after 24 or so hours of pondering, I came up with a way to describe what tomorrow will be like. Imagine getting “get a room you two” freaky in public with your smoking hot new girlfriend (or boyfriend), all in front of your wicked (see what I did there?) stupid ex-girlfriend (or ex-boyfriend). You know how satisfying that is? That’s what Wednesday felt like. I think I need serious therapy.

Anyway, tomorrow is like taking that awesome hot new girlfriend (or boyfriend) to meet the family. It’s going to be nice and comfortable and everyone’s going to like everyone and the honeymoon is going to continue. Probably. Hopefully. As long as everything goes according to plan. We don’t really know.

See, this 3-0 CAA record is the basketball version of those first glorious couple weeks with that new girlfriend (or boyfriend). We had no idea how great this was going to be, no idea that a seemingly routine first date would turn into this torrid love affair. Hofstra is all alone in first place, for God’s sake. That’s like—umm, well, you know, it’s like stuff I probably shouldn’t mention here. But it’s good.

We know it’s early, and a lot can go wrong, but damnit, we don’t want to think about that now. We just want to enjoy the ride, enjoy the good feelings, enjoy the euphoria. We just want to umm, keep watching the Flying Dutchmen win games, and worry about if this is built to last later.

We know, though. We know that even if it is the real deal, there will be hiccups. No relationship remains blissfully carefree forever and nobody goes 18-0, or even 16-2. Hopefully it doesn’t happen today, or Wednesday, or even next Saturday against preseason favorite Old Dominion. But it will happen. At some point, someone will say something stupid or someone’s friends will grumble that someone is spending too much time with that new girlfriend or boyfriend or…well, something will happen. That is guaranteed.

And Northeastern is the type of place where it could happen. The Huskies are 0-3, one of three teams winless in CAA play, and crazy young: Your good friend and mine Mike Litos noted that through Dec. 31, Northeastern’s freshmen and sophomores had combined to play 1,839 minutes. Juniors and seniors played 606—all but 14 from seniors Chase Allen and Vinny Luma.

Northeastern also wasn’t playing very good defense, at least before Wednesday’s sludgy 49-34 loss to Old Dominion, and Coen won’t tolerate that for long. That second figure, by the way, is not a misprint. It’s better to take on the Huskies in Boston now than in February, when they will be the spoiler nobody wants to face, but you’ve got to figure that the Huskies will be an ornery bunch Saturday and eager to take out their aggressions (figuratively speaking, the program is pure class), even if the target is a familial foe.

Once the shine does come off, the real test begins. And we of course believe in the Flying Dutchmen’s ability to bounce back, become better for the rough patch and build a better relationship because of it, so to speak. But man, I hope it doesn’t happen today, because this young lust is fun for us middle-aged types.

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

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.

Nobody asked me, but…here’s how Hofstra could be part of a brand-new ECC

Take Hofstra, Northeastern and Drexel from the CAA, Providence, Seton Hall and St. John's from the Big East and mix them up with LaSalle and Stony Brook and...HIVENGLAVIN!!!!

This was a false alarm. Please return to your homes and continue pricing flights to Richmond for next year’s CAA Tournament as well as sending nasty Twitter messages to Jim Larranaga (seriously, Litos must really think a lot of my self-restraint to post that bit of info, and doubly seriously, don’t send nasty Twitter messages to anyone, even someone at George Mason).

All that talk about Hofstra leaving the CAA for the A-10 was apparently premature, as Steve Marcus reported Wednesday. But I wouldn’t be in a rush to buy a wardrobe full of clothes sporting the CAA logo, either.

One of these times, the buzz about changing leagues will be legitimate. And it won’t just be Hofstra and a handful of CAA schools doing the conference shuffle. The current Division I landscape is an overfilled backyard pool, busting at the seams and liable to explode and flood the neighborhood at any moment.

The expansion of Division I to 353 schools means 31 conferences are no longer enough. A 16-team Big East…a 14-team Atlantic 10…13 other conferences with more than 10 schools, including our beloved CAA. And no matter how much CBS and your average bracket-filling Joe might love it, the 65-team NCAA Tournament has outlived its usefulness.

It’s time to blow the whole damn thing up.

It won’t be easy, of course. Bigger is better for the BCS conferences. After all, the Big East can’t try to get nine bids to the NCAA Tournament if it only has eight schools.

And the NCAA has made it as difficult as possible for anyone to think outside the box (groan) and form conferences that are more geographically and numerically friendly. Under current NCAA guidelines, the Great West Conference, the first new conference this decade, won’t be eligible for an automatic bid to the men’s tournament until 2020, by which point we’ll all be getting around in flying cars.

The NCAA did what it does best—bent the rules as it saw fit—the last time a new conference was formed in 1999, when the Mountain West broke off from the WAC. Mountain West schools had to wait only two years to receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Something tells me the NCAA won’t be as eager to award an automatic bid to the Great West and rob another deserving 17-12 BCS school of an at-large bid. But what if the Great West is just one of three new conferences? And what if waiving the usual requirements and awarding automatic bids to these new conferences after two years—and expanding the NCAA Tournament to 68 teams—means March Madness creeps into the national conscience a couple days earlier than it does now?

A 68-team tournament would allow for four play-in games that would take place, two apiece, on Tuesday and Wednesday. That makes for six consecutive glorious days of hoops during the first week of the tournament. Hard to argue with that, yes?

Sure, a North Dakota State might be ticked off because it was not eligible for the NCAA Tournament until its fifth year at Division I. Just because that’s the way it used to be doesn’t mean it should always be that way. I had to type my research papers in college on a Brother word processor, but I don’t plan on subjecting my kid(s) to that if I ever procreate.

Most importantly, from the perspective of a Hofstra fan, what if one of these new conferences features the Flying Dutch as a core member? It’d be the first time since the ECC that Hofstra would be on legitimately equal footing in its conference (the school was on its way to that kind of stature in the America East before the departure for the CAA).

What if the new conference was the old conference? What do you think about this East Coast Conference that features multiple natural rivalries and saves the member schools countless thousands of dollars in travel expenses?

Hofstra
Northeastern
Drexel
Seton Hall
St. John’s
Providence
Stony Brook
LaSalle

I have to think that any realignment of Division I will be centered around breaking up the Big East. And if and when that happens, the non-BCS schools that are mired in the middle and back of the conference—DePaul, Providence, St. John’s and Seton Hall—will be the ones most endangered.

All four schools have glorious hoops histories that overshadow anything Hofstra, Northeastern, Drexel, Stony Brook and LaSalle have accomplished, and I can’t imagine Providence, St. John’s and Seton Hall want anything to do with joining a bunch of eastern mid-majors. But they may not have a choice.

The Big East Three are afterthoughts in their own conference now. Georgetown and Villanova, in particular, have proven it’s possible to reverse such a downfall. But all you’ve got to do to accomplish that is hire the son of the most legendary coach in school history (actually, DePaul already did that) and a guy from Hofstra, respectively. Maybe Providence can get Rick Pitino Jr., but Seton Hall and St. John’s aren’t getting their paws on Tom Pecora.

LaSalle is the choice for the second Philly-area school because St. Joseph’s and Temple are far more established in the A-10. Stony Brook hasn’t even been a Division I school for 10 years yet, but the school has much bigger things in mind than the America East. Better to just cut ties now and take some growing pains in the new ECC.

I imagine any new conference will have more than eight teams, but such a small alignment leaves room for other schools to make the leap as well as takes into account future expansion. And the new ECC could be really interesting if the football-playing Big East schools end up overtaking the league and pushing out the non-football schools.

Can you imagine a 10-team ECC that also features Georgetown and Villanova? Lehigh Football Nation wonders if the recent departure of Georgetown AD Bernard Muir for the same position at Delaware is the precursor to Georgetown getting the boot from the Big East (and, somewhere down the line, Delaware joining the Big East).

To ditch Georgetown, Villanova and Marquette—all of whom are national championship-winning programs that have reached the Final Four this decade—would require a ruthlessness and short-sightedness that is hard to comprehend. Which of course means you can’t rule it out.

My third new conference, by the way, has been dubbed the Great South and features a bunch of Division I newcomers as well as a familiar face:

Longwood
Savannah State
NC-Central
Kennesaw
SC-Upstate
Lipscomb
NC-Wilmington

The more I think about it and talk to people who know more about it than me (line forms to the left), the more I think Wilmington would be in some serious danger if the CAA wants to be known for football as much as basketball. That said, this Great South was concocted in about five minutes and with the knowledge the Atlantic Sun probably wouldn’t be thrilled if Kennesaw, South Carolina-Upstate and Lipscomb bolted.

Plus, I’m sure college hoops fans south and west of the White House can come up with a new conference or two formed from the wreckage of the bloated likes of the Sun Belt, Southern, Southland and Conference USA, though breaking up the latter would be difficult since all 12 of its schools play I-A football.

Lastly, here’s what the new CAA, Big East and A-10 would look like:

CAA:
Charlotte
Delaware
George Mason
Georgia State
James Madison
Old Dominion
Richmond
Towson
VCU
William & Mary

Like Georgetown, Villanova and Marquette in the Big East, VCU and Mason are established enough in basketball (and in the board room) to survive despite not playing football.

Big East:
Cincinnati
Connecticut
Georgetown
Louisville
Marquette
Notre Dame
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
South Florida
Syracuse
Villanova
West Virginia

A-10:
Dayton
DePaul
Duquesne
George Washington
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
St. Bonaventure
Saint Louis
St. Joseph’s
Temple
Xavier

I realize this runs counter to what I wrote yesterday, when I said Saint Louis made no sense for the A-10, but add DePaul and suddenly you can split the league into two divisions—the East (GW, UMass, URI, St. Bonaventure, St. Joes and Temple) and the West (Dayton, DePaul, Duquesne, Saint Louis and Xavier). Can the A-10 lure a Horizon or Missouri Valley school to even out the divisions?

Fun stuff to chew on, for sure, even if it’s just talk for now. But at some point this will be a lot more than talk, because it’s hard to imagine anyone being satisfied with the status quo—at Hofstra and far beyond. And for Hofstra, at least, the best solution is a fresh start in a newly formed conference…one with an old name, of course.

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

Nobody asked me, but…here’s how Hofstra can leave the CAA & keep the football program

We'll definitely need to update this logo.

The last conference Hofstra left behind didn’t benefit a bit from the departure. It didn’t do the America East any good for Hofstra to leave and take Delaware, Drexel and Towson along for the ride following the 2000-01 school year. Those four teams combined to win nine of the preceding 10 men’s basketball championships.

(Actually, those titles were won entirely by Hofstra, Delaware and Drexel, which means Towson was the me of the America East at the turn of the century. During my perpetually single gawky teenage years, you could technically say “Randy, Scott, Kyle and Jerry have combined for 10 girlfriends,” even though you could drop me from the equation and those three would still have had 10 girlfriends. I don’t want to talk about it. Where was I?)

In 2001, the America East ranked 20th out of 31 conferences in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings. Since then, the A-East has matched or improved upon that performance just twice (16th in 2005 and 20th in 2007). The CAA, meanwhile, ranked 13th in Pomeroy’s rankings in 2001. It has ranked 13th or better five times since and has finished below 14th just once.

But the CAA shouldn’t miss a beat if Hofstra is serious about leaving. As competitive as the Flying Dutchmen have been the last five years, they still haven’t ended the dominance of southern teams in the men’s basketball tournament. And the conference is established enough as a premier mid-major to know it can replace Hofstra with a school of a similar or better profile.

Yet it’s football, not basketball, that makes this a mutually beneficial departure. A departure by Hofstra and another school (more on its identity in a moment) begins to solve the logistical nightmare looming when Old Dominion and Georgia State join the football league in 2011 and 2012, respectively. A 12-team conference is big enough. A 14-team conference is just about untenable (of course, if Hofstra ends up in the 14-team Atlantic 10, I reserve the right to spin baby spin about how 14 teams is in fact tenable).

In addition, the immediate success of the CAA in football—the league received a record five bids to the I-AA tournament in 2007 and matched the feat last year, when James Madison was the top-ranked team in the country most of the regular season before Richmond won the national championship—makes it and basketball interchangeable atop the pecking order. So it behooves the schools who play football to be as invested on the gridiron as on the basketball court

That, in turn, provides an opportunity for a graceful exit from the CAA and scholarship football for Hofstra (a possibility I pondered in November, never expecting it would theoretically present itself a few months later) as well as Northeastern, the latter of which has substandard football facilities and nearly terminated the program last year. The school announced it would redouble its efforts to bolster all its athletic programs, but such a plan is vague enough so that football scholarships can be pulled for the greater good.

Also, Northeastern should accompany Hofstra in any conference switch in order to provide it a natural rival, since the success of CAA football makes it very unlikely Delaware will follow the Dutch out the door.

Get Rhode Island—which has had three winning seasons in the last 20 years and hasn’t reached the I-AA playoffs since 1985, the second-longest drought among CAA schools behind only Towson—to leave the CAA as well and you’ve got the core of a new non-scholarship football conference. We can go old school and dub it the Yankee Conference, or go old school with a bit of originality by calling it the East Coast Conference.

We’ll go with East Coast Conference. Here’s how it would look:

Hofstra
Northeastern
Rhode Island
Georgetown
Marist
Dayton
Albany

The non-CAA schools are listed in the likelihood that they’d be interested in joining the hypothetical ECC. Georgetown plays football in the Patriot League, which offers need-based financial aid to gridders. But Fordham is reportedly demanding the conference add football scholarships, and Hofstra’s possible move to the A-10, coupled with Fordham’s complete lack of success in the A-10 since its ill-conceived leap to the conference in 1995, means maybe the Patriot League acquiesces on football scholarships in order to get Fordham back into the fold in all sports.

Marist, which is one of only two former MAAC football schools still playing the sport (too bad Iona dropped football after last year; it would be perfect here), is an obvious good fit in the ECC, but the big hurdle to its inclusion is its commitment to the Pioneer League, a non-scholarship league in which the Red Foxes will begin play this fall. However, the ECC would be a lot easier on the travel budget than the Pioneer League, whose other schools are located in South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and California.

Dayton is also in the Pioneer League, but Hofstra joining the A-10 would create a clear fit for both schools in ECC football. The biggest problem with Dayton is its location: The Flyers would have to—wait for it!!—fly to just about every destination in the conference, whereas the other six schools are all located within doable driving distance of one another.

We all learned after Albany beat Hofstra last year that the Great Danes did it with one scholarship. But Albany is listed last among the potential ECC candidates because it is enjoying success in the Northeast Conference, where it has won the last two championships, and because the NEC announced last year it will allow schools to offer as many as 40 scholarships by 2013, up from the current maximum of 30.

Among the schools that almost surely wouldn’t fit in the ECC: Duquesne (an A-10 school that plays football, but it upgraded from non-scholarship when it joined the Northeast Conference last year), Stony Brook (will be at 63 scholarships this year), Campbell and Davidson (Pioneer schools located too far south), Bryant (a former Division II power transitioning to I-AA that presumably does not want to spend all that time and money to play at the non-scholarship level) and NEC schools Central Connecticut, Robert Morris, Sacred Heart, Monmouth, Wagner and St. Francis (PA) (all six are NEC members in all sports).

So seven teams it is for the ECC. Scheduling isn’t as easy with only six conference games, but figure Hofstra could continue its rivalries with Delaware and Stony Brook, add another local foe in Division II C.W. Post and play a couple games a year against NEC teams. That’s 11 games.

Of course, there’s absolutely no guarantee Hofstra wants to risk playing Post, or that it will want to play Stony Brook when the Seawolves (0-11 all-time against the Flying Dutchmen) are fully loaded and playing in the CAA (you read that right), or that Delaware will want anything to do with Hofstra once it drops scholarships. But that’s why this is hypothetical.

Oh, and even though we won’t care about the CAA if Hofstra leaves it, here’s how the CAA would look under my plan:

CAA NORTH
Delaware
Maine
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Stony Brook (the best fit for a full-scholarship SBU)
Villanova

CAA SOUTH
Georgia State
James Madison
Old Dominion
Richmond
Towson
William & Mary

As for the proposed ECC, it’s probably the best way to satisfy almost everyone. The tradition of Hofstra football remains alive and doesn’t alienate alums of both the playing and non-playing variety.

Any hopes of contending for a national championship are probably out the window in returning to non-scholarship ball. But Joe Gardi built a Top 20 team without scholarships in 1994, and a year later, the Dutchmen opened 10-0 and nearly beat Marshall in the regular season finale even though the only scholarship players were freshmen. So who says it can’t be done again? Plus, with the I-AA tournament expanding to 20 teams in 2010, there may eventually be an automatic bid to be won in the ECC.

As for the administration, going non-scholarship lessens the bottom line beating the school has been taking with football and also assures all the money invested on football facilities over the last 15 years doesn’t go to waste. And the new conference is much less of a travel headache.

I’d like to think compromise is a legitimate possibility, that nobody at Hofstra dislikes the football team enough to end the program. Though it did happen at Boston University, albeit after more than a quarter-century of effort by president John Silber.

A resolution, one way or the other, is a long ways off, if there even needs to be anything resolved. In the meantime, stop back tomorrow, when I’ll examine how a move to the A-10 could work for Hofstra and the men’s basketball program in particular.

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

Drexel 63, Hofstra 56 (Or: Yogi was right)

This photo serves two purposes: It summarizes the last couple weeks for the Flying Dutchmen while also paying homage to the Icepick, who was always nice to me for liking remnants of the hair metal era.

In macro terms, I’m pretty sure the entire state of the CAA was summed up in the final few minutes of Drexel’s 63-56 win over the Flying Dutchmen Saturday.

Two games into the conference season was all it took to prove that trying to predict or project the CAA is a job for the sadistic. Drexel, picked to finish at or near the bottom of the CAA, became the only road team Saturday to win by beating the early-season darlings and a program that is 81-28 at the Arena since it opened nine years ago. The Dragons rank last in the CAA in just about every key offensive category, yet they salted away the victory Saturday by mimicking another Philadelphia-based men’s basketball team and shooting 5-of-7 from the field over the final 8:04.

And with eight seconds to play and Hofstra down five, Greg Washington—who was 3-of-17 from the free throw line last season—heaved a free throw attempt at the backboard, hoping he or a teammate would grab the carom to maintain a snowball’s-chance-in-hell of victory.

But he made the damn shot. Imagine that. The guy who couldn’t hit a free throw if his scholarship was on the line last year now CAN’T EVEN MISS WHEN HE TRIES.

(And how about Georgia State, which hasn’t beaten a Division I team since 1983, shocking red-hot Old Dominion?)

Those conference-wide observations are all well and good, of course, but we deal mostly with the micro here at Defiantly Dutch. And what the unpredictability of Saturday taught us is that the Flying Dutchmen are already in big, big trouble.

(This is as good a time as any to mention I took the game in from a barstool at P-Sam’s in Torrington, CT and that I was quite obviously the only person in the entire state not partaking in a day of dominance by the UConn Huskies. For having MSG-Plus—which is apparently on the Are You Crazy Nobody Wants This Station tier of cable back home; I guess that’s payback for mocking its very existence a few months ago—and airing the Hofstra game during UConn’s bowl game, P-Sam’s, a favorite hangout during my imbibing days, is now the official out-of-state bar of Defiantly Dutch. I’m sure management is thrilled. Back to our regularly scheduled pessimism)

The result Saturday was inconceivable to anyone who listened, attended or even scoured the box score from the Flying Dutchmen’s 90-79 victory over Towson in the CAA opener Dec. 6. In that contest, the Dutchmen came back from an early 10-point deficit, received at least nine points from five players, racked up 19 assists and committed just 11 turnovers.

Twenty-eight days later (well, now it’s 30, but you know what I mean), that team is nowhere to be found. The Dutchmen never led Saturday, and it never felt as if they had a game-changing run in them. Charles Jenkins and Cornelius Vines, who combined for 45 points against Towson, had none in the first half. Hofstra had nearly three times as many turnovers (20) as assists (seven).

Jenkins had a team-high five turnovers and fouled out for the first time this season, a pair of telling statistics for a player who so often displayed a natural and seemingly effortless touch for taking over games yet lately can’t seem to make anything happen, no matter how hard he tries.

With the Dutchmen down 42-34 and just under eight minutes left, Jenkins took the inbounds pass and raced up the right sideline…and dribbled the ball off his leg in front of the Hofstra bench. Jenkins had four turnovers or more in two of his first seven games but has committed at least four turnovers four times in the last six contests. He hit 50 percent of his shots Saturday, but in a season-low 10 attempts.

Two of the three fouls Jenkins picked up in the second half also symbolized the Charlie Brown-like black cloud that’s followed him around for weeks. Evan Niesler stole the ball from Jenkins, who raced down the court and raised his arm—seemingly just enough to contest the shot but not enough to earn the foul—as Scott Rodgers went to the basket. But Jenkins was a split-second late and caught Rodgers’ arm. And Jenkins fouled out with 3:53 left, when he was called for a charge on a drive to the basket.

(This provides a convenient excuse to mention that the refs, in my completely unbiased and nuanced opinion formed from the aforementioned barstool, stunk like a Staten Island landfill in August. I mean, seriously, Hofstra had 24 fouls compared to just 16 for Drexel? Some of those flops from Drexel that resulted in offensive foul calls on the Dutchmen were Razzie-worthy. But, again, just my opinion)

Vines did a decent Jenkins impersonation following the latter’s disqualification as he scored Hofstra’s next nine points. But it was an exasperating 14-point performance for Vines, one Tom Pecora—albeit unwittingly—best summarized with his expression in this photo from the game story on the Hofstra site. Vines missed his first five shots and chucked up a couple painful-looking desperation shots in the final minute.

Pecora displayed his exasperation multiple ways Saturday. He started Mike Davis-Saab, who had more DNPs (seven) than DPs (five) in the first 12 games. Davis-Saab played just two minutes, but Greg Johnson, whose senior season began with a pair of DNP-CDs in the Charleston Classic, took over point guard duties and led the Dutchmen with 34 minutes—including the entire second half—off the bench.

Tony Dennison, Miklos Szabo and Darren Townes—who were in the starting lineup in six straight games from Fordham through Iona—played a combined 17 minutes, including just one in the second half. Pecora even picked up one of those trying-to-rile-the-team up Ts in the second half. Didn’t work.

Little seems to work lately, and it’s as puzzling as it is frustrating. Maybe it’s just blog bias talking, but I refuse to believe the Towson game was a fluke. The Dutchmen were playing good, gritty ball for weeks before that. They weren’t a perfect team—even back then the point guard quandary lurked—but they were a lot better than this.

Where did that team go? It better show up tonight in Boston, where the Dutchmen are faced with one of their most pivotal early-season conference games in memory. Facing Northeastern, another fierce defensive team and a squad that’s beginning to play like the team that was a pre-season favorite, doesn’t seem to be the medicine for whatever ails the Dutchmen.

But if the Dutchmen don’t get on track now, when will they? With Delaware, VCU, Drexel again and Northeastern again awaiting following tonight, a season that once seemed to promise magic in March is threatening to turn very late very early.

Maybe a DD road trip will cure whatever ails the Dutchmen (hey, they’re 2-0 in road games I’ve attended this year). I’m planning to make my first visit to Northeastern tonight. If you’re there, I’ll be the guy yelling about Carlos Pena.

(Pre-road trip edit: Pick to click is Jenkins. Just has to be, right?)

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

We’re no. 1! We’re no. 1!

You just led the New York Jets to the most stunning upset in pro football history. What are you going to do next, Joe Namath? "I'm going to Hofstra USA!"

It’s true. Hofstra sits atop the standings page at the CAA's official site. Oh sure, conference play hasn’t started yet (T-minus four days until the lone conference game until January, which is a lot like allowing a starving man into a five-star restaurant and kicking him out after salad), so the standings are only based on overall winning percentage.

Never mind that nine CAA teams have played more games than Hofstra. And sure, of the four teams the Flying Dutchmen have beaten thus far, the one most likely to advance to a national tournament come March is Division III Old Westbury.

Nor has Hofstra been racking up the style points against Division I foes. The season opener against Clemson is shaping up to be the Flying Dutchmen’s showcase non-conference game—and it was one they dropped by a mere 29 points. Their three wins—against teams that are a combined 8-10—have all been by four points or less. If not for the regular late-game brilliance of Charles Jenkins, the Dutchmen would probably be 1-4.

But it’s those narrow wins that provide the reason for early encouragement. Entering play Tuesday, there were 137 mid-major teams that had won at least three games. (I didn’t count the BCS conferences, because, well, screw them. They’ll get 32 at-large bids and any Big Six team with a .500 record will play in a postseason tournament. So who cares about their early-season performance, since it doesn’t matter at all come March?)

Anyway, of those 137 mid-majors, guess how many have won three games by four points or less. (Pause as you ponder)

Two. Hofstra and Mercer—the latter of which is ranked ninth in SI.com’s mid-major poll and 10th in the Collegeinsider.com poll.

Hofstra is, understandably, nowhere to be found in the SI.com poll and a distant 41st in the Collegeinsider rankings (alas, “We’re no. 41!” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue). But the resiliency is notable, especially in a CAA that, as Michael Litos pointed out Monday, hasn’t gotten off to a very promising start overall.

The consensus top four preseason picks have all stumbled. Overwhelming favorite VCU is in a lot of trouble if Eric Maynor is really playing as if he’s disinterested. Northeastern scored 37 points in a loss to South Florida, which is ugly but excusable, right after it lost to former America East foe Boston, which is not quite as acceptable.

Old Dominion, 11-7 in games decided by four or fewer points the previous three years, is 1-2 in such contests thus far. George Mason looked just as discombobulated as I’d hoped (err, expected) in a narrow loss to Liberty Monday. (Is it too late, by the way, to pick Liberty to win the CAA?)

It’s early, but what if these slow starts aren’t a fluke for the CAA favorites? What if they spend time—a week, two weeks, a month, three months—trying to find their leader and discover their passion?

Hofstra is lacking for neither. The more time the other teams spend trying to find one or both, the better for the Flying Dutchmen. Even a Homer like me didn’t think Hofstra had the most talented team in the CAA entering the season. But what if talent’s not the determining factor this year?

***

The Flying Dutchmen won’t win any style points tonight, either, when they take on winless Fordham at the Arena. I do hope they win by more than four, though, because looking up all the results for the mid-majors with three or more wins was tedious. Oh who am I kidding, I had nothing else to do.

Regardless of what happens, check back here early Thursday morning for a recap. I haven’t been quite as prompt as I’d like with the recaps, but I’ll begin rectifying that tomorrow.

If you’re going tonight, see you there. I’ll be the guy yelling about Matt Carpenter. And hey, maybe Hofstra can spare a second to finally acknowledge the passing of Joe Margiotta.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.