Of ambitiously fake tiebreakers and the ambiguousness of Barone Bowl II

Hey honey! Come look at what I figured out!

Before we get into the really relevant business of pondering how tonight will determine the Flying Dutchmen’s potential second opponent in the CAA Tournament (which begins in 10 days, holy hell, where did the time go), let’s get really goofy and ponder what the final week of the regular season might have meant for the Dutchmen if the first two games of January turned out just a little bit differently.

By little bit differently, of course, I mean had the Dutchmen beaten William & Mary and George Mason on Jan. 2 and Jan. 4 instead of suffering gut-wrenching last-minute losses. A few of us blogger/broadcaster types were chewing this over after the Dutchmen defeated Rider Saturday and I declared I am convinced (CONVINCED I TELL YOU) that had the Dutchmen held on to beat William & Mary—whom they led for the first 39 minutes and 43 seconds—they also would have beaten Mason in Fairfax.

That’s admittedly a pretty big leap to take—even for someone like me, with the most pronounced blog biases in all of the CAA!—given Mason’s success at Patriot Center (the Patriots had won 18 straight CAA home games until William & Mary won there last Tuesday). But the Dutchmen had a six-point lead with less than eight minutes to play and twice closed within two points in the final minute. I really think beating William & Mary would have fueled the Dutchmen with the confidence and momentum necessary to close out the Patriots.

Of course, at that point the Dutchmen would have been 3-0 with a home game against Towson coming up on Jan. 6, so it’s fairly inconceivable that they would have fallen apart as badly as they did the rest of the month. It’s also impossible to assume that the rest of the season would have played out as it has for William & Mary and Mason.

But for the sake of this blog, let’s just assume that the first two games of January were the only ones to turn out differently. Because to do so is fun. Because if that was the case, the standings today would look like this:

Northeastern 13-3

Old Dominion 13-3

William & Mary 10-6

VCU 10-6

Drexel 10-6

Hofstra 10-6

George Mason 10-6

Ohhhh yes. That’s like the tiebreaker version of Viagra. I could go all night…figuring out those permutations!

And I did. OK fine I didn’t spend all night, but I still spent more time than anyone should on a completely fictitious possibility. The five-way tie is listed in the order in which it would be broken. William & Mary would be 5-2 against the fellow 10-6 teams, followed by VCU (3-3), Drexel (3-4), Hofstra (3-4) and Mason (2-3). Drexel gets the fifth spot ahead of the Dutchmen by virtue of its sweep of Northeastern. There are no more games scheduled between the 10-6 teams that aren’t really 10-6, so this would be good to go if there was an actual fictitious tie come Saturday night.

The Dutchmen would have an uphill climb towards one of the byes in this scenario, since William & Mary, VCU and Drexel combine to play just one team with a winning record in conference this week (VCU visits Old Dominion Saturday). But can you imagine the fun we’d have tonight, tomorrow and Saturday watching the Dutchmen, tracking the other relevant games and hoping for an ODU win over VCU and an upset by someone like UNC Wilmington (over William & Mary or Drexel), Towson (over William & Mary), James Madison (over VCU or Drexel) or Delaware (over George Mason).

I’m not complaining: There’s not much fluky about an 18-game season and the old Bill Parcells saying really does apply here. And the Dutchmen are perhaps the most perfect .500 team ever—not good at all for a few weeks and then really good for a few weeks.

That they’ve managed to turn tonight’s game into something meaningful says a lot for how far the team has come. But still…man, those tiebreaker scenarios for the five-way tie for third would have been FUN.

***

Battling for a first-round bye also would remove the ambiguity attached to tonight’s Barone Bowl II in Boston. Obviously, we should root for a Dutchmen win, because momentum is a delicate, finite thing and Tom Pecora and crew would love to enter the CAA Tournament on the hottest second-half run in the history of the conference. (Also, we should root for a Dutchmen win because rooting for the Dutchmen is what we do here)

But a loss would not be the worst thing in the world. As I wrote last week, Northeastern scares the hell out of me as a potential quarterfinal opponent. The last-time-around Huskies are too experienced and too mature to get caught flat-footed next Saturday.

Beating Northeastern tonight would likely drop them to second place for good—while the Huskies visits Mason in the season finale, ODU hosts VCU. (ODU hosts Georgia State in the only other CAA game tonight and wins by both the Huskies and Monarchs assure they will finish in the top two)

And to beat Northeastern—which thoroughly dominated the Dutchmen in Hempstead 17 days ago to hand them their only loss in the last eight games—on its Senior Night would certainly build a bigger buzz around the Dutchmen and quiet much of the skepticism that their recent hot streak is simply a matter of fattening up on the league’s bottom-feeders.

“I feel we can beat anybody now,” Pecora said Saturday. “I think we can go and play anyone and beat them. So whether we win or lose Tuesday, I’m going to feel like we can beat Georgia State Saturday and then whoever gets in our way the rest of the way. Tuesday won’t dictate that.”

But it probably will for the rest of us, for whom tonight will largely determine the mindset we’ll possess next Friday. While Dutch Nation (snort) is beginning to believe again, it is also exercising caution. Things were going so sour in January, it was impossible for even the most optimistic of people to avoid looking ahead to 2010-11.

But now this season matters again. Do we dare to believe? Do we dare to ignore the looming likelihood of heartbreak and invest, once again, in the hope that the Dutchmen can make a Cinderella run at the CAA Tournament?

Of course we do. A win tonight and nobody’s fretting about who the Dutchmen might face a week from Saturday. Even a close loss won’t necessarily send people back to the CAA Zone to call Pecora the worst coach to call Hofstra home since Rich Kotite. Another lopsided defeat though, and that bandwagon will be empty except for the blogger in the driver’s seat.

I can’t see Northeastern losing a second straight home game, especially on Senior Night, but this one will be far more competitive than the one at Hofstra. Any hopes the Dutchmen have of pulling off the upset rest on Chaz Williams, whose recent slump (he is shooting just 26 percent in his last six games and had more turnovers than assists Saturday for the first time in 11 games) has been mostly concealed by the Dutchmen’s red-hot play. But any chance the Dutchmen have of winning multiple games in the CAA Tournament are reliant on Williams finding his earlier form and doing a passable impersonation of Carlos Rivera circa 2006.

Greg Washington needs to continue his resurgent play and combine with Miklos Szabo, Halil Kanacevic and maybe even Nathaniel Lester to limit the damage of Northeastern big men Nkem Ojougboh and Manny Adako, the latter of whom scored 12 second half points in Barone Bowl I.

It should be a good one, either way, and I wish I was up there to see it in person. As is, we’ll be hitting Applebee’s for the ESPNU game (thanks again, Cablevision!). Tune in and follow along with me on Twitter as I wreck my fledgling diet by attacking the half-price appetizer menu!

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

Of Alumni Day, Faux Homecoming and the inaugural Barone Bowl

The annual men’s basketball Alumni Day is scheduled for tomorrow, which in and of itself is typically no big deal and barely, if ever, receives any actual promotion from the school. Ex-Flying Dutchmen show up, maybe scrimmage a little bit before the game and ignore the paunchy, occasionally bespectacled guy sitting a few rows up in John Stockton shorts and Michael Cooper socks begging for some run. C’mon guys I’m an alumni too!! I’ll just play the point, I won’t shoot. I promise.

But this Alumni Day is different than the rest. It’s the first one since Hofstra killed football, and not coincidentally, it’s getting a bit of publicity (free food and drink at City Cellar afterward, whoohoo, ride out the blizzard on Hofstra’s dime!) as Hofstra tests run the concept of a winter Homecoming. Geez, just typing those words makes my stomach ache.

A Homecoming centered around basketball, of course, is even more inevitable than the NCAA Tournament expanding to 96 teams, and it seems to be a particularly cruel coincidence that the beta version takes place when Northeastern visits the Arena. You know, the same Northeastern whose decision to drop football Nov. 22 had absolutely nothing at all to do with Hofstra following suit a mere 11 days later. If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect someone way high up in the food chain scheduled it this way to have a laugh at our expense.

Regardless, Hofstra and Northeastern are the closest thing either has to a kindred soul in the disjointed mess that is the CAA, even though the schools opposed each other once in men’s basketball before Hofstra joined the North Atlantic Conference in 1994 and hadn’t played each other in football in 28 years before Hofstra became a member of the Atlantic-10 in 2001.

Give credit to Husky at the CAAZone boards, who recognized the hilarious absurdity of it all and suggested the winner of the game Saturday receive the football that Frank Barone caught when an unnamed Hofstra kicker (David Ettinger? Walter Olshanski?) booted a world-record 68-yard field goal in a 2001 episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (hey look at that, promotion for a Division I-AA program, oh the humanity!)

Faux Homecoming, the Barone Bowl and potential blizzard aside, this game is plenty compelling on its own. The Dutchmen are on the verge of sucking us all back in after a three-game winning streak, but in order to really get us back on the bandwagon and enter the CAA Tournament with legitimate aspirations of playing Cinderella, they need to record a Signature Win.

Tomorrow may be the Dutchmen’s best and last chance to record it. Drexel, which visits Wednesday, is a legitimate championship contender as well, but Northeastern is in a three-way tie for first place and receiving national attention after turning its season around following a 2-7 start. The Huskies are 13-1 since then (a loss to Drexel in Boston last weekend snapped an 11-game winning streak).

Northeastern is awfully reminiscent of the Loren Stokes-Carlos Rivera-Antoine Agudio era Dutchmen: Three players are averaging at least 33 minutes per game and the quintet of Matt Janning, Chaisson Allen, Manny Adako, Nkem Ojougbah and Alwayne Bigby combining to make all but four of the Huskies’ starts.

The game will be a tasty battle of strengths, as Northeastern ranks first in the CAA in field goal percentage and 3-point field goal percentage while the Dutchmen rank first in field goal defense and second in 3-point defense.

The Huskies might be the most road-tested team in the CAA (they won at Wyoming in the CBI last year and participated in tournaments in Hawaii and San Francisco this season). But the Dutchmen are 3-1 against Northeastern at the Arena since the latter joined the CAA, including last year’s 57-52 upset win that knocked the Huskies from the ranks of the CAA’s unbeaten and jumpstarted Hofstra’s season-ending 11-4 run.

I’ll freely admit I don’t know what to expect tomorrow. I had a bad feeling going into the game Wednesday, and the Dutchmen were barely threatened in the final 30 minutes of a rout over James Madison. Hot is hot, even if the three-game winning streak came at the expense of a trio of scuffling teams, and the Dutchmen should enter Saturday more confident than they’ve been since early December.

The Signature Win will happen if Charles Jenkins shoots anything like he has the last three games (22-for-34), Cornelius Vines suffocates Allen like he did Julius Wells Wednesday and the Dutchmen’s big men limit Ojougbah like they did Denzel Bowles.

Sounds like a lot, sure, but a lot has already happened to make tomorrow matter. Either way, we are going to be there, snow be damned. I’ll leave the house at noon to get there if necessary (of course, my saner wife may have something to say about this). Follow us along on Twitter and come by and say hi if you brave the elements. I’ll be the guy randomly yelling out the names of former football players from Hofstra and Northeastern.

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

Bits and Bytes: Working (and waiting) for the weekend

Even Canadian rockers Loverboy are keeping their fingers crossed the Flying Dutchmen get lucky this weekend!

The Flying Dutchmen have Kansas right where they want ‘em. Or, to be grammatically correct no matter how awkward it may sound, the Flying Dutchmen have Kansas right where they want it.

The top-ranked Jayhawks waxed Division II Pittsburg State, 103-45, in an exhibition game last night, thereby assuring they’ll be overconfident and arrogant come Friday night and not prepared at all for the full fury of the Flying Dutchmen.

Freshmen Thomas Robinson and Xavier Henry combined for 27 points and one technical (assessed to Robinson for hanging on the rim after a dunk), or four points and one technical more than senior stars Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins had. Dissension! The new kids are leading a palace revolt! Pretty soon the Jayhawks will be fighting amongst themselves instead of rumbling with the football team!

As you can tell, we’re a little worked up about the season in general and the imminent upset of the Jayhawks in particular. Stop back the next two days for plenty of preview material, including a Q&A with your good friend and mine Tom Pecora as well as a couple features. In the meantime, here are a few bits and bytes to tide you over.

—The football team will be relegated even further into the shadows this weekend, when it visits future East Coast Conference football rival Northeastern, a little more than 12 hours after the Dutchmen shock Hoops Nation.

Alas, it’s difficult not to wonder how meaningful Saturday’s game could have been for the Dutchmen, whose 28-24 loss to Delaware last Saturday marked the third time this season they turned the ball over on downs inside the 50-yard-line with a chance to tie or win the game in the final minute. The Dutchmen have lost to Delaware, New Hampshire and Maine by a combined 14 points. Wins in those three games would have the Dutchmen 7-2 and primed for a playoff berth, but instead Dave Cohen and his staff will have to hope the heartbreaking losses will provide fuel and a foundation for next season.

It’ll be interesting to see if Steve Probst gets more time at quarterback over the final two weeks. As I’ve written here before, I’m a fan of Cory Christopher, but now that the focus is entirely on 2010, it’s about time to see Probst behind center for all 60 minutes.

The very tentative plan is to attend the game Saturday, because my love of Boston is surpassed only by my desire to experience famously rustic Parsons Field for myself, but our schedule is subject to change if I spend all night celebrating the win over Kansas. I expect you to breathlessly stay tuned to this website and my Twitter until I make my decision!

—John Feinstein is many things I am not—including, apparently, crazy. The prolific author and Washington Post columnist appeared on NPR Monday (I, of course, was too busy listening to hair metal hits on satellite radio, so thanks to Brian Mull for the link) and said he expected the CAA to send four or five teams to the NCAA Tournament. If the CAA sends four or more teams to the NCAAs, I’ll stand on my head, a la Dick Vitale and Austin Peay in 1987. Even if all four or five of those teams are located in Virginia. Where is my conspiracy theory font?

—The disrespect for the Flying Dutchmen just keeps spreading. Collegeinsider.com released its first top 25 of the season, and not only aren’t the Dutchmen ranked, they weren’t even among the 55 teams receiving a vote. Seriously. Eighty teams got a vote and Hofstra didn’t. I’m going to channel and paraphrase Harry Doyle here: “One vote? We couldn’t get one goddamn vote?”

Four CAA schools are in the top 25, led by defending Collegeinsider.com Invitational champion Old Dominion, but at least Hofstra’s not alone in not receiving a vote: None of the other seven CAA schools did, either. That’s OK. The Dutchmen will be there next week!

—The NCAA is mad at Kentucky for hiring John Calipari, so for the second straight year, it’s probably going to suspend a Hofstra transfer for playing in professional games in his native land. Maybe Miklos Szabo—and Greg Washington, who also knows what it’s like to be at the mercy of the NCAA’s hilariously ineffective, inconsistent and unpredictable Clearinghouse—can give Brad Kelleher some tips on how to pass the time.

—Finally, I’ve updated the links on the right hand side of this page. You’ll notice (or maybe you won’t) no Newsday link. Apparently, there is no college basketball blog this year. Hey, that’s a good idea, let’s cut the news hole, double the price to $1, make our website free only to Cablevision subscribers (hooray monopolies!) and then not bother giving those folks anything extra to read online. Awesome. No wonder newspapers are so healthy. Little birdies also tell me they’ll provide Hofstra even less beat coverage than usual, which, you know, is great.

Anyway, check out the new alignment of sites covering Hofstra, the CAA and mid-majors, especially The Mid-Majority, which is so good I cannot do it justice in a piece like this. At some point soon I’m going to pen an ode to that place, because it is just freaking amazing, every single day. Also check out the self-explanatory Friends of Defiantly Dutch further down the page. And, of course, buy my book!

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

In which I interrupt this basketball season to announce the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the official NFL team of Defiantly Dutch

If Raheem Morris' first act as Buccaneers head coach is to bring back Bucco Bruce--except in blue and gold--he will instantly become one of favorite people ever.

Was traveling all day Friday, so imagine my surprise when I got a text at 1:35 a.m. this morning from semi-loyal reader JG about the only other team I root for outside of the Flying Dutchmen: “Wow, shocker on Gruden.”

That was nothing, though, compared to the surprise of clicking on ESPN once we got settled in our hotel room and seeing the name of his likely successor: Raheem Morris. That’s the Raheem Morris who played safety at Hofstra from 1994-97, otherwise known as the bulk of the Defiantly Dutch Era, and spent time as a graduate assistant and defensive backs coach with the Flying Dutchmen in 1998 and 2000, respectively.

That’s right. Someone who played football while I was at Hofstra is now an NFL head coach. Boy I’m getting old and inconsequential.

I told my wife the news, to which she replied “Oh that’s convenient. Now you get to name the Buccaneers as the official NFL team of Defiantly Dutch.”

Well, yeah.

This is pretty interesting for multiple reasons beyond Morris’ Hofstra ties. He’s just 32, which will make him one of the youngest head coaches in NFL history. Morris has been viewed as a rapidly rising head coach candidate even though he hasn’t even coached a game as a coordinator: The Buccaneers promoted him from defensive backs coach to defensive coordinator Christmas Day, after which he interviewed for the head honcho job with the Denver Broncos.

And Morris’ hiring is quite a feather in the cap of the NFL, which encourages diversity in its head coaching ranks with the “Rooney Rule.” But two years before the “Rooney Rule” was instituted, Morris began his coaching career as a minority intern with the Jets under Herm Edwards. I remember attending a press conference at Weeb Ewbank Hall in which Morris talked about the program. Who knew I was watching the birth of an NFL head coach?

It’s also interesting to examine the Bucs’ thought process here. Three of the four remaining head coaches in the NFL playoffs have been head coaches for two years or less. Clearly, the Bucs think they can be the next team to find a Mike Tomlin or John Harbaugh or Ken Whisenhunt.

And if I think I feel old and inconsequential, imagine how Gruden feels. It seems like he’s been the Hot Young Coach forever, but this is proof that the shelf life of a Hot Young Coach is finite. Gruden is only 46—younger than both Harbaugh and Whisenhunt—but he’s been an NFL head coach for 11 straight years and hasn’t won a playoff game since the Super Bowl following the 2002 season.

The Hot Young Coach is now, officially, a retread…shoved out of office for a Flying Dutchman. What a world. Go Bucs.

***

We didn’t forget there’s a basketball game today against Northeastern, the hottest team in the CAA. The Dutchmen will prove they have plenty of—wait for it!!—pride by coming up with a much better performance than the one they mustered up against Drexel Wednesday. I’ll even wager they’ll hold a lead!

Litos is keeping the faith about the Dutchmen and believes there will be a day when the gang that can’t shoot straight will become the gang that can’t miss. I don’t think there’s much chance of a breakout performance today, though, against a Northeastern team that has yet to be challenged since conference play began For Real. The Huskies have won all five CAA games this month by an average of 17 points.

Charles Jenkins is the pick to click—it has to happen at some point, right?—but I have a hard time imagining the Dutchmen derailing the Huskies’ juggernaut. Perhaps a competitive loss can give the Dutchmen something to build on with William & Mary and UNC-Wilmington—two of the CAA’s three one-win teams—on the docket within the next 11 days.

We won’t be at the game due to the unexpected out-of-state trip, but Sully Ray may step in with some thoughts. Stop back Monday to see if he’s as good with words as he is with T-shirts.

And in the meantime, check out this Litos’ excellent blog from Thursday in which he makes quite a good case for a 22-game CAA schedule. It makes so much sense, it’ll never happen.

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