Hofstra 75, Drexel 69 (Or: Some things stay the same and some are due for change)

I was happy to learn it's tougher to find Hall & Oates songs about wins than it is about losses.

As is often the case, the “lede” to the Iona recap last week was not the one I had in mind originally. In fact, I’d written most of a blog about how the Iona game could define the Dutchmen’s season, and how most coaches hate to read and hear such declarations from writers so early in a season, until I realized the actual story was Charles Jenkins declaring he would never again display a lack of aggression in the first half.

Anyway, good thing I shelved that entry, because now I can say that LAST night is the type of game that could not only define a season but an era, and how Mo Cassara would probably cringe upon reading and hearing this tripe spill from my fingers and my mouth.

But the Flying Dutchmen’s 75-69 upset win over Drexel is huge, and not just because it improved the Dutchmen to 3-0 in the ECC (you didn’t think I’d forget that silly little meme did you?), put them into a three-way tie for first place in the CAA and assured they would receive a bye in the CAA Tournament, if only the CAA regular season lasted two games and the tournament began, say, Wednesday.

The win, of course, doesn’t guarantee much, especially with the most talented team in the league, George Mason, coming to town tomorrow night (that’s me playing nice, Mason Nation, don’t get used to it!) and a roadie at always-tough Northeastern awaiting the Dutchmen Saturday. All last night does is assure the Dutchmen will leave the weekend no worse than .500 in the CAA, which, let’s face it, we all would have taken a month or a week or a day ago.

But this win is a pivotal one because of what it signified in the short- and long-term. Beating the hottest and most surprising team in the league—on the road—to resume CAA play is the Signature Win this team has lacked since the departure of Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera and the Signature Win that eluded the Dutchmen in such demoralizing fashion last Jan. 2, when William & Mary—which, like Drexel, was predicted to finish at or near the bottom of the league before it threatened to climb into the Top 25 during the non-conference season—took its only lead of the game on its last basket to edge the Dutchmen 48-47 at the Arena.

There were many reasons why that loss began a 1-7 stretch for the Dutchmen that nearly derailed their season, but a win there would have likely done a lot more than merely made the Dutchmen 3-6 at the halfway point of the CAA schedule. The Dutchmen were, to invoke a cliché that I will use because it allows me to post another Hall and Oates video, so close yet so far away to that Signature Win, having squandered second half leads against UConn, Charlotte and St. John’s, that it began wearing on them and contributed to a brutal January.

This victory, and particularly the way it was recorded, allows the Dutchmen to clear a hurdle that had been in their path for the last four seasons. The best-case scenario for a victory didn’t come close to actually happening, but the Dutchmen won anyway.

The Dutchmen, one of the nation’s best 3-point shooting teams, were just 2-of-11 from beyond the arc, by far their worst performance of the season, yet were 24-of-43 from everywhere else. They were outrebounded 44-31 and allowed 18 offensive rebounds, but that was a result of the Dutchmen throwing a variety of defenses at Drexel and forcing the Dragons to shoot a season-worst 37.3 percent from the field.

Everyone shy of Demetrius Dudley was in serious foul trouble for the Dutchmen in the second half, when they got into the bonus within the first five minutes and saw Charles Jenkins and Greg Washington both head to the bench with four fouls within the first six minutes. Jenkins and Washington hit the pine with the Dutchmen down 44-40 and Drexel in the midst of a 15-4 run, yet the Dutchmen and their piecemeal lineup (at one point in the second half, the five players on the court for Hofstra were Mike Moore, Shemiye McLendon, Brad Kelleher, Yves Jules and David Imes—three newcomers and two sophomores who barely saw the court as freshmen) hung on thanks to Imes, who outscored Drexel 6-4 with Jenkins on the bench.

Imes had the best game of his career, shooting a perfect 8-for-8 from the floor and scoring 14 of his 20 points in the second half. Imes, who grabbed eight rebounds as well, also hit the most pivotal basket of the final seven minutes, a reverse layup immediately shortly after Washington fouled out and Drexel took its biggest lead (55-50) with 7:10 left.

By that point, Jenkins was back. Utilized to perfection by Cassara, who pulled Jenkins in defensive situations and just before media timeouts whenever possible, Jenkins—who displayed his newfound aggression in leading the Dutchmen to a seven-point halftime lead—scored 11 of his game-high 23 points in the final eight minutes.

Mike Moore, who had another game in which he managed to make multiple contributions despite a quiet night offensively (11 points, a team-high nine rebounds and a game-high three steals) scored eight of his 11 points after Jenkins picked up his fourth foul. Jenkins and Moore had the most pivotal baskets of the game, back-to-back coast-to-coast layups that extended the Dutchmen’s lead to six with a minute left.

The Dutchmen got valuable contributions from the rest of their lean roster. Brad Kelleher, five nights removed from an ugly 0-for-8 performance from the field, ran the point again with Dwan McMillan still out sick and had seven points, five assists and one turnover in 33 minutes. Shemiye McLendon, who was 0-for-7 against Iona, was 0-for-3 from the field but hit the two free throws that gave the Dutchmen the lead for good at 63-62.

Yves Jules, who missed two of the last four games due to injury and illness, played a season-high 21 minutes and blanketed hot-shooting Chris Fouch, who was just 3-of-10 from the field and 1-of-5 from 3-point land. The five attempts from beyond the arc were a season low for Fouch. Even Paul Bilbo, forced into action due to the early foul trouble for Washington and Stephan Nwaukoni, scored his first career basket on a gorgeous sky hook to end the first half.

Again: One win doesn’t ensure anything for this season, but this victory is more proof the Dutchmen have a keeper in Cassara. We all wondered how easily Cassara could shift from buddy mode in the spring to hard-ass mode in the fall and winter. Pretty easily and pretty convincingly, as it turns out, because he put the Dutchmen through what he called “boot camp” over New Year’s weekend after the Iona debacle and promised no Hofstra team would ever play like that under him ever again.

And the Dutchmen responded by producing a long-awaited Signature Win. Imagine what we’ll be saying about Cassara and the possibilities of this season if they do it again tomorrow night.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Drexel, 1/3)

3: David Imes

2: Charles Jenkins

1: Mike Moore

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 34

Mike Moore 17

David Imes 10

Greg Washington 7

Dwan McMillan 5

Shemiye McClendon 2

Brad Kelleher 1

Yves Jules 1

Stephen Nwaukoni 1

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

College of Bill Lawrence 73, Hofstra 66 (Or: My Overkill)

J.D. is tired of hearing Colin Hay sing about the Flying Dutchmen. "Signature Wins appear and fade away. Signature Wins appear and fade away..."

To try and figure out which painful loss is the worst for a team is presumably the inverse of asking a parent to identify his or her favorite child. They all suck equally (the losses, that is, not the kids).

But if the Flying Dutchmen were to rank the defeats of 2009-10 in order of agony, their 73-66 loss Saturday to the College of Bill Lawrence would have to top the chart, such as it is.

Like they have so many times this season, the Dutchmen had that long-desired Signature Win in their grasp Saturday night. For the fifth time, the Dutchmen lost a game in which they enjoyed a multiple-possession lead in the second half. Yet as disappointing as it was to squander those leads against UConn (nine points with 9:10 left), St. John’s (seven points with 16:50 left), George Mason (six points with 7:52 left) and in the first game against William & Mary Jan. 2 (eight points with 14:31 left), this one really smarts.

The Dutchmen led the Fighting Lawrences by seven with 9:14 to play. Had they held on, it would have been quite the Signature Win, second in hypothetical impact behind only a victory over UConn.

This Signature Win would have come on the road against one of the CAA’s first place teams (it sounds grammatically incorrect, but it isn’t—look at the standings!), and while William & Mary’s RPI isn’t as high now as it was when it visited Hofstra Jan. 2, the win would have been even more impressive because the Fighting Lawrences have proven over the first two weeks of the conference schedule that their success in November and December was no fluke.

Instead, the Dutchmen’s midseason skid hit semi-historic levels. The Dutchmen’s seventh loss in nine games dropped them to 2-5 in the CAA and 9-10 overall. This is the first time since the 1981-82 season the Dutchmen have fallen under .500 in a season in which they were at least four games over .500.

The fateful final few minutes Saturday unfurled in frustratingly familiar fashion as the Dutchmen were unable to either maintain or extend the lead over the Fighting Lawrences nor come back once they fell behind. The Dutchmen finished the game in a 3-of-16 funk and missed 10 straight shots over a nearly eight-minute span, during which a six-point lead turned into a seven-point deficit.

Such a dry spell was uncannily similar to the losses against St. John’s and Mason. Four weeks ago yesterday, the Dutchmen missed their final 12 shots against the Red Storm, who turned a five-point deficit into a 12-point win with an 18-1 run over the final 6:57. And two weeks ago against the Patriots, the Dutchmen missed eight straight shots over more than five minutes as a four-point lead turned into a four-point deficit.

The common perception in the near-misses—perpetuated plenty here—is that Charles Jenkins tries to do too much as the Dutchmen flail down the stretch. But the late game offensive struggles have been a team effort in all five potential Signature Wins.

Jenkins, who finished with a team-high 19 points and two blocks while adding five assists and four rebounds. took eight of the Dutchmen’s final 16 shots Saturday and missed his final seven. He also took half the Dutchmen’s shots down the stretch against St. John’s and missed them all. He took five of the final 12 shots against UConn, six of the final 14 shots in the first William & Mary game and five of the final 14 shots against George Mason.

Expecting Jenkins to take a greater percentage of the shots is probably a bit unrealistic, yet nobody has consistently stepped up to lessen the pressure on him. Nathaniel Lester and Halil Kanacevic were both outstanding in the first half Saturday (Lester had eight points and seven rebounds while Kanacevic had 10 points and three rebounds) but quiet in the second half (Lester had one point and one rebound while Kanacevic had two points and three rebounds).

As much as the Dutchmen need someone to emerge as the Robin to Jenkins’ Batman (I can’t take credit for that analogy, it comes from WRHU’s Mike “Clay Buchholz” Leslie), Tom Pecora at this point would probably be happier to know the identity of his core beyond Jenkins and freshmen Chaz Williams (12 points on 4-of-5 shooting in his return from an ankle injury) and Halil Kanacevic.

Lester should be a part of it, but Saturday marked the fourth straight game in which he played less than 30 minutes. Greg Washington played a career-high 34 minutes but had just seven points and six rebounds. Miklos Szabo recorded just one foul but played only 15 minutes. Cornelius Vines had six assists and no turnovers—that’s right, Cornelius Vines had a perfect assist-to-turnover ratio—but was just 2-of-9 from the field.

There is, of course, a lot of time left in conference play, and we were reminded just yesterday how foolish it can be to prematurely bury a team. And the youthful and undermanned Dutchmen are the type of team that nobody is going to want to play come tournament time, when, presumably, some of the flaws will have been worked out and there will be several freshmen in the rotation who don’t know they’re supposed to be intimidated by the task of going to Virginia and winning four games in four days in foreign territory.

But that Signature Win that the Dutchmen have come so close to earning feels farther away than ever. And when the best-case scenario in the third week of January is playing Cinderella in March...well, it’s a pretty good sign the season has not unfolded as expected.

Sure, the Dutchmen were pegged as a middle-of-the-road team by outsiders, but internally, the expectations were much higher. There was a reason the Dutchmen played Kansas and in the preseason NIT this year and not last year, and it was because nobody in Hempstead expected the Dutchmen to get to the first weekend of March relying on the hope that someone someday has to beat the long odds and win on Monday as well as Friday.

But that’s where they are as February approaches, banking on a miracle in the long-term and, in the short term, hoping 2-5 doesn’t turn into 2-7 and wondering how long it’ll be before the next most demoralizing loss of the season takes place. Fortunately, the Dutchmen play George Mason tomorrow night. And nothing bad ever happens when the Dutchmen play George Mason.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. College of Bill Lawrence, 1/16)

3: Charles Jenkins

2: Chaz Williams

1: Halil Kanacevic

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 33

Chaz Williams 20

Halil Kanacevic 18

Nathaniel Lester 18

Miklos Szabo 9

Cornelius Vines 8

Greg Washington 8

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