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.

Bits and Bytes: Enjoy no. 1 while you can, Kansas!

That's right, Bill. You've got two weeks left as the unbeaten top-ranked team in the land.

It’s official: Your good friend and mine Jeremy Kniffin can get rid of the qualifier “likely” when it comes to referring to Kansas as the preseason no. 1 team.

The Associated Press unveiled its first poll of the ’09-’10 campaign Thursday, and despite rampant internal dissension in Lawrence and the overwhelming likelihood of a lopsided loss to the Flying Dutchmen two weeks from tonight, the damn liberal media still made the Jayhawks the overwhelming pick to win the national championship. Kansas, which returns all five starters from a year ago, received 55 of the 61 first-place votes.

Amazingly, the anti-Hofstra bias in the poll was three-tiered. The only school in the top six not to receive a first-place vote was Villanova. Still disrespecting Jay Wright for his Hofstra days, AP dudes and dudettes?

Even worse, two CAA teams received votes, and neither is based in Hempstead. Defending champion VCU got two votes and reigning Collegeinsider.com champion Old Dominion received one vote. So many doubters, so little time.

That’s OK though. The over/under on Hofstra’s spot in the next top 25—to be tabulated, of course, after the Dutchmen shock the world—is 1.5. Bet the under if you know what’s good for you.

Some other bits and bytes as I put the finishing touches on my Tom Pecora costume and prepare for the Freak Formal tomorrow night:

—Speaking of Pecora, sort of, I have to begrudgingly admit that Noted Hofstra Hater Mike Litos made a pretty good case yesterday for Northeastern’s Bill Coen, and not Pecora, as the best coach in the league. From literally the moment he stepped on campus in 2005, Coen has done more with less than anyone in turning a hockey school into a perennial basketball contender.

Still, what jumps out at me there is not the ruthlessness of Ron Everhart or the spot men’s hoops occupies on the athletic totem pole at Northeastern. It’s that the administration there was willing to send one of its secondary programs across the country to continue its season in a new—and admittedly dubious—postseason tournament.

Am I unnecessarily harping on an issue I already ranted about in April? Possibly.  Is this going to annoy the powers that be? Positively. And with the benefit of hindsight, I can almost—ALMOST—see how the disappointing performance of last year’s seniors could have influenced the decision not to continue the season, as was rumored way back when.

But, again: I keep coming back to how the Dutchmen performed down the stretch last year—better than both Northeastern and James Madison, the latter of which won two games in the CIT, and almost as well as Old Dominion, which edged the Dutchmen by one point in the CAA quarters—and it annoys me a program that is The Program on campus, one with an underclassmen core that was just beginning to gel in February and March, didn’t get an opportunity to gain some valuable postseason experience.

Is it any coincidence the CAA’s consensus top two teams both recorded victories in these new tournaments last season? I think not. Anyway, that’s all out of me about that. Until the Dutchmen play Old Dominion, at least.

—I try not to be one of Those People who harps on every little error or misconception a national writer makes about my alma mater, but I can’t let this one go without comment: In reporting the UFL’s decision to move next Wednesday’s New York-Las Vegas game from the Mets’ new stadium (screw them, I’m not calling it by its actual name) to Shuart Stadium, Examiner.com writer Andrew Kossak theorizes it’s a good idea because “…it’s on a college campus, meaning ticket sales could easily increase as the student body is looking for some entertainment.”

Yeah, ask Joe Gardi and Dave Cohen how far the Hofstra student body has to look for entertainment options before it settles for the football team. Kossak is also a bit too optimistic in projecting the crowd at Shuart Stadium, writing “…it’ll look a lot better on TV to see a half- of three-quarter full Shuart Stadium than a near empty [Corporate Stadium Name redacted].”

I’ll bet you, right now, that even the announced attendance for next week’s game is closer to the 2,751 that turned out for the James Madison game than the 7,160 that showed up for the opener against Stony Brook. And that might even include me, because I whole-heartedly support minor leagues that temporarily call Hofstra home! When is the United States Basketball League starting again, anyway?

—Speaking of the UFL, how bad are things going for our beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers, known worldwide as The Official NFL Team Of Defiantly Dutch? So bad that Tatum Bell thinks his UFL team—the Florida Tuskers, whatever the hell that is—could beat the 0-7 Bucs, who mercifully have a bye this week but will debut their third starting quarterback of the season next week against the Packers.

That’s crazy talk, as AOL Fanhouse blogger Matt Snyder subtly points out. But with the Bucs’ final nine opponents owning a 34-21 record, can we get a game at Hofstra against the Tuskers, just to assure one win?

—Lastly, stop back later tonight or tomorrow for a Halloween-themed Time Machine. And don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten yesterday’s 15th anniversary of the gut-wrenching loss to Towson. I’ve got a feature in mind to commemorate that and am hoping to speak to a couple people in time to unveil it next week.

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

Bits and Bytes: Waiting For The Sun edition

Not sure how much longer I'll be able to play off the one Jayhawks song I know...

Pardon my absence the last few weeks. I just figured I wouldn’t return to posting until the sun returned from behind the clouds.

Seriously, sorry for the protracted hiatus and very sorry I didn’t have something on the OOC up earlier. I intended to post a Bits and Bytes last Sunday night, but the hotel my wife and I were staying at had wireless Internet straight out of 1998. Then I spent a couple days in Connecticut and boom, it was almost July 4.

I’ve also been busy at my Red Sox blog, especially now that my book is out (cue trumpets). If you like the Red Sox and/or you like me—and even if you don’t!— please consider buying yourself a copy or 500 so that I can put off getting a Real Job a little while longer. Seriously, I think it turned out pretty well, so if you’re interested in the Red Sox and the media, check out the book as well as the blog and let me know what you think.

That’s enough self-promotion for today. Here’s some other Bits and Bytes that have piled up:

—On the list of lame clichés, marveling at how fast time is flying ranks just below talking about the weather. So now I’ve done both! Hooray for me! Hard to believe, but as of this morning we are officially less than two months away from the football opener. And as of late this week, we’ll be more than halfway through the basketball off-season. Whoohoo.

—My good friend Tommy the KU Grad has been checking the blog lately and talking all sorts of trash. What a bully. Dude is 15 months removed from watching his team win a national championship—its first one in 20 years, he suffered so much—and he’s flexing his muscles by picking on innocent Hofstra fans like us who never ever said anything mean about the Jayhawks, nuh-uh, not once.

I gotta give him credit, though, for reading the blog enough to actually identify three Hofstra players other than Speedy Claxton! Look forward to much more banter between Tommy and I over the next 130 days (again, not that I’m excited, or anything).

—Tommy should be careful how much he chirps, because the Jayhawks already look vulnerable thanks to a spate of dysfunction and dissension! That’s the New York spin on the news that Xavier and C.J. Henry, the hotly hyped brothers who chose to leave Memphis for Kansas once John Calipari bolted to Kentucky with NCAA investigators bearing down on Memphis, almost left Kansas after a Kansas City Star story in which they were portrayed—in their own words—as having no interest in academics and looking at college as a one-and-done situation.

A basketball factory like Kansas may have student-athletes who aren’t at all into the first part of the equation? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you! Self has apparently mended fences—though, reading between the lines in the first link in the above graph, it sounds like he has no use for Carl Henry, the father of Xavier and C.J. and a former KU star himself. And quite frankly, it’s hard to blame him, given how Carl Henry seems to be doing a bang-up job of essaying the controlling, overbearing stage dad.

But hey, as a Hofstra alum, I encourage Carl Henry to bug the hell out of Self between now and Nov. 13! Maybe he’ll pull his kids out of school and a bunch of the Jayhawks’ other All-American candidates will follow and Self will have to send out the student manager to fill out a starting five! This is just the beginning of the crumbling Jayhawks empire, Tommy!!

—Speaking of controversial recruits, Lance Stephenson finally landed somewhere: Cincinnati. The Bearcats signing recruits with more baggage than Samsonite? Did Bob Huggins go back there when nobody was looking? Seriously, I can’t think of a bigger red flag than St. John’s—which is in screaming need of a local star to raise its fortunes and national profile—passing on the chance to sign Stephenson at a discount (pun possibly intended).

The Daily News wrote about Stephenson’s meandering journey two weeks ago Sunday. At the end of the lengthy feature, former Adidas guru Sonny Vaccaro implores Stephenson to go somewhere, even a local school off the big-time D-I path. “Manhattan, Seton Hall, Hofstra,” Vaccaro said. I picture Hofstra officials cringing at that line and wondering how politely and pointedly they can tell Vaccaro to mind his own business.

—Hofstra’s future conference affiliation is touched on directly and indirectly in this interesting story from The Providence Journal about the future of athletics at the University of Rhode Island. URI’s outgoing president, Robert Carothers, says he expects the Colonial to eventually add Charlotte, that Hofstra president Stuart Rabinowitz “…wants to get out of the Colonial altogether” and join the A-10, which is a move Carothers would support. Carothers also expressed hope that a travel-friendly all-sports Yankee Conference could be formed.

Of course, Carothers’ opinion is now as valuable as the rest of ours, but it’s interesting that the idea of blowing up the D-I landscape isn’t unique to bloggers like me. Also notable is that URI AD Thorr Bjorn wonders what will happen to the northern-based CAA football schools once Old Dominion and Georgia State join the league and expand it to 14 members.

Asked if the northern schools might form their own league, Bjorn said “…as of right now, we have no immediate plans to change,” which sure sounds like it’s being pondered for a few years down the road. Stay tuned.

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

Follow the yellow (and blue) brick road!

Oh yeah. One hundred and seventy-one days until the Flying Dutchmen wipe the smile off the beak!

So imagine Mom and Dad come to you on July 8 and tell you that they’ve heard there’s going to be a brand spanking new video game system that is like Nintendo plus Sega plus Atari, except 150 times better, and that as long as it comes out before Christmas they’re going to get it for you. You’d be looking at the calendar and wondering what to do with yourself for the next 171 days, wouldn’t you?

I mean, once you’ve gotten a glimpse of the future, it’s kind of tough to go back to that Intellivision, with its clunky controllers (I’ve got a great idea! Put the most important buttons ON THE SIDES!!) and even clunkier overlays. All the cool kids had Atari. Nobody ever wanted to hear about the awesome graphics on the Intellivision or how Mattel had the rights to NFL Football or Major League Baseball. Nobody ever come over to play Pac-Man knockoff Lock ‘N Chase or Space Invaders knockoff Space Armada. They wanted to play the so-called real things on Atari, despite graphics that looked like they were designed by an eight-year-old with absolutely no artistic skill.

Seriously, we used to have to play this crap.

Where was I? Oh yeah. We’re approximately 171 days away from the Flying Dutchmen almost surely opening the 2009-10 season at the University of Kansas. You know…Kansas. Rock Chalk Jayhawk. Likely 2009-10 preseason no. 1. 2008 national champions. Danny Manning and the Miracles. Alma mater of the dude who invented basketball.

Sure, there’s a couple qualifiers in the above graph, but athletic director Jack Hayes appeared on WRHU’s The Locker Room last night and said an agreement to play the game “…is pretty close.

“I think if you went to a lot of basketball fans and said what are the five places you’d want to see a game, Allen Fieldhouse is going to be on most people’s list,” Hayes said. “[Kansas] certainly has an unbelievable tradition of success coming off a national championship a couple years ago. This will be a test for us, but these are the kind of tests and the kind of situations that we want to put our team in.”

I know you liked opening the season against the likes of Clemson, Holy Cross, Charlotte and Florida International, but, well, they’re kinda like tube socks and slacks and polo shirts, aren’t they? Necessities, sure, but nobody ever hustles downstairs Christmas morning to rip the wrapping paper off those gifts.

But Kansas? Kansas? I’m not saying I’m bouncing off the walls in anticipation of Christmas Day—err, Nov. 15, at least if Kansas opens its season on the third Sunday of November like it did last year—but I just looked at Expedia and a round-trip flight to Kansas City from one of the New York-area airports is a little over $500. That’s a small price to pay to watch the Flying Dutchmen knock off the top-ranked team in the country! Then we’ll be no. 1! That’s how these things work, right? Unless Tom O’Connor has a vote, of course.

And really, why should Hofstra be intimidated by Kansas? So “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” rolls off the tongue and Allen Fieldhouse is one of the most legendary venues in the country. I’d rather be unique like Hofstra, which has no chants because most fans refuse to refer to the team by its “official” nickname and plays in a 10-year-old arena best known for looking exactly like the one at Delaware.

The Jayhawk ain’t all that tough. Kate and Willie could probably kick his butt.

Kansas might begin the season no. 1? Pffft. Hofstra’s probably going to be picked to finish in the top four in the CAA. You know what that means, right? A 25 percent chance of winning the post-season tournament!

Sure, the Jayhawks won it all in 2008, but there’s no Supernintendo Chalmers to save them now! And Hofstra hits its free throws! And the Flying Dutchmen won’t miss a buzzer-beater in a postseason elimination game! Wait a minute…

Danny Manning and the Miracles can’t hold a candle to Darius Burton and the…umm…err…Three Wins In Three Daysers! And without Butch van Breda Kolff, James Naismith’s invention never takes flight!!

That’s right. Bring it on, Jayhawks.

Of course, I’m just talking out of my backside, much more so than usual. I fully realize Hofstra’s best chance of winning that game probably involves the Kansas starting five being kidnapped and replaced by The Jayhawks, the Minneapolis-based alt-country band who hit it moderately big with “Waiting on the Sun” the year the Flying Dutchmen played an independent schedule (oh yeah, you didn’t see that coming, did you?). The real Jayhawks may be so good and so unstoppable next year that I’ll be curled into the fetal position somewhere in Allen Fieldhouse, sucking my thumb and begging for mercy (or, more likely, kicking a barstool at my local Applebees).

But it’ll be fun getting there. My best friend lives in Lawrence (and, ironically in that it’s not ironic at all, he grew up a Syracuse fan, which meant he was also the target of my barbs the last time Hofstra played a top 10 team) and another good friend is a Kansas grad, so we can all go at it until the two teams finally tip off.

And short of everyone on the roster deciding it likes Kansas so much it would rather play for Division II Pittsburg State than return home, the trip to Lawrence is a no-lose proposition for Hofstra. The school makes a crapload of money for heading to Kansas. The Flying Dutchmen get the experience of playing a top-tier team and do so with a group of players well-equipped for such an opponent and the possibilities that come with it. Keep the game close—or, dear God, win it outright—and it would provide an immeasurable boost for the 2009-10 team as well as the entire program.

If they lose by 35? It’s probably not going to destroy the Dutchmen’s confidence. Could we have said the same thing the previous two years?

“I’m just not sure if coming off 12-18 and losing your all-time leading scorer was the best time to go and play the defending national champions,” Hayes told WRHU. “But in this case, we have a talented group coming back and I think it’ll be a good test for us.”

The big test for the rest of us will be tempering our enthusiasm between now and the day the Flying Dutchmen channel their inner Chaminade. That happened at a Christmas tournament, by the way. The so-called real Christmas, not the one that is now only 171 days away. Are we there yet? I’m tired of my Intellivision.

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