Postgame Buffet: Northeastern 64, Hofstra 62 (Or: Only missed by a fraction)

Right now, Dutch Nation (snort) is despondent.

I knew the Flying Dutchmen were totally toasted with less than a minute to play Wednesday night, when the above song started playing during a timeout at Hofstra Arena. I mean, I get the intent—the message is all about seizing the moment and all that good stuff—but as the video tells us: Right now maybe we should pay attention to the lyrics.

And right now, a missed beat keeps haunting the Flying Dutchmen, who lost to Northeastern, 64-62, in the year’s first Barone Bowl to fall to 0-5 in the CAA. To quote a Boston-based band (which is what I usually do here), it’s the same old song and dance for the Dutchmen, who have lost their five CAA games by a grand total of 26 points, by far the fewest of any team to start 0-5 since 2001-02. Here’s the postgame buffet that was delayed by work and not a two-day mourning period. Really.

1.) Once again, defensive breakdowns at the end cost the Dutchmen. Except this just wasn’t a matter of allowing a handful of baskets in the final couple minutes, a la against James Madison and Florida Atlantic. The Dutchmen squandered a pair of seven-point leads by allowing Northeastern to score on an amazing 17 of its final 20 possessions over the final 12-plus minutes, and that counts Jonathan Lee missing a free throw with 4.6 seconds left. So Northeastern basically ended the game by scoring on 17 of its last 19 possessions. Tough to win when that happens.

“If you told me tonight we were going to hold them to 64 points, I really would have thought we would have won the game,” Mo Cassara said afterward. “We went in some stretches again where our offense wasn’t clicking and our defensive intensity and focus let down.”

2.) That wasn’t the case at the beginning of the game, when the Dutchmen suffocated Northeastern into missing its first eight shots, kept the Huskies scoreless through their first nine possessions and carried a shutout into the first media timeout. But after falling behind 9-0, Northeastern went on a 12-0 run to grab the lead and begin a game-ending stretch in which it shot a mind-boggling 23-of-42 from the field.

“We’ve been talking about it the last few days, really the last few weeks, what I call multiple effort,” Cassara said. “I think we do a really good job defending maybe one action or two actions, but then we relax for half a second, we get beat or we’re a step slow. We had two times where we had a 3-point lead and we gave up a 3-pointer and a 3-point play where we got beat to the basket. We can’t have that happen. It’s hampered us all year. We do a good job of an initial five, 10, 15 seconds sometimes, then we have a breakdown at the very end.”

3.) The breakdowns weren’t limited to the defense. The Dutchmen had a seemingly solid offensive game, shooting 60 percent in the second half, and an even 50 percent overall while putting three players into double figures. Mike Moore (nine points) and Dwan McMillan (eight points) each finished a basket away from making it four or five players with at least 10 points. Moore, who is battling a lingering groin injury, had a career-high five assists and continually looked to get teammates involved while McMillan had seven assists and just two turnovers.

However, the Dutchmen got just five points from their bench as Shemiye McLendon, Moussa Kone and Stevie Mejia combined for just five field goal attempts. David Imes was 5-of-7 from the field, but one of his misses was a dunk. And while Stephen Nwaukoni continued his breakout performance in CAA play with 10 points, nine rebounds, three steals and two blocks, the one shot he missed was a thunderous dunk attempt just before the first half buzzer that nearly resulted in a Darryl Dawkins moment (Google it kids!). Nathaniel Lester had another big second half, during which he scored 14 of his team-high 19 points, but he stepped out of bounds with five seconds left to basically end the Dutchmen’s hopes.

“Go back to the end of the first half—we do a great job running a play, we send two guys to the offensive glass, two guys trying to dunk the ball and the ball comes out,” Cassara said. “Right now it’s one bounce for us, it’s one play. That’s how fine our margin for error is. Unfortunately we’re doing some good things. We just haven’t been able to finish them off.”

4.) Once again, Nwaukoni’s performance threatened to get lost in the haze of another gut-wrenching defeat, but he is rapidly evolving into a legitimate post presence for the Dutchmen. His ceiling at one point seemed to be that of someone who could absorb minutes, but with 38 rebounds in his last four games and an improving offensive skill set, he’s starting to look like a legitimate CAA big man and someone who could contend for a rebounding title in his final two seasons.

“Stephen’s giving us great energy, he’s keeping a lot of basketballs alive and doing a great job around the basket,” Cassara said. “Really did a good job on post defense tonight. He’s continuing to improve and we need him to do that.”

5.) This was the Dutchmen’s fourth CAA loss by six points or less and their third by two points or less, which statistically makes them the best team to open CAA play 0-5 since the conference expanded (only one of the other 11 teams to open 0-5—William & Mary last year—lost its first five conference games by less than 50 points). But this might have been a season-crushing defeat.

As tough as it was to lose to James Madison and the Humpty Hitchens Experience and as tough as it was to lose by one point to Delaware after never leading, losing to Northeastern at home by two points—after leading for more than 13 minutes in the second half, becoming the first team to score 40, 50 and 60 points in a low-scoring game and losing even though they never trailed by more than three points—might be more than this or any team could bear, especially with a treacherous stretch coming up. How’s this sound: at Old Dominion today, Drexel Wednesday, at James Madison next Saturday, at VCU Jan. 23, George Mason Jan. 25, at Northeastern Jan. 28. Gulp.

While he spoke optimistically as usual Wednesday night, Cassara looked spent as he sat slumped at the podium. “It’s frustrating to lose anytime, and I think it’s especially frustrating for these guys and our staff and our team when we’ve been stringing some good practices together,” Cassara said. “Our intensity and our focus has been good. We’ve remained positive. And like I’ve said, we’ve lost three league games by five total points, So sure, it’s frustrating.

“But we have to continue to move forward. I [said] in the locker room, the great thing about being a basketball player: We get to play again in a couple days and the great thing about this league is we have another great opportunity in two days.”

Right now, that doesn’t sound so great.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Northeastern, 1/11)

3: Stephen Nwaukoni

2: Nathaniel Lester

1: Dwan McMillan

SEASON STANDINGS

Mike Moore 35

Nathaniel Lester 23

Dwan McMillan 14

Shemiye McLendon 9

Stephen Nwaukoni 8

David Imes 8

Stevie Mejia 3

Bryant Crowder 2

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

George Mason 87, Hofstra 68 (Or: Where have all the good times gone?)

I'm fairly confident no one in the readership (except possibly NUHF) will call me out for not posting the Kinks original.

Mo Cassara had a readymade response a couple weeks ago when he was sniffling, sneezing and coughing as if he was auditioning for a NyQuil commercial: “I’m tougher than I look.”

More prescient, too, as it turns out.

Cassara warned us this was coming. Not so much last night’s thorough 87-68 loss to George Mason, but the first crisis for the Flying Dutchmen of the CAA season—a three-game losing streak that has dropped them from a share of first place into fourth place, just a game ahead of James Madison and Drexel, and has made the fast start that seemed so inconceivable in the final days of December seem so far away in the opening days of February.

He didn’t SAY he worried the Dutchmen were headed for the skids, of course. Not explicitly, at least. But this is what Cassara was getting at every time he uttered the familiar words “a work in progress” and when he joined us in imploring you to live by the clichés and take the Dutchmen’s January surge one day at a time.

The Dutchmen have the best player in the conference in Charles Jenkins, but with three first-year starters on the floor and an eight-man rotation whose three bench players include two freshmen and a sophomore who saw little time last season, their margin for error is a thin one. Such a lean team was not going to go through the CAA season without hitting some choppy waters (get it?), especially with the infamous four-in-eight finally just concluding.

None of the three losses, individually, are cause for alarm. There’s no shame in losing at VCU and George Mason, the two teams that are now tied for first in the CAA. VCU has won 22 straight home games and nobody is hotter than Mason, which has won eight in a row and was itching for some payback after getting routed in Hempstead last month. And Drexel, which would have been all but eliminated from the race for a bye with a loss to the Dutchmen, was the more desperate team last Saturday.

And none of the three matchups were good ones for the Dutchmen. VCU and Mason play an up-tempo game and have the type of depth the Dutchmen can only dream about while Drexel thrives on crashing the boards.

But the fashion in which the Dutchmen have lost is worrisome. They haven’t led in the second half in any of their last FOUR games—Hofstra didn’t go ahead of James Madison until overtime last Monday night (and boy, is it ever a good thing the Dutchmen won that one). The Dutchmen didn’t lead for the final 27-plus minutes of regulation against Madison and trailed the final 34-plus minutes against VCU, the final 32-plus minutes against Drexel and the final 33-plus minutes against Mason. In addition, the Dutchmen trailed the entire second half in their first conference loss to Old Dominion.

The Dutchmen never even got within as many as 10 during the second half at VCU or Mason, another indication the Dutchmen don’t have the bodies to play from behind. The Dutchmen outscored the Patriots 27-23 in the first 13 minutes of the second half but strung together consecutive baskets just three times during that stretch.

Cassara prides (boooo!) himself on teams that play strong defense, but the Dutchmen gave up 48 first half points to VCU and 49 first half points to Mason. If that wasn’t enough to cause a sleepless night upon the return from Fairfax, then he surely tossed and turned over what to do with a team whose players seem to have hit the wall at the exact same time.

Jenkins finished with 22 points and seven assists, but he was just 8-of-20 from the field (his most misses of the season and only the fourth time he’s shot 40 percent or below) and tied a season-high with four turnovers as Isaiah Tate and Cam Long draped him all night long. He also looked exhausted in hoisting a bunch of short shots in the first half. Mike Moore tied his season high by draining four 3-pointers on his way to 18 points but had just two rebounds, the third straight game he’s had four boards or less.

Greg Washington had five blocks, tied for his most against a Division I opponent this year, but was scoreless for the second straight game, which is hard to comprehend given he was 19-for-30 in his preceding three games. The Dutchmen aren’t going anywhere if he’s a non-factor on offense.

David Imes had eight points and seven rebounds, a shade above his season averages, but he missed several shots underneath the basket in the first half as the Dutchmen tried to establish him down low and take some pressure off Jenkins and Moore. And while Shemiye McLendon had nine points and seven rebounds, he looked like a freshman for the first time in a long time with some questionable shot selection in the second half that briefly earned him a spot on the bench.

The schedule doesn’t provide much of an opportunity for the Dutchmen to catch their breath. Barring a run in the CIT or CBI, next season will be the next time they play consecutive home games. There are two two-game road trips left and mid-week flights to Georgia State and UNC Wilmington (as well as a flight to BracketBuster opponent Wright State) on the horizon.

In addition, a schedule that seemed to ease up after the four-in-eight—each of the Dutchmen’s last six conference games are against teams in the bottom half of the CAA—is suddenly fraught with potential danger. Northeastern comes to the Arena Saturday having won four in a row after an 0-8 start (we told you they wouldn’t be down for long) after a rout of VCU last night in Boston. William & Mary, whom the Dutchmen host Feb. 15, is 3-9 but easily dispatched James Madison last night (and we thank you for that, Fighting Bill Lawrences). And then there are two games in a 14-day span against thoroughly unpredictable Delaware.

The good news is the Dutchmen are in far better position than any of us could have envisioned last summer, when we would have gladly sold our souls to the Larranaga to be alone in fourth place two-thirds of the way through the conference season. And we all know Cassara relishes a challenge. He’s tougher than he looks, and so is his team, which is good, because the task ahead of them—regaining the confidence and mojo the Dutchmen had 10 days ago and figuring out where all the good times went—is at least as tough as it looks.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. George Mason, 2/2)

3: Charles Jenkins

2: Mike Moore

1: Shemiye McLendon

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 59

Mike Moore 28

Greg Washington 21

David Imes 15

Shemiye McLendon 5

Dwan McMillan 5

Brad Kelleher 3

Yves Jules 1

Stephen Nwaukoni 1

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

As seniors, Szabo and Vines turn this thing around

Cornelius Vines and Miklos Szabo take one more trip into the Lions Den following the Flying Dutchmen's 87-73 win over Georgia State on Senior Day Saturday. Photo by Sean M. Gates/The Chronicle.

Senior Day at Hofstra Arena was a seemingly routine affair Saturday, when Miklos Szabo and Cornelius Vines proceeded right from a moving pre-game ceremony into the starting lineup and went on to contribute to the Flying Dutchmen’s convincing 87-73 win over Georgia State.

Both players left the court in the second half to a warm ovation—Vines did so while blowing kisses to all corners of the Arena—and took one last trip over to the Lions Den after the final buzzer to thank the students for their support. At his post-game press conference, Tom Pecora spoke fondly of Szabo and Vines and said the Dutchmen’s success would not have been possible without them.

But Pecora knew better than anyone how the path to a textbook Senior Day was a grueling one—for Szabo and Vines as well as himself—and how such a festive afternoon seemed inconceivable just weeks earlier, when Szabo and Vines were occupying Pecora’s doghouse as the Dutchmen’s season threatened to splinter apart.

“There’s a quote, some coaching quote [from] Tom Coughlin,” Pecora said Saturday. “‘Coaching is making guys do what they don’t want to do so they can be what they want to be.’ And that’s something I talk to my staff about and the players about all the time. It’s our job to get you out of your comfort zone, because very few people are self-motivated enough to make themselves great. They have to have somebody behind them pushing them.”

The process of pushing Szabo and Vines out of their comfort zones and into the roles Pecora expected them to fill turned into one of the biggest challenges of Pecora’s career. Pecora demands leadership out of his seniors, no matter how many years they have been part of the program. To cull that out of junior college transfers such as Szabo and Vines—who comprised the least-experienced senior class of the Pecora Era—was a particularly delicate exercise, especially given their drastically different personalities.

Szabo’s natural shyness is compounded by his self-consciousness over the age and language differences between he and the rest of his teammates. Szabo turns 24 in August and is a full five years older than freshmen Halil Kanacevic and Paul Bilbo.

“It’s kind of hard for me, since I’m not an American, I’m not from here, I’m doing things different than the other kids,” Szabo said last Friday. “So it’s a little bit hard for me to be a leader, because I don’t really have too much in common with the guys. We’re good friends and stuff, but the freshmen sometimes just don’t listen to me because I’m like an outsider.”

Vines is actually a few months older than Szabo (he turns 24 in June), but his gregariousness makes it far easier for him to interact as a peer with the younger Dutchmen. Yet he arrived at Hofstra having never been part of a team where he had to do anything other than shoot the ball as often as he wanted.

As this season began, Pecora told Vines he needed him to shoot less, involve his teammates more and concentrate on defending the opposition’s best guard. But while Pecora wanted Vines to smoothen out some of his edges, he needed the opposite to happen with Szabo, who rarely looked last season like the player who led the junior college ranks in rebounding during his sophomore season at Broward Community College.

“I had a conversation with him one time and I remember saying ‘Mike, if my son Sean can grow up and be as good a man as you are, I’d be thrilled,’” Pecora said last week. “‘But if he was a basketball player and he played the way you’re playing, I would tell him to stop playing basketball. And he’d be a great kid that didn’t play basketball. You have all this talent. I just want you to go out and play with a little passion and a ferocity and you’re really going to help this team win.’”

For weeks—months, even—it seemed as if Pecora, Szabo and Vines could never get in sync. Flashes of brilliance by both players were followed up by frustrating bursts of near-invisibility. Szabo played perhaps his best game in a Hofstra uniform in the CAA opener against Towson Dec. 5, when he racked up a career-high 22 points and added eight rebounds, but he played fewer than 10 minutes in four of the Dutchmen’s next six games and briefly lost his starting job in early January.

Vines drained six 3-pointers in the near-upset of UConn on Nov. 17 but hit just 12 treys in his next eight games and lost his starting job after producing an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2/6 over a three-game span. “I just couldn’t buy a basket at the beginning of the year,” Vines said last Friday. “I was in a little bit of a funk. I went to the bench. When that happens, that just takes some stuff out of you and you start thinking ‘What am I doing wrong? What do I have to do to get right, to get my stuff together?’”

Szabo began working his way back into Pecora’s good graces in mid-January and is shooting 57 percent (45-for-79) since returning to the starting lineup Jan. 12. He’s had at least five rebounds in 12 of his last 16 games after recording five or more boards just six times in the first 15 games.

“It’s basketball—you’ve always got a chance,” Szabo said. “We’ve got a chance every practice to prove ourselves. We’re fighting it out [in] practice, fighting for positions.”

But while Szabo was racking up a double-double against George Mason Jan. 19. Vines was being benched at halftime for telling Pecora he had no confidence in his shot. Vines sat the next game against Drexel with a knee injury as the Dutchmen were routed by the Dragons to fall to 2-7 in conference.

“I love this game, and for it to be taken away from me a couple times this year really hurt,” Vines said. “I went back to my room and cried a couple times. I told myself ‘I can’t cry no more about it. It’s time to man up and do what I’ve got to do.’ And I learned a lot.”

Like Szabo, Vines earned his way back into the starting lineup in practice, and Pecora encouraged him by once again flashing the green light. Pecora told Vines before the game at UNC Wilmington Feb. 13 that he owed him the nearly 40 3-pointers Vines needed to reach his total from last season.

Vines responded by hitting a school-record tying seven 3-pointers against the Seahawks and has hit 22 3-pointers in his last five games—as many 3-pointers as he had in the preceding 18 games dating back to Dec. 5. He has also reached double figures in each of his last five games after scoring as many as 10 points in just seven of his first 25 games.

For Vines, the roller coaster senior season is an appropriate finale to a fascinating college career that has been as much about personal discovery as anything that has happened on the court.  While at Hofstra, Vines has begun to establish a relationship with his father, with whom he was estranged in high school, and Vines was joined by his Dad as well as his mother and grandmother during Senior Day festivities Saturday.

“He’s been coming to a lot of games this year, so it’s exciting to see him [and] we’re trying to build a bond,” Vines said. “Growing up was interesting. My Mom was my Dad and my father probably made it to see me play in high school probably twice, three times at the most."

Vines had a scholarship offer to Hartford coming out of Henninger High School in Syracuse but didn’t have the grades to get into the America East school. He went to Globe Institute of Technology in Manhattan—the same JUCO that Darren Townes attended—but left after one semester in which he rarely attended class. He ended up at Iowa Lakes Community College, where, as he told the Syracuse Post-Standard in 2008, “…the biggest building was as tall as me.”

Vines didn’t land at Hofstra until late in the spring of 2008, and he remains grateful to Pecora for being secure enough to handle an emotional player who admits he can annoy opposing players, coaches and fans.

“I always play with confidence, I always play with a swagger—the only one that can take that away from me is me,” Vines said. “I’m always smiling. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. I’m gonna talk smack. It’s just how I play basketball. Some people may look at it like he’s ignorant or whatever, but that’s just how I’ve been playing the game since I’ve been [young]."

Said Pecora: “I remember this, watching as a young coach and seeing a kid behave in a certain fashion. And you’d say ‘How can a coach let him do that?’ When you’re a young coach, you’re so worried about what will people [think], will they be afraid I don’t have control of my program? And then after you do this for 20 years, you realize, hey, I know I’ve got control of my program.”

Pecora proved as much in February, finally eliciting from Szabo and Vines the type of leadership and performance he needed and turning their experience at Hofstra into a positive one when it very easily could have become a forgettable disappointment for all involved.

“I personally believe that college is just a means to get to where you want to get,” Szabo said. “I enjoyed my two years at Hofstra. I liked playing basketball over here, I tried to get the best out of it I could and I liked it.”

“Today being the last regular season practice on the floor, it is sad, but it’s exciting,” Vines said. “I came far. Whoever would think, from where I came from, that I’d be playing Division I basketball?”

“I think they’ve both done a very, very good job and I’m really proud of both of them,” Pecora said last week. “They’ll be part of this whole thing. When we recruit kids, we tell them ‘It’s not about four years it’s about 40 years.’ With JUCO kids, it’s not about two years, it’s not about 20 years. They’re in it for 40 years, too.”

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

Hofstra 77, Delaware 67 (Or: For a split second, it felt the way it did back then)

This will probably come as no surprise to anyone, since I run a blog in which I pay homage to Hofstra’s original nickname, but I’ve long been an overly nostalgic fellow. In fact, I earned some immediate ridicule from my future Loyal Readers by toting with me to campus in 1993 multiple AS SEEN ON TV!!!! ‘80s compilation CDs.

Looking back, I can’t blame anyone for making fun of me. I mean, it was 1993. The world was just getting re-acquainted with Meat Loaf. How could we pine for a time that was barely in the rear view mirror yet one whose music and movies already felt incredibly dated?

And really, how can you be nostalgic for a simpler time when simple is all you’ve known? I was 19 years old, too young to be bitter and jaded no matter how many copies of Editor and Publisher I read. Nothing horrible had happened in my life to provide the defining line between the good ol’ days and everything thereafter.

You can’t be 19 years old and get the poignancy of Alex Van Halen’s words—how meaningful it is to experience a moment in time that is reminiscent of an earlier and better one, even if it is nowhere near the real thing and even if it serves as a reminder that a long-gone era can never be relived.

Now, of course, things are different, both individually and collectively. Not a day goes by without my mind wandering back to the simpler days of 1989, or even 2007.

There’s a lot of daydreaming, too, by those who root for Hofstra athletics, and even those who have been there long enough to recall the halcyon days of a decade or so ago, which is why the Flying Dutchmen’s 77-67 win over former America East archrival Delaware Saturday (talk about burying the lede…if you’ve read this far, thanks!) was such a riveting experience.

The Hofstra Arena crowd of 4,019 made the type of noise so often lacking at on-campus basketball games and enjoyed the roller coaster ride on an afternoon in which victory was absolutely essential, and yet at some points perilously close to slipping out of reach.

“It was great to see the place rocking a little bit,” Tom Pecora said. “It was a great crowd, 4,000 people. I thought it was awesome. And that’s what we need—we need that home court advantage. And I think it helped us get over the top.”

Just as they were at the height of the Hofstra-Delaware rivalry, the Dutchmen were sparked by a Big East-caliber point guard who landed at Hofstra because his measurables didn’t measure up to Big East standards as well as a big-time scorer from the boroughs.

To see and hear Chaz Williams cap a sensational performance (18 points, eight rebounds and six assists) by bellowing to the rafters so loudly he could be heard several rows up in the stands was to recall Speedy Claxton authoring a similar performance (24 points, eight assists, seven rebounds) before he pumped his fist and screamed in the waning seconds of the Dutchmen’s win over Delaware in the 2000 America East title game.

And Williams’ driving layup as the shot clock expired with 1:27 left—a basket that extended the Dutchmen’s lead to 68-62 and effectively finished the Blue Hens—was incredibly reminiscent of Jason Hernandez’ back-to-back jumpers that turned a four-point lead into an eight-point lead in the final three minutes of the 2001 title game rematch.

“It was similar to when—not on [that] level yet—but it was similar to when Speedy was here,” Pecora said. “I would go speak for Nike [about] attacking pressure defense. They’d say ‘Well, what did you do when you had Speedy Claxton?’ I said ‘We didn’t have to use any of this.’ And it’s getting like this with Chaz.”

Queens native Charles Jenkins, meanwhile, essayed the role of Brooklynite Norman Richardson almost to perfection by scoring 21 of his 27 points in the second half. He also had four boards and no assists. In the 2001 title game, Richardson scored 26 points—20 in the second half—while adding three boards and one assist.

“I want Charles Jenkins to get out of bed thinking about ‘How can I get a shot?’” Pecora said. “I want him to go to the bathroom saying he ain’t missing. It’s got to be all about him getting shots and its got to be all about Chaz knowing how to get him the shot.”

Of course, to truly compare Saturday to either of the America East championship games is foolish. The largest gathering at the Arena in almost three years (since a sellout crowd of 5,047 turned out for the Bracket Buster against Holy Cross) was there largely for Scout Day, and Hofstra will be lucky to turn 10 percent of the audience into repeat customers.

The Dutchmen and Blue Hens were fighting for seeding in the bottom half of the CAA, not the America East title. A defeat would have been almost unimaginably awful not because it would have cost the Dutchmen an NCAA Tournament berth but because to lose a game in which Hofstra ended up leading wire-to-wire would have been a crushing blow to a team whose confidence was almost shattered during a five-game losing streak as well as to a fan base searching for any reason to believe an unlikely Cinderella run can take place in March.

And never mind that the Dutchmen won despite a less-than-stellar performance, and that less-than-stellar was all that was needed against a Delaware program that has been down in the dumps for the better part of a decade.

Freshman Halil Kanacevic came off the bench to provide 16 points and six rebounds, which helped the Dutchmen overcome quiet nights from Miklos Szabo (two points and one rebound in 14 minutes), Cornelius Vines (scoreless in 33 minutes) and Greg Washington (who followed his epic game Wednesday with five points, six boards and three blocks in 35 minutes.)

The Dutchmen won even though they let the Blue Hens hang around and erase almost all of a 13-point second half lead. Delaware twice got within one point and trailed by three with 26 seconds left before the Dutchmen hit their final seven free throws.

“Are you going to beat the best teams in this league without having everybody playing at a high level? No, we’re not,” Pecora said. “So we’ve got to get more consistent and learn from this.”

But fretting over how much work the Dutchmen still have to do to and how far they are from their ultimate goal could wait. On Saturday night, all that mattered was it felt, for a little while, like it did back then. There was no anguishing over the end of football, no pondering the untenable situation CAA membership has become for Hofstra, no wishing the school had never left the America East. Even the final score inspired some nostalgia.

And in a sweet bit of serendipity, one of the players responsible for the fond memories of yesteryear was along for the trip back in time as well. Claxton, his NBA career all but over because of chronic knee woes, sat in his familiar courtside seat and watched Williams create the type of magic that he once spun so effortlessly, back before things got complicated.

“A good Saturday for college basketball” is what Pecora called it. Especially for those of us old enough to understand just how good Saturdays against Delaware used to be, and to need a reminder of it.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. Delaware, 1/30)

3: Chaz Williams

2: Charles Jenkins

1: Halil Kanacevic

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 41

Chaz Williams 24

Halil Kanacevic 19

Nathaniel Lester 18

Miklos Szabo 15

Greg Washington 11

Cornelius Vines 9

Yves Jules 1

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