College of Bill Lawrence 75, Hofstra 71 (Or: Their overkill)

Ghosts reappear and a season fades away...

It’s gotten to the point for the Flying Dutchmen where every loss is a microcosm of a lost season. Loss no. 21, a 75-71 defeat at the hands of the College of Bill Lawrence, contained elements omnipresent in so many of its 20 predecessors.

The margin of defeat was certainly familiar: The Dutchmen are now 2-8 in games decided by six points or less or in overtime, their most losses in such games since 2007-08 (the last time the Dutchmen endured a sub-.500 season) and the program’s worst winning percentage in these contests since the 1992-93 team went 1-5.

Once again, the Dutchmen did a lot of good things, but once again, their mistakes and missteps once again proved costly. The Dutchmen displayed their trademark resiliency in scoring 11 straight points after falling behind 7-0 and outscoring William & Mary 27-10 in the eight minutes following the Tribe’s hot start. In the second half, the Dutchmen fell behind by as many as seven and closed within at least three points a dozen times but could never take the lead.

Mike Moore all but locked up the CAA scoring title by collecting a game-high 25 points—including a beauty of a bank shot from just inside the half-court line at the halftime buzzer, that’s right, the Dutchmen are now 0-2 in games with halftime half-court buzzer beaters—and his efficiency score of 23 was by far the best of any Hofstra player, but he didn’t score from the field after opening the second half with a layup and missed his last five shots.

Moore and Nathaniel Lester (18 points and a game-high eight rebounds) were again a solid 1-2 combination, but the Dutchmen had just two players in double figures for the seventh time in the last 10 games. Moore, Lester and Moussa Kone (six points on 3-of-3 shooting and five rebounds, including four in a five-minute span late in the second half) were 17-of-37 from the field while the rest of their teammates were 7-of-23. Stevie Mejia, who has been emerging as that reliable third scoring option, picked up nine points, five of which came in a 53-second span before the first media timeout of the first half, and finished just 2-of-9 from the field.

The Dutchmen’s struggles on offense negated their gritty effort on defense in the final minutes. While many of their early narrow losses were marked by an inability to buy a stop on defense in the waning minutes, the Dutchmen limited the Fighting Lawrences to just one field goal on five attempts in the final five minutes Wednesday.

But the Dutchmen were scoreless from the field following a layup by Lester with 4:28 to play and missed five shots with William & Mary clinging to a 71-69 lead. Finally, the Dutchmen had a costly defensive breakdown and surrendered the back-breaking 3-pointer by a wide-open Brandon Britt with 18 seconds left that accounted for the game’s final points.

Overall, the Dutchmen scored on just one of eight possessions in the second half in which they had a chance to tie or take the lead, and that one basket was the afore-mentioned layup by Lester that came with the Dutchmen down three.

Britt’s basket was doubly frustrating because it was another example of what the Dutchmen have largely lacked this season: Someone bailing out a struggling star. Britt’s shot ensured Quinn McDowell, who led the CAA in free throw shooting percentage last season, wouldn’t wear the goat horns after missing three of four free throw attempts in the final two minutes. What if someone had done that for Moore when he missed those two free throws with the chance to take the lead against Delaware seven weeks earlier?

In the end, the defeat served as another reminder of just how difficult it is for the Dutchmen to create even the tiniest bit of momentum. A win would have been the 10th of the season for the Dutchmen and put them in position to earn the 10th seed. That’s no great shakes for a program that has recorded double-digit wins in each of the last 15 seasons and finished in the bottom half of the CAA just twice since the league expanded to 12 teams in 2005-06, but 10 wins and a 10 seed would certainly be more aesthetically pleasing than being stuck on nine wins and being locked into the 11th seed heading into Senior Day.

Instead, the lone solace the Dutchmen could take from Wednesday was knowing Towson locked up last place by losing to Delaware. It’s not much. But on an evening that so accurately summarized a lost season, it’ll have to do.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. College of Bill Lawrence, 2/22)

3: Mike Moore

2: Nathaniel Lester

1: Moussa Kone

SEASON STANDINGS

Mike Moore 62

Nathaniel Lester 44

Dwan McMillan 17

Stevie Mejia 15

David Imes 14

Stephen Nwaukoni 10

Shemiye McLendon 9

Moussa Kone 6

Bryant Crowder 2

Matt Grogan 1

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

Hofstra 72, College of Bill Lawrence 56 (Or: Our Road To Somewhere)

A.) I know I already used the "Road To..." motif, but B.) Hofstra actually had enough fans in Richmond to spell out the final score and spoil the surprise for someone, if they so wished.

When the Flying Dutchmen fell to Drexel Jan. 29 in front of the first sellout crowd at Hofstra Arena in almost four years, Mo Cassara was almost inconsolable, feeling as if he’d let down all the newcomers to the Dutchmen bandwagon and wondering how long it would take to lure them back.

The bandwagon reloaded in a hurry, thanks to a series of thrilling wins in February, and the Dutchmen’s home finale eight days ago was another sellout. And with that success came another challenge Saturday: Don’t send home unhappy the hundreds of fans and students who came down to Richmond and lent a distinctly New York flavor to the world capital of Southern Bias.

The chants began moments after Old Dominion completed its win over Delaware. “LET’S GO HOF-STRA! LET’S GO HOF-STRA!” A bunch of students, most sporting blue or white Charles Jenkins T-shirts and some toting ROLL PRIDE signs or enormous headshots of Jenkins and Mo Cassara, began marching down the stairs in Section 17 of the Richmond Coliseum and gathering outside the entrance to the student section behind the home basket.

They would fill the section, three people deep, and spend the pregame jumping and yelling and chanting. It was a scene Dutchmen fans of a certain age (*cough* this guy *cough cough*) had never seen and thought they would never see.

After all that, the Flying Dutchmen COULDN’T lose their quarterfinal game to 11th-seeded William & Mary. And after a slow start in which thoughts of the inconceivable began creeping into the heads of the hundreds of Hofstra faithful, the Dutchmen dominated the Tribe in the second half and cruised to a 72-56 victory that was as notable for what happened on the court as for the passion off it.

The Dutchmen, who are in the CAA semifinals for the fourth time ever but the first time since that memorable 2006 season, will face second-seeded Old Dominion in the second semifinal at 2:30 today. Old Dominion beat the Dutchmen, 75-64, in the lone meeting of the season between the teams in Hempstead on Jan. 15.

“I spent all afternoon on Twitter responding to every kid sitting on that bus writing me messages all day,” Cassara said afterward. “Actually had a great message I’ll tell you [that shows] just how great our fans have been and how well they’ve connected to this team. I got a Facebook message from a student who is in the band and said ‘Coach, we’re on our way down, just want to let you know I’m gonna play my heart out for you guys tonight.’

“I thought that was incredible, for a kid to do that in the band and be able to reach out to us. I sent him a message back. I did that all afternoon. Our student section, our fan support our administration, the people that are down here to support us, it’s just incredible and that’s why we’ve had the success we’ve had.”

The Dutchmen put together perhaps their best half of basketball—as well as the cleanest game in CAA Tournament history—to bury William & Mary, which seemed primed to give the Dutchmen fits for the third time this season when it opened the game on a 9-0 run and carried a 27-25 lead into halftime. The Dutchmen found the Coliseum rims familiarly unfriendly as Charles Jenkins and Mike Moore each shot just 2-of-7 and saw multiple shots roll around and out.

But the shots began falling in the second half when the Dutchmen put together a 10-0 run to take the lead for good and a 15-0 spurt beginning at the midway point of the half that removed all doubt. “Thought in the first half we were just a little flat, we just weren’t quite clicking on all cylinders,” Cassara said. “I think part of that was having a week off, being in a big arena. We got a little tight.

“[He] told the guys at halftime just to relax a little bit. We’ve been in this position many times—we’re down at halftime so much. But our guys don’t panic. I think that’s an incredible tribute to them and our staff just doing a great job finding a way to win games.”

Jenkins, who scored 15 points in the second half, jumpstarted both runs—his driving layup broke the final tie of the game with 15:41 to play and his 3-pointer with 9:59 left began the decisive surge—but the (spoiler alert!) real MVP Saturday was Brad Kelleher, who drained three 3-pointers (improving the Dutchmen to 9-0 this season when he hits multiple 3-pointers), finished with 13 points, collected four assists and presided over a crisp offense that committed just two turnovers—the lowest total ever for a CAA Tournament Game. For all intents and purposes, it was one turnover: The second one was a travel on Paul Bilbo in the final minute.

“We talk about something with our team: Be obsessed about fundamentals and little things,” Cassara said. “Little things are going to win us tight games. One of the things we talk about is valuing the basketball. I thought as a team we did a great job tonight, but really, Brad did a great job. He really did a good job and then ultimately made a couple shots. Once a couple of those shots fell, we really started to open things up offensively.”

The Dutchmen finished with four players in double figures (Jenkins 20, Kelleher 13, Moore 11 and David Imes 10) and Shemiye McLendon fell just shy with nine points. The Dutchmen were 19-of-22 at the free throw line and made 18 of 19 free throws in the second half.

Most impressively, they outscored William & Mary 69-38 in a 33-minute span beginning with the Dutchmen’s first basket of the game. And only a late 9-3 run by the Tribe prevented the Dutchmen from recording their most lopsided win of the season against a Division I foe for the second time in as many games.

Defensively, the Dutchmen shut down the red-hot Quinn McDowell, who had just six points on six shots after scoring a Tournament-record 35 the night before, and limited the Tribe’s second chances. William & Mary had just five offensive rebounds, including only one in the first half. Imes pulled down a game-high eight rebounds—four apiece on both ends of the floor.

“Being down at halftime—I’m a senior and I’ve been down in the quarterfinals every year, we always lost here,” Jenkins said. “So the second half was just a sense of urgency, not necessarily on offense. On defense we got stops.”

As the Coliseum emptied out in the final minutes, the Hofstra student section’s chants of “Charles Jenkins!” filled the arena. Cassara began emptying the bench with three minutes to play and the Dutchmen’s last basket was scored by walk-on Matt Grogan, who drained a 3-pointer to become, quite possibly, the first walk-on in school history to score in a conference tournament game.

“Matty Grogan hitting that shot made everybody as happy as can be,” Cassara said. “[To] be able to play a few guys there for a few minutes is great for everybody’s morale.”

Morale was high everywhere in Dutch Nation (no longer a snort-worthy comment) Saturday night as fans and players alike looked ahead to the biggest challenge of the year—so far. “[Fans will] be a huge help tomorrow, when we’re probably going to be outnumbered by ODU fans,” Kelleher said. “So having a little support will be good.”

“[It] means a lot, our fans and administration coming down, because were going to need everybody [today],” Jenkins said. “The ratio’s probably going to be 1/50. We need as many people as we can.”

Incredibly, yet no longer surprisingly, they’ll be there.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. College of Bill Lawrence, 3/5)

3: Brad Kelleher

2: Charles Jenkins

1: David Imes

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 79

Mike Moore 37

Greg Washington 27

David Imes 20

Brad Kelleher 11

Shemiye McLendon 5

Dwan McMillan 5

Yves Jules 1

Stephen Nwaukoni 1

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

Hofstra 81, College of Bill Lawrence 78 (Or: Our Own Personal Jenkins)

Because multiple views of two of the greatest clutch shots we've ever seen are more important than a Scrubs photo. Yes. This is serious stuff.

The passing of time has a way of embellishing the truth. Home runs travel farther, more tackles are broken on the way to the goal line, the fish get bigger as each year goes by.

But sometimes, the truth is better than the legend, and no tall tale anyone can ever muster up will match what actually happened at Hofstra Arena last night, when a transcendent player carrying his team to a magical season saved his best—so far—for his next-to-last home game.

Charles Jenkins hit a flat-footed 3-pointer just before the regulation buzzer to send the game into overtime and then drained a 35-footer as time expired in overtime to lift the Flying Dutchmen to their latest description-defying comeback victory, an 81-78 thriller over the College of Bill Lawrence in front of 2,378 euphoric fans.

“That’s as good as I’ve ever seen,” Mo Cassara said. “To go to overtime—when we didn’t put ourselves in a position to win—to hit one to go to overtime and then hit another one in overtime is as good as I’ve ever seen.”

Especially not in practice. “We have a drill at the end of practice when we have walkthroughs called ‘win the game’ and I’ve never made the shot at the buzzer,” Jenkins said with a laugh.

“We put the whole rack of balls in the half-court and then I throw the ball out and blow the whistle and give every guy a chance and we don’t leave until somebody hits their last-second shot,” Cassara said.

“Coach always gives me a hard time—he throws it down to the other end and gives me two seconds to make a shot,” Jenkins said.

He had plenty of time on both his shots Tuesday and as a result the Dutchmen will have plenty of time, relatively speaking, before their first CAA Tournament game. The win, coupled with George Mason’s rout of VCU (yay! We love you George Mason—no, not really) and Drexel’s loss to UNC Wilmington, not only catapulted the Dutchmen into a three-way tie for second with VCU and Old Dominion but also assured the Dutchmen a first-round bye.

Only the hardiest of souls (raises hand) thought a bye was possible after the tumult of last spring, but the Dutchmen will be resting and relaxing Friday as their quarterfinal opponent (please, Lord Jenkins, don’t be William & Mary) grinds out a first round win.

“I wouldn’t put anything past this group,” Cassara said. “I wouldn’t put anything past them.”

Who would after all the Dutchmen did to win their seventh game in which they came back from a double-digit deficit? The Dutchmen were outscored 36-11 over the span of almost an entire half—16:41, to be exact, between taking a 15-3 lead at the first media timeout of the game and falling behind 39-26 less than 90 seconds into the second half.

The Dutchmen squandered five-point leads with less than two minutes to play in regulation and less than three minutes to go in overtime. They shot an uncharacteristically poor 63 percent from the free throw line (17-of-27), their worst performance since Dec. 18 at Manhattan. William & Mary, meanwhile, was a sizzling 12-of-25 from 3-point land and 20-of-22 from the free throw line, including 14-of-14 in the second half and overtime.

Just seven players saw the court for the Dutchmen and the starting five of Jenkins, Mike Moore, Brad Kelleher, David Imes and Greg Washington played all but five minutes in the second half and overtime. Yet despite frittering away multiple leads, the quintet was almost perfect—the Dutchmen didn’t commit a single turnover in the second half and overtime—and put up boxscore-busting numbers.

Jenkins finished with 28 points (his final basket gave him 2,402 career points), four assists and two overtime blocks. Moore opened the game with three straight 3-pointers and had 25 points and eight rebounds. Kelleher put together his best game yet with nine points, seven assists, a career-high six rebounds and just one turnover in a career-high 42 minutes. Imes had his fifth double-double (12 points, 10 rebounds) and Washington had five blocks, two steals, five rebounds and four blocks—huge contributions from the forwards since the Dutchmen didn’t play another big man.

“This is probably the one team I’ve been around in all my years of playing and coaching—our best talent is we never give up,” Cassara said. “This group just never thinks they’re going to lose the game.”

Everyone else’s faith was wavering when William & Mary went on a 9-1 run—off a 3-pointer and six free throws—to take a 69-66 lead with just over six seconds to play. But Jenkins performed his first miracle after he took the in-bounds pass from Greg Washington and stared down Kyle Gaillard, who briefly dropped his arms. Jenkins took advantage of the opening and hit the 3-pointer from well beyond the arc and William & Mary’s last-ditch shot fell short of the rim.

“Me and Mike’s motto is ‘hand down, man down,’” Jenkins said. “Once he put his hand down, I got a good look at the basket.”

It didn’t seem as if the Dutchmen would need another buzzer-beater to hang on in overtime when they opened the extra session with a 5-0 run. But once again the Tribe—the best and peskiest 3-13 team I have ever seen anywhere, and that is in no way damning with faint praise—crawled back and took a 76-75 lead on Quinn McDowell’s 3-pointer with 1:08 left.

Then Jenkins went into superhuman mode. He drove on three William & Mary defenders and somehow hit the leaning layup to give the Dutchmen a 77-76 lead before he blocked Brandon Britt’s layup on the other end. Kelleher grabbed the rebound and was fouled but hit just one free throw. Yves Jules fouled McDowell streaking for a wide-open layup and McDowell hit both free throws with 4.5 seconds to play.

Imes inbounded the ball to Jenkins, who raced up court, pulled up at 35 feet and fired over the outstretched arms of McDowell with less than a second left. “I have four seconds to get up the court, which is a lifetime,” Jenkins said. “I got a good look at the basket and I made it.”

With the buzzer still echoing, the ball hit nothing but net as the Arena went from silent to ear-splittingly loud in a split second. Jenkins turned, raced to the opposite foul line and flexed his arms as his teammates mobbed him and half-carried him, half-followed him into the Lions Den, where he made his now-trademark Dutch Dive before he was engulfed by students.

“I think I want to signature that,” Jenkins said with a wide grin. “If anyone else does it, that’s going to be something that they took from me.”

Not likely anyone will ever again do what Jenkins did last night, or match what he has done over his first 122 career games, or come close to doing what we imagine he’ll do over his final—how many games does he have left? Six? Seven? Twelve?

Someday, somebody will hear or read our recollections of this Jenkins guy and wonder if our memories aren’t of the big fish variety, if those two buzzer-beating 3-pointers weren’t actually a couple of 18-footers with half a minute left in a game that had absolutely no bearing on anything.

But we’ll know better. We’ll know the truth. We saw it.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. College of Bill Lawrence, 2/15)

3: Charles Jenkins

2: Mike Moore

1: Brad Kelleher

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 69

Mike Moore 35

Greg Washington 23

David Imes 16

Brad Kelleher 7

Shemiye McLendon 5

Dwan McMillan 5

Yves Jules 1

Stephen Nwaukoni 1

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

Hofstra 67, College of Bill Lawrence 64 (Or: Their Road To Somewhere)

Mo Cassara fared much better than The Janitor during the Flying Dutchmen's impromptu road trip last Thursday!

The Flying Dutchmen are almost halfway through a potentially magical CAA season that is constructed out of equal parts duct tape, thumbtacks, grit, smoke, mirrors and The Man Amen, so they are long accustomed to scouring the landscape for any little edge they can find. A little rest for Charles Jenkins right before a media timeout here, a couple minutes from a Roland Brown or a Paul Bilbo there, a couple spots a game for Yves Jules to come in when the Dutchmen need a defensive stop.

The latest little edge was gleaned Thursday afternoon, almost exactly 48 hours before tipoff against William & Mary, when the Dutchmen got on a bus and endured another 10-hour bus ride in order to get to Williamsburg instead of waiting for a flight Friday and potentially spending the day stuck in airports if the area was hit by heavy snow.

The storm proved to be nothing major, but the ability to spend a relaxing Friday in Virginia, instead of fretting for the second time in three weeks over whether or not they would arrive at their destination time for a Saturday afternoon game, just might have been the difference as the Dutchmen remained tied for first in the CAA heading into the biggest week of the season with a nail-biting 67-64 win over the Fighting Bill Lawrences.

Asked last night if he thought the early arrival was a vital part of victory, Mo Cassara said “I definitely do.” Then he repeated those three words for emphasis—twice.

“That was a real great call by Jack [Hayes] and Danny [McCabe],” Cassara said of Hofstra’s athletic director and his top assistant. “They said ‘Let’s go, let’s not take a chance, let’s not have these guys sitting in the airport.’ Danny and Jack, that’s kind of veteran leadership there. I deferred to them. [They said] ‘Let’s get you on the bus.’

“It made all the difference in the world. We had a whole day to get off our feet, relax and catch our breath a little bit. It worked out well.”

Who knows what happens if the Dutchmen spend Friday sprawled out in an airport instead of sprawled out in a hotel room before taking a post-dinner trip to a mall? Maybe Jenkins doesn’t overcome a tough shooting day (7-of-18, the second time in three games he’s shot below 40 percent after shooting less than 40 percent just twice in the Dutchmen’s first 16 games) to once again fill up a boxscore once again in leading the Dutchmen with 22 points, eight assists and four steals as well as pulling down six rebounds. The assists and rebounds matched his season highs against Division I competition.

OK, Jenkins probably would have done that anyway. But maybe Greg Washington fails to overcome early foul trouble (two by the first media timeout) and misses one or two of his field goal attempts, instead of hitting all six—the first time in his career he’s taken as many as three shots without a miss and the second perfect shooting performance by a Hofstra big man this month (David Imes was 8-for-8 against Drexel Jan. 3)—and giving the Dutchmen that ever-valuable third player in double figures. The Dutchmen, who also got 13 points from Mike Moore, are 11-1 when at least three players reach 10 points and 5-0 when Washington scores at least 10.

Washington also had nine rebounds, one shy of his season high. “I thought the second half was as well as he’s played all year,” Cassara said. “He made some big plays, obviously, offensively, but I think more importantly he was just such a presence on defense. He moved and he had a difficult assignment running around guarding a lot of different guys and he bailed a lot of guys out on the back line there. Even though he didn’t block shots, he changed shots.”

Maybe, without a full day of rest, Washington and the Dutchmen aren’t able to withstand going scoreless from the field in the last 4:21 and maybe they don’t survive two attempts by William & Mary to take the lead in the final 40 seconds, during which the Fighting Bill Lawrences missed a shot and were whistled for a travel, to close out a true CAA grinder in which they never led by more than six points.

“I thought our defense was as good as it’s been all year the last couple possessions,” Cassara said. “They run a lot of the Princeton style offense. We hedged out, we really, really played aggressive man-to-man defense and from one through five, all our guys did a terrific job, really led by Greg Washington.”

Maybe, if Shemiye McLendon spends Friday trying to catch some sleep on airport seats, he doesn’t coolly drain two free throws with a little more than a second left to provide the final margin of victory. He’d gone 14 days since last attempting a free throw and 17 since he hit one. And maybe he doesn’t end the first half by going coast-to-coast and hitting a driving layup just before the buzzer to pull the Dutchmen within 37-34.

“That gave us a little momentum going into the locker room, that was a big play,” Cassara said. “He hasn’t shot the ball terribly well the last two weeks from the perimeter [2-for-16 from 3-point land in his last five games]. He’s doing other things for us. He’s really defending well for us. And him going to the line and making tow free throws on the road in the CAA to keep you tied for first place, it’s really a credit to him for doing the job for us.”

There’s not much of a maybe about this: Without a relaxing Friday, the Dutchmen don’t come back from a 10-point first half deficit against William & Mary, which is in a full-on youth movement and entrenched among the CAA’s bottom quadrant, just like Northeastern two weeks earlier.

But unlike Northeastern, which is still seeking its first league win, the Fighting Bill Lawrences are in the process of figuring things out, and fast. The FBLs entered Saturday with a two-game winning streak in which they routed Drexel and Towson by a combined 29 points and drained 10 of their first 18 shots—including 4-of-9 from beyond the arc—in taking a 30-20 lead against the Dutchmen. But William & Mary was just 12-of-33 from the field the rest of the way, including 2-of-16 from 3-point land, and never led by more than three points in the second half.

“They shot the ball really well,” Cassara said. “We went back and looked at the film. We didn’t think our zone was very good to start, but we were in pretty good position. They just hit some tough shots I told the team going into it that this is a team that is playing very well and they’ve got some confidence, won a couple games in a row. They’re at home and they’re going to make some tough shots. They literally did that—they made some tough shots. We were just a little bit slow, part of being on the road, but we made some adjustments and in the second half the adjustments worked.”

But not nearly as well as the adjustment Cassara and the Hofstra staff made Thursday.

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. College of Bill Lawrence, 1/22)

3: Greg Washington

2: Charles Jenkins

1: Mike Moore

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 47

Mike Moore 24

Greg Washington 17

David Imes 14

Dwan McMillan 5

Brad Kelleher 3

Shemiye McLendon 2

Yves Jules 1

Stephen Nwaukoni 1

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

College of Bill Lawrence 48, Hofstra 47 (Or: His Unfortunate Prescience)

Tom Pecora was REEHEE HEEHEE HEEEally unhappy after the Flying Dutchmen's heartbreaking loss to the College of Bill Lawrence.

One of the first things you learn upon becoming a sports journalist and heading behind the looking glass is that players and coaches are far less emotional about the games than the fans. They care—well, most of them anyway—but the long season demands from its participants patience and all the accompanying clichés. It doesn’t do a player or a coach any good to emulate a fan and stay up all night obsessing over a defeat or celebrating a victory, especially during the regular season.

To every rule there is an exception, though, and there it was on Saturday, when College of Bill Lawrence coach Tony Shaver and the Tribe fans alike were believing the 48-47 win over the Flying Dutchmen was another sign of the magical season unfolding before their eyes. The win was the school-record 10th in a row for CBL, which was the consensus pick to finish last in the CAA but has beaten Wake Forest and Maryland on the road, entered Saturday ranked fifth in the entire country in RPI and should, by any reasonable standard, be ranked when the latest top 25 polls are released today.

Tom Pecora and all of Dutch Nation (snort), meanwhile, were left to bemoan, both in the micro and the macro, what could have been and what might have slipped out of their grasp.

If this game were to be simulated on a computer 1,000 times, Hofstra probably goes 997-3. The Dutchmen played a brilliant defensive game, limiting the Tribe to less than 50 points three days after it went into College Park and racked up 87 in routing Maryland. The Tribe entered Saturday as one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the nation yet was just 3-of-16 from beyond the arc and shot just 36 percent overall. The Dutchmen outrebounded CBL 37-27.

“Holding them to 35 percent [shooting] should be good enough [to win],” Pecora said. “That’s one of our game goals for every game. One is hold the opponent under 40 percent. One is not letting an opponent score 20 points. We did that. One is outrebounding the opponent. We did that by 10.”

And the most remarkable stat of all: Hofstra did not trail CBL for the first 39 minutes and 43 seconds. But oh, those last 17 seconds.

The Tribe’s Kendrix Brown drove a wide-open lane for his only basket and was fouled by Charles Jenkins. Brown hit the free throw to give CBL its first lead. After a Dutchmen timeout, a double-teamed Jenkins dished the ball to Halil Kanacevic, who fired up an errant 3-pointer from the right corner with three seconds left. Nathaniel Lester grabbed the rebound and appeared to be fouled as he hoisted the ball up just before the final buzzer—and by “appeared to be fouled,” I mean “was absolutely mugged.”

One official blew his whistle, seemingly indicating a foul, but he was waved off by the other two as Lester, Chaz Williams and Greg Washington stood by and pleaded their cases.

“I told the players in 30-some years of coaching, this is one of the best wins I’ve ever been a part of,” Shaver said. “We just found a way to win and I think that’s a sign of a great basketball team. Just their courage and their toughness today was very impressive.

“People have been telling me all year long we shoot too many threes and we can’t score if we don’t shoot the ball, we can’t win if we don’t shoot well. Well, we shot 35 percent and 18 percent from three and won against a great team on the road. So something good’s going on with these guys.”

As for Pecora, he stormed after the officials demanding an explanation and had to be held back by two staff members. “‘Game over,’ that’s all they said,” Pecora said. “He blew the whistle to end the game. That’s what he said. I don’t believe that to be the case.”

As livid as he was with the officials, Pecora was even more disappointed with his team for failing to record a seismic victory over the Tribe and its sky-high RPI. He wasn’t alone: The wife and I had some errands to run after the game and she remained silent in the car the entire time. I finally asked if it was something I’d said or done, or, more likely, something I hadn’t said (“Honey, I forgot to tell you, if you called your college loan people by 5 pm New Years Eve, they would have wiped away your debt”) or hadn’t done (fed and watered the cats).

“I’m just so pissed about that game,” she said.

(Note: It’s her damn fault. Sometime in the second half Saturday, she said “This better not be one of these games we lead the whole way and then lose.” Thanks honey. Next time we’re on the highway, why don’t you marvel at how we haven’t hit any traffic.)

“I’m worried they’re not going to do something special,” she added.

Pecora wasn’t offering such a pessimistic declaration, but he seemed more discouraged that at any other time this year. And one day after Pecora talked about how the Dutchmen’s season could be defined by these five games in 10 days, the question has to be pondered: What if the first game in that stretch proves to define something far greater than a single season?

“I talk all the time to these guys about their legacy—this would have been an opportunity for them to leave a mark in the history books by beating a team that was as highly touted as William & Mary,” Pecora said. “And we weren’t able to do that.”

The legacy so far for this core of Dutchmen is “almost.” The closest thing to a defining game last season came in the CAA quarterfinal against Old Dominion, which the Dutchmen lost 52-51 when Jenkins’ 3-pointer at the buzzer fell short.

This year’s team has played quite an improved schedule, but at some point, it is not enough to merely go out to Kansas and lose to the top-ranked Jayhawks or to almost beat UConn, Charlotte, St. John’s and CBL. What good is an upgraded schedule without a signature win or two? If the season ended today, the Dutchmen wouldn’t even be on the radar in the NIT discussion, never mind the NCAA.

Plenty of patience has been exercised with the Dutchmen, who are still inexperienced beyond Jenkins. He entered Saturday with 74 career starts, a mere seven fewer than the rest of the lineup—Lester, Miklos Szabo, Greg Washington and Chaz Williams—combined.

But patience cannot be limitless, especially in college basketball, where careers are cruelly finite. And the calendar dictates when youth is no longer an excuse. Guess what? It happened at midnight Friday morning.

And guess what? The last Biggest Game Ever played at Hofstra Arena was won by a team with two seniors, two juniors and a sophomore in its starting lineup. One of those seniors was Adrian Uter, a junior college transfer. The other was Aurimas Kieza, who entered 2005-06 with 41 starts—one more than junior Carlos Rivera, eight more than sophomore Antoine Agudio and 10 fewer than junior Loren Stokes.

The Dutchmen have won with inexperienced teams that played beyond their years. It is time for this team to take that leap, and despite the crushing disappointment of Saturday, there was evidence at least one player is ready to do so. Lester led the Dutchmen with 14 points and 10 rebounds, drew two fouls in the first 26 seconds of the second half and took eight of the team’s 10 free throw attempts.

It is time for him to do that consistently—he has scored in double figures in consecutive games just twice this year—and it is time for Szabo and Washington, who have gone to the line more than four times in just five of 28 games this season, to be more than decoys in the paint. And yes, it is even time for Jenkins to play like Loren Stokes all the time, not most of it.

“This is a poor game for Charles—he’s 5-of-13 from the floor, he’s 12 points and two rebounds in 40 minutes,” Pecora said. “Our great players have always filled up boxscores. They score points, they rebound, they defend, they have a good assist-to-turnover ratio. And he’s still working on it. He’s only a junior.”

Which means Jenkins—along with everyone else in the lineup except Williams—is closer to the finish line than the start. So if not now for the Dutchmen, then when?

“It sure does sting, because you only get so many opportunities in life,” Pecora said. “And when you’re young, sometimes you don’t realize that. But when you’re old, like me, you realize it. And you realize when you get a chance to win a big game like this, you better take advantage of it, because it may not come along that often.”

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. College of Bill Lawrence, 1/2)

3: Nathaniel Lester

2: Charles Jenkins

1: Halil Kanacevic

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 21

Nathaniel Lester 18

Chaz Williams 14

Halil Kanacevic 11

Greg Washington 8

Cornelius Vines 7

Miklos Szabo 5

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