Let the record show that at 5:58 p.m. on October 15, 2010—58 minutes into his first practice as the head coach of the Flying Dutchmen basketball team—the perpetually good-natured Mo Cassara got mad.
“Are you telling me that’s as fast as you can run?” Cassara said after he whistled a stop to a drill in which players play suffocating defense on staff members before sprinting to one of the baskets. “Do it again.”
In the second half of the nearly three-hour workout, Cassara grew annoyed when Brad Kelleher and Dwan McMillan, the two players most likely to play the point this season, continued sniping at one another after mixing it up in a physical defensive drill. Cassara used the opportunity to declare he didn’t want to hear any complaining and that the Dutchmen better get it out of their system now.
“Coach Mo getting under some players’ skins today, getting fired up—hey, that’s what we want,” Greg Washington said.
Criticism by Cassara was far outweighed by the positive reinforcement he delivered to his players: On McMillan’s next trip up the floor, he and Cassara spoke and patted each other on the back.
“It’s good for them to know when they do things right and when they do things wrong,” Cassara said afterward. “We’re going to keep encouraging and keep coaching.”
Still, to hear Cassara raising his voice was just one of the many new experiences for the Dutchmen on the first night of the season. “Very strange,” Charles Jenkins said. “Each direction I look, I’m seeing a new face. It’s very strange—a whole new team. A whole new system. It’s different.”
“A lot of freshmen would be like ‘Well, what do we have today?’ and I’m like ‘Well, I don’t know—this is my first time too,’” Washington said with a laugh. “[Last year he could] be like ‘Oh, one time we did this last year, we did that’ and you know what it is. When it’s new, you kind of get nervous a little bit, but it’s good. It’s fun.”
There was at least one similarity to a Pecora-coached practice: An emphasis on defense, which was difficult to highlight during the brief workouts Cassara and his staff were allowed to hold during the first several weeks of the school year.
“No shots are going to go uncontested in this gym,” Cassara said early in the practice.
Cassara was hands-on the entire time, showing the Dutchmen the type of footwork and effort he wants to see as well as the type of verbal commands he wants them to use.
“It’s just so many things so quickly,” Cassara said afterward. “There’s new terms, there’s new phrases, there’s so many different things that they have to learn. And they also have to learn how to come together as a team. You’ll hear me say all the time ‘Team, team, team. Team defense. Team effort.’ Those are the type of things that our guys will have to constantly grasp. And once they do that, we’re going to be pretty good.”
Cassara said he was hopeful it would take “…a good week or 10 days” for the Dutchmen to adapt to his practices, work out the kinks every team has in October and to get into midseason shape. In the meantime, he’s looking for more of what he saw Friday night—effort and enthusiasm.
“This is a new staff, it’s an all-new team in the sense that they’re learning a whole new system, a whole new coaching staff—so a lot of teaching today,” Cassara said. “Overall I’m really happy with our effort and happy with the energy. I think every day we’re going to get a little bit better.”
The real Midnight Madness! File photo from author's cassette collection, 1984. Make fun of me at your peril.
The first day of college basketball practice elicits from us great gratitude and anticipation every year. The off-season, which seems so unspeakably long when the final second of the previous Flying Dutchmen season ticked off the clock, is finally over, and there will never be more basketball to be played than there is right now.
There’s no room for pessimism on New Year’s Day, when every question mark is an exclamation point and every scenario is the best-case one. Especially today, when we welcome the fresh start October 15 symbolizes while also acknowledging how last April and May were reminders that progress does not come without pain.
Even before Tim Welsh made a career-ruining mistake in the early morning hours of Apr. 30, this coaching change was wholly different than the last time Hofstra went outside the school to find a new leader of the men’s basketball program. Back in 1994, there were no worries about star players transferring and no bruised feelings generated—internally or externally—by the exit of the outgoing head coach. Such was life on the fringes of Division I.
Life as a Flying Dutchmen fan is much better in 2010 than it was in 1994. But some of the innocence is gone, too, and was gone long before the Welsh incident. Yet today is about regaining some of that wide-eyed wonderment and believing in all the positives the season has to offer.
Sure, if all of the underclassmen who ended last season with the Dutchmen were taking the court today, Hofstra might be the preseason favorite to win the CAA. But this is a wide-open conference that has no obviously dominant team. The Dutchmen have the best player in the league and seem to have developed a great chemistry with new coach Mo Cassara. To borrow the three words used by just about everybody in every sport before the first practice of every season: Why not us?
Charles Jenkins’ final lap around the track isn’t what he or anybody else imagined, but he’s still got the opportunity at leading the Dutchmen to the NCAA Tournament berth that would cement his status as the best player to come through Hofstra in at least the last 30 years. Fellow seniors Greg Washington and Nathaniel Lester get their last shot, too, while Brad Kelleher gets his first shot, even if it’s far shorter than it should be. We are so optimistic today, we are almost in the mood to thank the NCAA for granting Kelleher 22 regular season games. Almost.
We look forward, as well, to seeing the future of the Flying Dutchmen in the sophomores who stuck around (David Imes, Yves Jules and Matt Grogan), last year’s redshirts (Mike Moore and Paul Bilbo) and the intriguing newcomers (transfers Dwan McMillon and Stevie Mejia, the latter of whom is redshirting, and freshmen Shemlye McLendon, Stephen Nwaukoni and Roland Brown) brought aboard by Cassara.
And we are glad the season will start with no fanfare. Just roll out the cart of basketballs and begin playing. As fun as a Midnight Madness would be, better to wait until next year, when Cassara and his staff has more time to put one together. Plus, imagine how cool it’ll be to raise the CAA banner a year from tonight. Hey, it’s October 15. Why not us?
Sing it with me, kids! "Too hot to handle, too cold to hold, they're the Flying Dutchmen and they're in control..."
Mo Cassara is so excited about his new home, he can’t even wait for it to be fully constructed before he moves in. The rookie Flying Dutchmen basketball coach, striking a youthful look in a blue Hofstra polo shirt with a white sweatshirt underneath it, is working in chaos as the men’s basketball offices undergo a top-to-bottom renovation but seems perfectly content to occupy a room that has just two banquet tables, two chairs and a whole lot of sawdust in it—and, occasionally, a computer covered by plastic.
And why wouldn’t he be happy? Tonight, a little more than five months after his unprecedented ascension to the top job, Cassara finally gets to take the court with the Dutchmen and preside over his first practice as a Division I head coach.
We caught up with Cassara Wednesday, and after he gave a quick tour of the construction, he sat down and discussed his preparations for the first practice, his whirlwind spring and summer, the enthusiasm he’s brought to the job—both on and offline—and, of course, late ‘80s/early ‘90s dance pop. Thanks as always to Cassara for his time.
So how are you feeling, two days before your first practice?
We’re all excited. Our players are excited, our staff is excited, we’re excited to officially get on the court and be able to work together on a daily basis now. During the fall, we’ve only been able to work together short amounts of time, and moving forward here, when we get out on the court Friday, we’re going to be able to work together for longer periods of time and as a group. We’re really excited about that.
What were you able to take from what you saw of the guys in the fall?
I think our staff has worked pretty hard and we’ve really tried to get a good feel for some of our guys and some of the talents that they have. Certainly, we’ve seen them on film and got to know them as people. But during the course of the late spring and summer, we weren’t able to work with them at all. But now we’re able to get a feel for some of the things they may not do well, some of the strengths and weaknesses of the team and really the whole makeup of the team…what we need to work on and address and more importantly how are we going to be able to play? What are we going to be able to do to make us successful?
I think my biggest job, our biggest job as a staff, is to put our kids in position to be successful. And you may want to play one way or you may want to do one thing, but you may not be able to do that because of the talents that you have. So I think right now we’re still determining some of the things that we do well and trying to put our kids into the best position to be successful.
How do you go about planning your practices?
Lots of time and lots of thought. We’re still tinkering with some things that we want to do and how quickly we can implement some things. I think this year, more than ever, [with] everybody being new—from the staff down to all the players, there’s no returning guys here that have been through our practices and even our whole staff has never all worked together—we’re even working on things like terminology and sayings and how we’re going to phrase things, because we’ve all come from different places. So the practices are very thorough and very thought out right now, because I think the quicker we can all get on the same page, the better.
Are there any coaches on whom you’ve relied upon as you’ve adjusted to the job in the last few months and what kind of advice have they given you?
Yeah, it’s funny, I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to talk to different coaches, ask different people certain things. As a matter of fact, I talked to Josh Pastner last night at Memphis, [a] guy who took over kind of suddenly and got thrust into something after never being a head coach before. And he really gave me some good advice, to make sure you take some time for yourself everyday and make sure you spend some time working on basketball and things that are really important to you, as opposed to getting pulled in a lot of different directions. It’s easy to do that. And I think he was a great resource for me, just because he’s been in a similar situation.
But I’ve talked to a lot of coaches throughout the country—people that I’ve worked for, people that I know and [about] everything from planning practice to things that work to things that don’t work and how to deal with certain situations. I’m very fortunate I’ve got a lot of good people in my corner.
Have you been able to catch your breath at all the last few months or have you been running 24/7?
It’s pretty much 24/7. I do catch myself in the mornings, when I’m going for a run or having a little bit of time to myself, and sometimes I reflect and say ‘Geez, how did I get here?’ And I’m certainly very glad to be here. It’s really worked out well.
What do the members of your first recruiting class all have in common?
I think they’re all young [grins]. I think that they’re all terrific kids, they’re all willing to learn. I think that they’re really good pieces to our program. They’re really great representatives for our university and our program. And they have big upside—they all have a lot of talent, and I think that will certainly show over the course of time.
When did you know you wanted to make basketball your life?
I think as a kid. It was something that was in my blood. It was something that I always wanted to do. I caught myself, as a young kid, not just watching games. I would write things down when I saw a play I liked, or I would talk about it with my father—the way somebody played defense or the way a certain coach coached. I was always fascinated and intrigued by coaching and the business side of this whole thing.
You’ve made dozens of speeches to every type of group since you got this job. Is there a common theme to what you say?
I think excitement and enthusiasm. I have spoken at country clubs and church gatherings and Boy Scouts and boys clubs and different groups and alumni and dinner and lunches—all over the place—and I think the one thing that I’ve preached and talked a lot about is myself and our staff’s excitement and enthusiasm to be here and what a terrific program this already is. And we’re going to work really hard to build upon what’s already been a very, very successful program, but we’re going to continue to bring a new excitement, a new enthusiasm to Hofstra basketball.
You’ve quickly established yourself as someone who is comfortable with social media. How has Twitter helped you introduce to that whole new audience?
I think it’s huge. I think what it’s really become for me is a huge resource for information. I think now, the way technology is and the way that I’m involved in it, it’s a great resource for information from recruiting to alumni. I have so many different people get back to me and [who] like the updates and the different things, and it’s a great way to interact when you know you don’t have time to pick up the phone everyday and talk to everybody. Certainly my time is challenging at times, but I have one phone that I use just for Twitter and Facebook.
How many more followers do you have than a few months ago?
Quite a few [laughs]. Nobody cared about me in March, when I was an assistant. I have a lot more now, and there’s a lot of great Hofstra fans out there. We’re actually going to spend some time here pretty soon linking my networks up to our webpage and making sure that anybody that wants to follow and get involved can do that.
This is an era in which coaches seem to want to reveal less about themselves and their teams. Why are you so open with information?
There’s people that really care about the program and want to know about the program. And I don’t think there’s any big secrets here, you know? I think that my enthusiasm and my excitement is because I really am excited about what I do everyday and I’m excited about being here and I want to share that with as many people that are interested in it. And I think the more people are interested, the more people that we have following our program and [will] hopefully be as excited about it as I am.
Last question: Everyone knows your fondness for music. What would a Mo Cassara mix tape in 1991, your senior year in high school, sound like?
Whew. [Laughs] Probably some Bobby Brown. Let’s see, my senior year in high school. Definitely Bobby Brown, I’m trying to think what else would have definitely been on there. Probably some old school rap music. I was going to say New Edition—I couldn’t remember [if] Bell Biv Devoe was [1991]? Yeah? So definitely Bobby Brown, Bell Biv Devoe and some old school rap music. That was pretty much what I was listening to. Stevie B, Johnny Gill—definitely, no doubt.
Man, no wonder I’m waxing poetic about the fall of 1994. Hofstra’s first-ever Midnight Madness occurred Oct. 13, like 14 hours before I saw Pulp Fiction. Seriously, if you weren’t around 15 years ago, sucks to be you.
I’ll have more on the awesomeness of Pulp Fiction next week, but stop back sooner than that—think late tonight or first thing in the morning—for much more on the first practice of hoops season, then and now. I’ll be at the opening practice and will once again be hunting for rock bottom as I tweet the crap out of it. Stop by at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch and join the fun!
