Bits and Bytes: Of optimism and injustices

William & Mary grad Chris Turk is thrilled to have tickets to the Flying Dutchmen-Tribe game tonight. Wait til he finds out that J.D. thought Turk was in charge of bringing the tickets, though.

If you’re anything like me—once again, I’m very sorry—then you saw the CAA schedule when it was released in August and figured one of the few sure things for the Flying Dutchmen during conference play was a pair of wins over the College of Bill Lawrence Jan. 2 and Jan. 16.

Everyone else seemed to agree with us, too, as the Fighting Lawrences were a consensus pick to finish last in the CAA. Except, of course, CBL has emerged as one of the nation’s surprise teams, compiling a top-10 RPI thanks to road wins over Wake Forest and Maryland and winning five of its first six conference games. Three of those wins have been by a single point, including a 48-47 win over the Dutchmen two weeks ago today in which CBL trailed for the first 39 minutes, which fuels the notion that this is finally The Year for CBL, which has never made the NCAA Tournament.

The Dutchmen, of course, are the anti-CBL. Like CBL, the Dutchmen played an upgraded non-conference schedule, but the type of wins that would have boosted the RPI and the Dutchmen’s at-large candidacy never materialized as they squandered second half leads against UConn, St. John’s and Charlotte. The Dutchmen have been similarly star-crossed during conference play: In addition to falling to CBL and George Mason by combined five points in consecutive games, they lost freshmen Chaz Williams and David Imes last week due to high ankle sprains and learned this week that Brad Kelleher is officially a poster boy for the NCAA’s skewered sense of justice.

As a result, the Dutchmen will likely take the court tonight with just seven scholarship players, though I wouldn’t be shocked if Williams manages to make it back. Regardless, being ice-cold and hexed and going on the road to visit red-hot and charmed is not the optimal situation for a team staring at the possibility of a 3-6 or 2-7 start in conference play.

Of course, we specialize in optimism here and in thinking of ways the Dutchmen can win, so we’ll spend the hours until game time figuring that Pecora has whipped his team into an us-against-the-world fury, that the Dutchmen are at their most dangerous when they are wounded—it was a year ago today that the reeling Dutchmen knocked off first-place Northeastern, which was just 12 days removed from a wire-to-wire thrashing of the Dutchmen in Boston—that this is a much better matchup for the undermanned Dutchmen than VCU was and that CBL’s run of incredibly good fortune has to come to an end some time.

Turns out your good friend and mine Mike Litos doesn’t think the concept of a Dutchmen win is so crazy, either. He predicts another narrow CBL win but lays out the ingredients for a Hofstra upset: A big night from Charles Jenkins and Nathaniel Lester’s return from witness protection. We’ve said it multiple times this month: When Lester is the Dutchmen’s second-best player—when he plays 30 minutes and gets himself to the foul line with regularity—they win far more often than not. But who knows which Lester will show up tonight?

I’ll add that as important as Lester is to the Dutchmen’s fortunes, they’ll also need Miklos Szabo’s recent resurgence to be a trend and not an aberration. He has played quite well the last three games (during which he has averaged 8.7 points and seven rebounds), avoided the foul trouble that plagued him earlier in the year and earned back his starting job.

If Pecora is grumpy and sparse with his praise late tonight, I’ll bet you it’s good news for the Dutchmen. After all, he didn’t complement the Dutchmen last year when they finally began playing up to their potential.

A win here and things will look a lot better. We’ll be tuning in—hopefully on the William & Mary website, unless it sucks like the Florida Atlantic one did—and live Tweeting throughout. Join us, won’t you? It’s much better than the NFL playoffs.

A couple other quick bits and bytes:

—In writing last night’s piece about the similarities between this year’s slow CAA start and last year’s slow start, I reconstructed the 2008-09 standings through six games. Worth a look as a reminder of how much things can change over the final two-thirds of the season.

2008-09: Through six

George Mason 6-0

Northeastern 6-0

VCU 5-1

James Madison 4-2

Old Dominion 3-3

Drexel 3-3

Hofstra 2-4

Georgia State 2-4

Towson 2-4

Delaware 1-5

UNCW 1-5

William & Mary 1-5

Final standings

VCU 14-4

George Mason 13-5

Northeastern 12-6

Old Dominion 12-6

Hofstra 11-7

Drexel 10-8

James Madison 9-9

Georgia State 8-10

Delaware 6-12

William & Mary 5-13

Towson 5-13

UNCW 3-15

—Injustice update No. 1: Save Hofstra Football is hosting a fundraiser tonight at Public House in Manhattan from 4-8. NFL memorabilia donated by the likes of Wayne Chrebet and Dave Fiore will be auctioned off, as well as golf outings to local courses. For more information, check out the Save Hofstra Football website. The group is also hosting a rally at Bar Social (the old Bogarts) Tuesday from 5-7 p.m., just before the basketball game against George Mason.

—Injustice update No. 2: The NCAA issued a statement in response to Tom Pecora’s comments in Friday’s Newsday in which he blistered the so-called governing body for declaring Brad Kelleher ineligible because he signed a contract with—but was never paid by—a professional team in his native Australia five years ago.

It boggles the mind to think of how many people were paid obscene amounts of money to drum up this crap: “Coach Pecora’s comments are both inappropriate and inaccurate. Brad Kelleher’s eligibility is not finally determined, but a Division I committee that includes Hofstra’s peers has sustained the finding that he signed a previous professional contract which makes him ineligible.

“Like any NCAA institution, Hofstra now has the opportunity to seek Mr. Kelleher’s reinstatement from the NCAA. This process starts with a review by NCAA staff, and the university can also appeal staff decisions to the Student-Athlete Reinstatement Committee, comprised of representatives from NCAA schools and conferences.”

So let’s get this straight: The NCAA has declared Kelleher ineligible, but it’s not a final decision and Hofstra can make an appeal to a committee comprised of the same people who already declared Kelleher ineligible. Oh. OK then. That’s fair. I’m sure the appeal will be a fruitful endeavor. I’m convinced Dilbert creator Scott Adams worked at the NCAA before turning to comics. And I’m convinced that Pecora’s comments only scratch the surface of how livid he is with those bureaucratic lowlifes.

But hey, Stuart Rabinowitz sent a letter to the NCAA. No word on whether he needed to conduct a secret “two-year study” before composing it, though.

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

Me 1, Sully Rays 0 (Oh and Hofstra 68, Old Westbury 50)

Sully Ray's anguish sustains me!

“Ahh, the first night of basketball season—when anything seems possible,” my wife the quote machine said as we waited for the first tip last night at Hofstra Arena.

Looking around the Arena during the Flying Dutchmen’s 68-50 victory over Old Westbury provided memories of what once was, and perhaps of what will be. The surprisingly decent-sized crowd of 2,508 for a game against a Division III foe—only 2,184 showed up to Hempstead for last year’s Hofstra-Stony Brook battle; can it be, is the optimism spreading?—inspired recollections of the sellouts against Mason in February ’06 and Old Dominion in the NIT quarterfinals three weeks later and stoked hopes of full houses for pivotal late-season CAA games.

Charles Jenkins flinging his body around with reckless abandon and filling up the box score was reminiscent of Loren Stokes, but with the reminder that he’s better built for such punishment. Jenkins had 24 points and was 6-of-8 from inside the 3-point arc (1-of-5 beyond it) as well as 9-of-11 from the free throw line.

Cornelius Vines evoked memories of Antoine Agudio by firing at will from outside (3-of-10 from 3-point land, 13 points overall), punctuating his 3-pointers with an Agudio-like fist pump (not nearly as annoying as this guy’s fist pump) and sporting the Agudio-circa-his-real-freshman-year long hair. (That, by the way, is a great test of someone’s Hofstra hoops fandom: Mention Agudio’s long hair. If he/she stares at you like you just suggested having Thanksgiving dinner at Dutch Treats? Not a real fan, or at least not as hardcore as you.)

Then there was Tom Pecora, who needed about 10 minutes to round into midseason form: Stalking the sidelines, filling the ears of the referees jogging by with friendly suggestions and producing his classic passive-aggressive “What? I’m not completely beyond The Line” pose by taking one knee near the scorer’s table and extending the other foot just beyond the coach’s box.

Greg Johnson played 26 minutes and effectively ran the point. Arminas Urbutis unveiled a new closely shorn hairdo that made him look, from a distance, like a dead ringer for Aurimas Kieza. He played like one, too: Eight points, six boards and three steals in 22 minutes.

Anything was possible…even beating out Sully Ray and his father for a T-shirt. That’s right. It’s 1-0, boys. Never mind that it’s a medium and I haven’t worn a medium T-shirt since like 1987, or that if I were to wear this just to taunt Sully Ray I’d look something like the guy on the left:

In which I gratuitously take advantage of any opportunity to reference Needs More Cowbell.

And never mind that there are 11 more home games for the Sullivans to remind me of their inherent advantages. For instance, Sully is a tri-athlete. I tried to be an athlete in high school, when I ran track because it was the only sport that didn’t cut anyone, and tried running at the beginning of my diet in January but quit after two days because I felt so pathetic and out-of-shape.

And his dad is 70 years old but with the agility, instincts and killer instinct of a man five decades younger. You’ve got to see this guy go for T-shirts. He’s a bad man. And I mean that in the most complementary way possible.

Where was I? Oh yes.

Of course, it was still the fourth Monday of November, so there were plenty of reminders it’s a long season and there’s still plenty of work to be done on the court (if not in the stands). This was the ultimate no-win game for the Flying Dutchmen—as in, no matter how much they won by, it wouldn’t be enough because Division I teams are supposed to trounce Division III teams—but Pecora didn’t have to get creative in finding ways to criticize his team’s performance.

It was a game with little flow or consistency on either end. Despite a clear size advantage, the Dutchmen only pulled down three more rebounds than Old Westbury (34-31).

And if Old Westbury shot just a little better—the Panthers shot just 35 percent from the field and 56.5 percent from the free throw line—then things might have gotten really hairy down the stretch. As it was, Old Westbury hung around long enough—down four with just over 12 minutes left, one of the Panthers players started extorting the crowd—that the wife mentioned it was beginning to feel a lot like Hofstra-UCLA, except Hofstra was the UCLA.

I’ll chalk some of the inconsistency up to the experimental nature of the game. As decent as Greg Johnson looked, let’s remember he was headed for the side of a milk carton after back-to-back DNPs in Charleston. The odds of him recording more minutes than Tony Dennison again, barring an injury to one of the three starting guards, are slim.

Darren Townes didn’t start, but played 29 minutes—more than either Urbutis (22 minutes) or Dane Johnson (13 minutes)—despite drawing four fouls as Pecora continued to mix and match with the big guys. Miklos Szabo had a quiet 15 minutes with no points and five boards.

And Nathaniel Lester (three minutes) and Zygis Sestakos (five minutes) continued to slide down the depth chart. Lester was yanked after a turnover late in the first half and Sestakos nailed his first 3-point attempt but missed his next two before both remained on the bench for the entire second half. Ditto for Mike Davis-Saab, who scored a point in two minutes in the first half. Walk-on David Vallins played the final 66 seconds while Greg Washington did not play and spent the game in sweats on the sidelines.

Now that the unofficial pre-season portion of the non-conference schedule is out of the way, we’ll start to get a better idea of what’s really possible—and what kind of work the Flying Dutchmen really have ahead of them—beginning Saturday, when the Dutch visit Manhattan. In the Bronx, of course, because that makes sense. I may start Bay Shore Community College but open it in Copiague.

(Sorry for the delayed posting tonight, should have just capped last night’s all-nighter by finishing this. Come back later Wednesday for a football-related post)

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.