New coach, familiar refrains for Hofstra after scrimmage win

Is that really Mo Cassara uttering those words? Or is it TOM PECORA?!

Mo Cassara’s first appearance in the post-game interview room sounded so familiar, one had to wonder if it wasn’t part of an elaborate ruse. Here’s the new coach talking about how he vocally expressed his displeasure at halftime…and how the Flying Dutchmen had to perform better on defense and on the boards…and how taking care of the basketball is the most important job for a point guard…and how the Hofstra squad that takes the court after New Year’s Day will be better than the one we see beforehand.

Haven’t we heard this all before? This doesn’t sound like the new guy. It sounds like—oh my God IT’S TOM PECORA AND HE’S JUST RIPPED OFF HIS MO CASSARA MASK!!! I NEVER SAW THIS COMING!!!

As it turns out, that was really Cassara speaking, and he wasn’t channeling Pecora to pay homage to his predecessor but to indicate how much room the Dutchmen have for improvement after an inconsistent 76-62 win Sunday over Division II Molloy College in front of a CBI-sized crowd at the Arena.

The Dutchmen took the lead for good less than three minutes into the game but didn’t take a double digit lead for good until there were less than seven minutes to play as the Dutchmen often struggled to find a rhythm against Molloy’s zone defense.

“We got a little tentative,” Cassara said. “Credit goes to Molloy, their coaching staff and their team. They did a good job of slowing the tempo down and making us get a little tight.”

More notably, Molloy outrebounded the Dutchmen 37-34 even though the Lions received just 38 minutes from players taller than 6-foot-5. The Dutchmen had just two offensive rebounds in the first half, when Molloy not only stayed close by outscoring the Dutchmen 22-12 in the paint but also provided the fodder for Cassara’s halftime speech, which, you can be certain, had nothing to do with old school rap.

“We gave up some easy shots,” Cassara said. “My big concern, where we have to get better, is defense. We have to become a more defense-oriented team.”

The Dutchmen responded to Cassara’s scolding with 11 offensive rebounds in the second half. “Phenomenal halftime speech by me,” Cassara said with a grin. “I got after a couple of our front court guys—mainly Mike [Moore], David [Imes] and Greg [Washington] because they just simply weren’t going to the offensive glass.”

Still, Cassara was concerned that the Dutchmen’s leading rebounder was freshman Stephen Nwaukoni, who had eight boards in just 12 minutes. Washington had six rebounds, three blocks and three steals, but didn’t take a single free throw. Sophomore David Imes scored 12 points and showed flashes of filling the offensive void left by the departure of Halil Kanacevic in going to the line a team-high six times but he had just four rebounds—two on each end of the floor.

“I thought Steven Nwaukoni did a terrific job, and what he does well, he did tonight,” Cassara said. “He’s a strong body, he rebounds. He really was a presence in here and I think he ultimately got in there and gave us a little bit of a lift and challenged our more veteran front court guys to really start playing harder.”

There were bursts of impressive efficiency on offense, particularly from Charles Jenkins and point guard Dwan McMillan. Jenkins had his usual overflowing stat line—a game-high 24 points as well as five steals, four rebounds and four assists—and McMillan had eight assists, including seven in the first half, and just one turnover. McMillan didn’t score from the field until there was 5:03 left but capped three fast breaks with layups in a span of 101 seconds to highlight a 14-3 run that ended any hopes of a Molloy upset.

“The number I look at and my big challenge to Dwan is value the basketball,” Cassara said. “I’ve told our team from day one that if we value the basketball and get a good shot every time down the court, we’re going to win our share of games.

“Eight assists and one turnover, that’s the kind of numbers that we need from him consistently. There don’t have to be that many assists, but the lower number of turnovers is what’s really important for me.”

Mike Moore finished with 14 points and provided his own bit of nostalgic channeling in Cornelius Vines’ old no. 23: He opened the game by scoring the Dutchmen’s first six points, but he missed his next eight shots—including six from 3-point land—and went scoreless from the field for more than 30 minutes.

Brad Kelleher, freed momentarily from the NCAA gulag, scored eight points and was 2-of-5 from 3-point land before the Clearinghouse ordered him off the court for having a fantasy football team. (I made that up. Or did I?)

Kelleher played 17 minutes, most among the non-starters, and Moore was the only starter to play less than 30 minutes due to some early foul trouble. Getting such an extended look at the Dutchmen, getting his starters ready for a big workload—no easy task considering Imes saw limited duty as a freshman, Moore sat out last year as a transfer and McMillan was in junior college—and identifying strengths and weaknesses in a game setting was the real goal for Cassara.

“We’ve got some good tape to show them tomorrow that we’ve got a long way to go,” Cassara said. “We’re still a work in progress. We’ve got a lot of new faces, a whole new coaching staff, so we’re not going to be great at some things right now My big thing for this team is to get better every day, and I think this is going to be a very different team come late December and January and moving into the real CAA season, where I think we’re going to get better and better.”

Hmm. That really sounds familiar. Even if it doesn’t rhyme.

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

CBI Bits and Bytes: Whose season gets Scrubbed tonight?

Denise the hot intern, above, smiles despite preparing to deliver bad news to her castmates as well as one of the two teams playing tonight at Hofstra Arena.

Tom Pecora couldn’t stop yawning in his office Monday afternoon, and for once it wasn’t I was boring him to tears.

Neither Pecora nor his staff got much sleep Sunday night as they awaited word on whether or not the Flying Dutchmen’s season would continue. The news that the Dutchmen were headed for the CBI and a home game tonight against IUPUI finally arrived around midnight, which set into motion a chain of events that had Pecora and his assistants and his staff spending all day Monday embarking on a crash course of all things IUPUI (well, not all things, we took care of that this morning!).

“What we did last night was we had two guys waiting at Hoop One Video [in New Jersey]—they were sitting in the car, two of our managers,” Pecora said. “As soon as we knew it was IUPUI, we called them at midnight. They got us three tapes and they drove back, got back here about two o’clock.

“Coach [David] Duke was sleeping here. He got up and started watching tape at six. And then I got here at eight and I started watching.”

Pecora said the plan was to produce a scouting report for the Dutchmen in time for practice Tuesday. “So for the kids, it’s business as usual,” Pecora said. “We’re usually ahead of the curve a little bit more.”

—Hofstra and IUPUI have never played each other and IUPUI has played just two CAA opponents in its 13 seasons as a Division I program. The closest connection Hofstra has to IUPUI is a thin one indeed: IUPUI plays in the Summit League, which used to be known as the Mid-Continent Conference, which in turn took in the rest of the old East Coast Conference (Buffalo, Central Connecticut, Chicago State, Northeastern Illinois and Troy State) after the ECC finally broke apart for good in 1994.

Yet is anyone surprised that Pecora, who seems to know and get along with everyone in Division I (well, except this guy), is friends with IUPUI coach Ron Hunter and exchanged texts with him late Sunday night?

Pecora and Hunter have worked together on CBS College Sports’ coverage of the NCAA Tournament and will do so again this weekend. “He texted me ‘Wow, what are the chances of us playing? Now I’ll have to buy you dinner,’” Pecora said, “Because I usually buy him dinner when he comes in to do the TV work. My response was ‘Laughed when I heard. I’ll pick you up Friday morning.’”

Judging by Hunter’s biography on the IUPUI website—which states, in part, “…Hunter has made strong defense, excellent guard play and local recruiting three of his fortes”—he and Pecora have plenty in common on the court, as well.

“I think it’s the same mid-major philosophy that you can get better guards than you can get forwards, so go out and try to play a three guard offense and you’re going to have better players on the floor,” Pecora said.

—Maybe the NCAA Tournament doesn’t take into account how a team fares in its last five or 10 games (snort), but the CBI does.

“It obviously played a role, there’s no doubt about that,” CBI spokesman Ray Cella said Monday of the impact of the Flying Dutchmen’s 8-2 finish. “That’s one of the things that everybody looks at, is the last five or last 10. They don’t admit it anymore, but they still do.”

Like with the CIT, Cella said the CBI is particularly interested in teams such as the Dutchmen, who have a young core returning next year and are eager to continue their season. “Obviously, the fact that they are a young team—even getting in two or three more practices can be helpful,” Cella said. “If they win their game on Wednesday and they continue to play, obviously, not only does it give you more opportunities to be with the kids and [work on] what you need to work on, it also gives you a sense of what the postseason is about and to try to use that to leapfrog into the following season.

“Tulsa won the first year and then was able to parlay that into the last two years [an NCAA Tournament berth last year and an NIT appearance this year]. UTEP last year, look at the year they had. Any chance you get to keep playing, keep practicing and get a game environment is going to help you, especially if you’re a young team.”

—I’m probably the only person who finds the CBI and CIT analogous to Scrubs (yes, I can in fact tie anything at all into the show created by William & Mary graduate Bill Lawrence). Allow me to explain: Scrubs has been revived from the edge of cancellation numerous times. The CBI and CIT allow teams to extend a season that seemed finished after a loss in their conference tournaments. Not bad, right?

Anyway, Scrubs is probably airing its last LAST episode tonight, right in the middle of the Dutchmen’s game against IUPUI. Someone’s season will finally be cancelled tonight as well in an enticing matchup of strengths.

Hofstra ranks among the nation’s leaders in 3-point field goal percentage defense, IUPUI shoots almost 40 percent (39.2 percent) from beyond the arc. The Dutchmen pride (booooo) themselves on limiting teams to less than 40 percent shooting, the Jaguars shoot 51.1 percent, second-best in the country behind Syracuse. It took Tom Pecora until almost February to find a starting five that gelled, IUPUI has used the same starting five in every game this season.

The Jaguars’ three double-digit scorers (Robert Glenn, Alex Young and Leroy Nobles) are all 6-foot-5 or taller, which could present some matchup problems for the Dutchmen. Greg Washington and Miklos Szabo must stay out of foul trouble, particularly early in the first half, and Nathaniel Lester will have to emerge from the doghouse to put in some time at power forward.

If one of the Jags’ trio is held under 10 points, the Dutchmen should win. If not, the race to see whose season gets Scrubbed will go right to the wire and be too close to call. Either way, see you there. I’ll be the guy screaming how the Fordham, Seton Hall and St. John’s jobs are career suicide.

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

Bits and Bytes: All the blogging that’s fit to print!

Will there be any newspapers left to Chronicle (get it? Chronicle? I'll be here all week!) the return of Hofstra football?

According to his biography in the Hofstra media guides, athletic director Jack Hayes “…has placed a significant emphasis on fund-raising during his tenure,” which is a nice way of saying the price of our season tickets have risen dramatically under his watch and means he’s not always the easiest guy in the room for whom to feel sympathy.

But count me among those who have felt for him since last Thursday’s announcement that Hofstra was pulling the plug on the football program. Hayes’ career arc suggests Hofstra is a stop along the way, not the final destination, and I cannot imagine KILLED FOOTBALL is the type of thing one who aspires to return to a BCS school wants to have on his resume.

The task of delivering the news that would crush a coaching staff and its 80-some players was also left to Hayes, presumably because Stuart Rabinowitz had to go over his talking points and rehearse for his appearance with Mike Francesa. Eight days later, Rabinowitz is nowhere to be found while Hayes is still taking the bullets and the heat for his boss’ decision.

Hayes sat down this week with the original Hofstra blogger, Jack Styczynski, for a Q&A at The New York Times’ “Quad Blog.” Even if you’d prefer to have an audience with Rabinowitz, it’s a really good, insightful interview that is well worth your time. And, personally, it gives me reason to hope that in nine or 10 years, when Hofstra football returns, I’ll be conducting Q&As with Hayes’ successor at The New York Times or some other prestigious newspaper. Aren’t I a dreamer, thinking newspapers and their websites will still be around in 2020?

While I ponder how nobody is organizing Facebook pages to save newspapers and mass media as we know it, here are some other pre-weekend, pre-exam bits and bytes:

—Tom Pecora has not been pleased with the Dutchmen’s last two home wins, but I think the narrow victories over Fairfield and Manhattan will be pivotal ones in the Dutchmen’s development. A team that is still quite young, experience-wise, needs to win games like those—and in the fashion it did, by outlasting Fairfield in a shootout and hanging on against Manhattan in a defensive sludge fest—to hasten its maturity process.

Beating Fairfield and Manhattan doesn’t mean the Dutchmen will win the CAA, but the gritty wins over the Stags and Jaspers should build confidence and momentum and reduce the odds of a midseason skid like the one the Dutchmen endured last season, when they went 2-6 immediately after an eight-game winning streak.

I thought the most crushing defeat in that span was the 67-64 loss to Iona right before Christmas. Like against Manhattan Wednesday, the Dutchmen threatened to blow Iona out in the first half before letting the Gaels crawl back into it. The difference this time, of course, was the Dutchmen never allowed the Jaspers to come all the way back. They’re ugly wins and they made for some sleepless nights in the Pecora household, but do not underestimate how valuable those wins might look in March.

—Of course, if the Dutchmen lose tomorrow—when New Hampshire, one of the teams they beat during the 2-6 funk last year, visits the Arena—I’ll look really foolish. The America East retro rematch against the Wildcats, whose coach is ex-Drexel head man Bill Herrion, could make the Manhattan game look like the hoops version of Jennifer Aniston.

New Hampshire lost to Pitt last Friday in a game in which it trailed 15-7 at halftime. Fifteen. To. Seven. It was the lowest-scoring first half of the shot clock era. If the Dutchmen and Manhattan were throwing rocks Wednesday, what were New Hampshire and Pitt throwing? The White Mountains?

Anyway, like most teams, the Dutchmen respond better to an angry coach than a reasonably happy one, so I’d expect a sharper effort tomorrow. And if that effort doesn’t appear? Don’t be shocked if Pecora is willing to absorb a painful loss, a la Iona last year, to teach some lessons.

That said, Charles Jenkins will not go 3-of-14 from the field again and I imagine Miklos Szabo and Cornelius Vines will play more like they did last Saturday than Wednesday. And for some reason, I think we’ll see more out of David Imes, who has impressed Pecora in limited duty this far. I don’t think we’ll see Brad Kelleher, because the NCAA is trying to confirm whether or not he took two cents from the penny dish at Dunkin’ Donuts in order to pay for a coffee three years ago. But John Wall is free and clear!

Where was I? Oh yeah. New Hampshire came back from an early deficit to give the Dutchmen everything they could handle up north last year, so I’d be surprised if the Wildcats were blown out of the gym. The Dutchmen win but Litos’ prediction might be a bit too optimistic. If you’re there—and you should be there, since this is the last home game until the New Year—stop by and say hi. I’ll be the guy yelling about the Shaq of the NAC.

—Looking for a new college football team to follow? Charlotte announced today it still plans to play football beginning in 2013. The school had considered putting off its debut season for three years to allow the economy to further improve. What a concept, a school not quitting on a football team that doesn’t even exist yet. How cute of “Little Charlotte.”

—Speaking of football, sort of, I was so hoping the final of the Manhattan game would be 52-38. That would have been AWESOME. As is, the Flying Dutchmen football team never played a 44-39 game, though it did come close with a 45-38 win over Lehigh in 1997. As I wrote on Twitter late Wednesday (gratuitous plug): Damnit! Just swap FTs and we would have had that tonight.

Some other 44-39 near-misses, lifted from Twitter (gratuitous plug):

—41-40 loss to Maine, 2008

—44-41 loss to Furman, 2005

—43-37 loss to Richmond, 2005

—44-36 win over Buffalo, 1998

—Going back to newspapers for a moment: To borrow a phrase from Peter King, this may only interest me, but I was disappointed to see the New York Daily News’ coverage of the Manhattan game relegated to the web Thursday morning. I got my copy of the paper on the Island, so it’s possible that different editions had it, but I tend to doubt it.

Like most people, I long ago began reading everything on the web, but I try to support the News by buying it on the newsstand as often as possible. The News has been my favorite newspaper since I was old enough to read—my Dad used to bring home copies from the office—and it remained the same size even as Newsday, the New York Post and Times cut an inch or more of newsprint, thereby giving people even less reason to pick them up. (I’m pretty sure Newsday is a postage stamp now)

Alas, nothing good lasts forever and so the News is now much smaller than it used to be. Still better than the rest, but not as good as it was.

—I leave you with this: VCU hosts Richmond Saturday in the renewal of one of Virginia’s best hoops rivalries. Maybe next year, it’ll be a conference game again. More next week on my ideas for CAA realignment and, more importantly to us, Hofstra's new long-term athletic home.

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

Bits and Bytes: Working (and waiting) for the weekend

Even Canadian rockers Loverboy are keeping their fingers crossed the Flying Dutchmen get lucky this weekend!

The Flying Dutchmen have Kansas right where they want ‘em. Or, to be grammatically correct no matter how awkward it may sound, the Flying Dutchmen have Kansas right where they want it.

The top-ranked Jayhawks waxed Division II Pittsburg State, 103-45, in an exhibition game last night, thereby assuring they’ll be overconfident and arrogant come Friday night and not prepared at all for the full fury of the Flying Dutchmen.

Freshmen Thomas Robinson and Xavier Henry combined for 27 points and one technical (assessed to Robinson for hanging on the rim after a dunk), or four points and one technical more than senior stars Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins had. Dissension! The new kids are leading a palace revolt! Pretty soon the Jayhawks will be fighting amongst themselves instead of rumbling with the football team!

As you can tell, we’re a little worked up about the season in general and the imminent upset of the Jayhawks in particular. Stop back the next two days for plenty of preview material, including a Q&A with your good friend and mine Tom Pecora as well as a couple features. In the meantime, here are a few bits and bytes to tide you over.

—The football team will be relegated even further into the shadows this weekend, when it visits future East Coast Conference football rival Northeastern, a little more than 12 hours after the Dutchmen shock Hoops Nation.

Alas, it’s difficult not to wonder how meaningful Saturday’s game could have been for the Dutchmen, whose 28-24 loss to Delaware last Saturday marked the third time this season they turned the ball over on downs inside the 50-yard-line with a chance to tie or win the game in the final minute. The Dutchmen have lost to Delaware, New Hampshire and Maine by a combined 14 points. Wins in those three games would have the Dutchmen 7-2 and primed for a playoff berth, but instead Dave Cohen and his staff will have to hope the heartbreaking losses will provide fuel and a foundation for next season.

It’ll be interesting to see if Steve Probst gets more time at quarterback over the final two weeks. As I’ve written here before, I’m a fan of Cory Christopher, but now that the focus is entirely on 2010, it’s about time to see Probst behind center for all 60 minutes.

The very tentative plan is to attend the game Saturday, because my love of Boston is surpassed only by my desire to experience famously rustic Parsons Field for myself, but our schedule is subject to change if I spend all night celebrating the win over Kansas. I expect you to breathlessly stay tuned to this website and my Twitter until I make my decision!

—John Feinstein is many things I am not—including, apparently, crazy. The prolific author and Washington Post columnist appeared on NPR Monday (I, of course, was too busy listening to hair metal hits on satellite radio, so thanks to Brian Mull for the link) and said he expected the CAA to send four or five teams to the NCAA Tournament. If the CAA sends four or more teams to the NCAAs, I’ll stand on my head, a la Dick Vitale and Austin Peay in 1987. Even if all four or five of those teams are located in Virginia. Where is my conspiracy theory font?

—The disrespect for the Flying Dutchmen just keeps spreading. Collegeinsider.com released its first top 25 of the season, and not only aren’t the Dutchmen ranked, they weren’t even among the 55 teams receiving a vote. Seriously. Eighty teams got a vote and Hofstra didn’t. I’m going to channel and paraphrase Harry Doyle here: “One vote? We couldn’t get one goddamn vote?”

Four CAA schools are in the top 25, led by defending Collegeinsider.com Invitational champion Old Dominion, but at least Hofstra’s not alone in not receiving a vote: None of the other seven CAA schools did, either. That’s OK. The Dutchmen will be there next week!

—The NCAA is mad at Kentucky for hiring John Calipari, so for the second straight year, it’s probably going to suspend a Hofstra transfer for playing in professional games in his native land. Maybe Miklos Szabo—and Greg Washington, who also knows what it’s like to be at the mercy of the NCAA’s hilariously ineffective, inconsistent and unpredictable Clearinghouse—can give Brad Kelleher some tips on how to pass the time.

—Finally, I’ve updated the links on the right hand side of this page. You’ll notice (or maybe you won’t) no Newsday link. Apparently, there is no college basketball blog this year. Hey, that’s a good idea, let’s cut the news hole, double the price to $1, make our website free only to Cablevision subscribers (hooray monopolies!) and then not bother giving those folks anything extra to read online. Awesome. No wonder newspapers are so healthy. Little birdies also tell me they’ll provide Hofstra even less beat coverage than usual, which, you know, is great.

Anyway, check out the new alignment of sites covering Hofstra, the CAA and mid-majors, especially The Mid-Majority, which is so good I cannot do it justice in a piece like this. At some point soon I’m going to pen an ode to that place, because it is just freaking amazing, every single day. Also check out the self-explanatory Friends of Defiantly Dutch further down the page. And, of course, buy my book!

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