Sully Ray is catching T-shirts for two now!

In this file photo from last summer, Sully Ray, above right, realizes he can no longer work at the bowling alley and has to return to the nuclear power plant to support his suddenly expanding family.

There have been a few Big Days here since Defiantly Dutch launched--some good, some bad, some a little bit of both. Never has there been a bigger or better Big Day than Thursday, when the Defiantly Dutch family grew as Sully Ray became a Dad to a baby boy. Tom Pecora, knowing the height and athleticism of the Sullivan boys, has already inked Sully Ray Jr. to a letter of intent for the fall of 2028 (that's five presidential debates from now!).

Before that, I look forward to many games with Sully Ray Jr, who, if his Dad and Grandpa are any indication, should be elbowing me and kicking me aside in the pursuit of free T-shirts by November. I also look forward to telling him of his Dad's wild child youth, such as the time he got rip-roaring drunk as we partied with the New Hampshire basketball team at the North Atlantic Conference tournament and the time he saw me stalking around The Chronicle office, cursing and throwing stuff because I was panicking yet again on deadline, and said "Beach. Cut the [crap]."

Anyway, those are tales for another day. Hearty congrats today to Sully Ray and his wonderful wife, as well as the new grandparents. The T-shirts I catch today will count towards my total, though, despite your excused absences.

Of Alumni Day, Faux Homecoming and the inaugural Barone Bowl

The annual men’s basketball Alumni Day is scheduled for tomorrow, which in and of itself is typically no big deal and barely, if ever, receives any actual promotion from the school. Ex-Flying Dutchmen show up, maybe scrimmage a little bit before the game and ignore the paunchy, occasionally bespectacled guy sitting a few rows up in John Stockton shorts and Michael Cooper socks begging for some run. C’mon guys I’m an alumni too!! I’ll just play the point, I won’t shoot. I promise.

But this Alumni Day is different than the rest. It’s the first one since Hofstra killed football, and not coincidentally, it’s getting a bit of publicity (free food and drink at City Cellar afterward, whoohoo, ride out the blizzard on Hofstra’s dime!) as Hofstra tests run the concept of a winter Homecoming. Geez, just typing those words makes my stomach ache.

A Homecoming centered around basketball, of course, is even more inevitable than the NCAA Tournament expanding to 96 teams, and it seems to be a particularly cruel coincidence that the beta version takes place when Northeastern visits the Arena. You know, the same Northeastern whose decision to drop football Nov. 22 had absolutely nothing at all to do with Hofstra following suit a mere 11 days later. If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect someone way high up in the food chain scheduled it this way to have a laugh at our expense.

Regardless, Hofstra and Northeastern are the closest thing either has to a kindred soul in the disjointed mess that is the CAA, even though the schools opposed each other once in men’s basketball before Hofstra joined the North Atlantic Conference in 1994 and hadn’t played each other in football in 28 years before Hofstra became a member of the Atlantic-10 in 2001.

Give credit to Husky at the CAAZone boards, who recognized the hilarious absurdity of it all and suggested the winner of the game Saturday receive the football that Frank Barone caught when an unnamed Hofstra kicker (David Ettinger? Walter Olshanski?) booted a world-record 68-yard field goal in a 2001 episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (hey look at that, promotion for a Division I-AA program, oh the humanity!)

Faux Homecoming, the Barone Bowl and potential blizzard aside, this game is plenty compelling on its own. The Dutchmen are on the verge of sucking us all back in after a three-game winning streak, but in order to really get us back on the bandwagon and enter the CAA Tournament with legitimate aspirations of playing Cinderella, they need to record a Signature Win.

Tomorrow may be the Dutchmen’s best and last chance to record it. Drexel, which visits Wednesday, is a legitimate championship contender as well, but Northeastern is in a three-way tie for first place and receiving national attention after turning its season around following a 2-7 start. The Huskies are 13-1 since then (a loss to Drexel in Boston last weekend snapped an 11-game winning streak).

Northeastern is awfully reminiscent of the Loren Stokes-Carlos Rivera-Antoine Agudio era Dutchmen: Three players are averaging at least 33 minutes per game and the quintet of Matt Janning, Chaisson Allen, Manny Adako, Nkem Ojougbah and Alwayne Bigby combining to make all but four of the Huskies’ starts.

The game will be a tasty battle of strengths, as Northeastern ranks first in the CAA in field goal percentage and 3-point field goal percentage while the Dutchmen rank first in field goal defense and second in 3-point defense.

The Huskies might be the most road-tested team in the CAA (they won at Wyoming in the CBI last year and participated in tournaments in Hawaii and San Francisco this season). But the Dutchmen are 3-1 against Northeastern at the Arena since the latter joined the CAA, including last year’s 57-52 upset win that knocked the Huskies from the ranks of the CAA’s unbeaten and jumpstarted Hofstra’s season-ending 11-4 run.

I’ll freely admit I don’t know what to expect tomorrow. I had a bad feeling going into the game Wednesday, and the Dutchmen were barely threatened in the final 30 minutes of a rout over James Madison. Hot is hot, even if the three-game winning streak came at the expense of a trio of scuffling teams, and the Dutchmen should enter Saturday more confident than they’ve been since early December.

The Signature Win will happen if Charles Jenkins shoots anything like he has the last three games (22-for-34), Cornelius Vines suffocates Allen like he did Julius Wells Wednesday and the Dutchmen’s big men limit Ojougbah like they did Denzel Bowles.

Sounds like a lot, sure, but a lot has already happened to make tomorrow matter. Either way, we are going to be there, snow be damned. I’ll leave the house at noon to get there if necessary (of course, my saner wife may have something to say about this). Follow us along on Twitter and come by and say hi if you brave the elements. I’ll be the guy randomly yelling out the names of former football players from Hofstra and Northeastern.

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

When it comes to a 96-team NCAA Tournament, don’t ask why—ask how

The NCAA might want you to believe a 96-team NCAA Tournament will have as many spots for at-large mid-majors as the Astrodome had seats, but don't be fooled, the target will be as small as ever.

Like so many college basketball fans, I’m sitting here asking “Why?” as the NCAA apparently moves closer to expanding the Division I tournament to 96 teams. But while many of our peers are wondering why this is happening—why the NCAA is messing with perfection—I’m looking at it like this: Much like receiving a summons for jury duty, it was inevitable and probably long overdue. So why bother complaining once it happens?

Other than the addition of a play-in game in 2001, the NCAA hasn’t expanded the field since 1985, the longest such drought in the history of the event. It began as an eight-team tournament in 1939 and expanded to 16 in 1951, 32 in 1975, 40 in 1979, 48 in 1980 and 53 in 1983.

But Division I membership has dramatically increased—from 305 schools in 1985 to 347 this year—meaning the percentage of schools participating in the tournament has slipped from 21 to 18.7. Even adding in the 32 NIT teams, just 28 percent of Division I schools will qualify for traditional postseason play in 2010, down from 31.4 percent in 1985.

The number of college football bowl games since 1985, meanwhile, has more than doubled—from 15 to 34—while the Division I-A membership has only increased from 111 to 120. Fifty-seven percent of I-A teams reached postseason play last year, up from 27 percent in 1985.

My favorite complaint of the potential expansion is that it’s going to ruin the tournament for the average fan by making it impossible to bet on and by diluting the first weekend of the event. Are you kidding me?

Choose a euphemism, any euphemism, and it applies to the NCAA Tournament and gamblers both casual and chronic. It’s their crack cocaine, their chocolate cake two weeks into a diet, their Pavlovian bell ringing and demanding a mouth-watering response. The tournament could expand to include every Division I team and the bracket as we know it could require a microscope to read. People are STILL going to fill out the bracket and are STILL going to wager sums of money large and small on the games.

And anyone who loves college basketball is now going to call in sick on Tuesday and Wednesday as well as Thursday and Friday and is still going to beg off housework Saturday and Sunday. I’ll go so far as to say a 96-team tournament will be better than what we know now, because it seems inconceivable that ESPN wouldn’t grab at least the first week of the tournament and bash us over our frackin’ heads with coverage.

Remember the good ol’ days when ESPN carried every single game of the first two rounds, even if it had to be aired on tape delay. It’ll be even better now, because with four cable networks and ABC at the disposal of the Most Powerful Entity In Sports, every game can be televised in its entirety. No more worrying about CBS cutting away from Ye Alma Mater because it’s getting smoked by 26 points in the first half.

So as a college basketball fan who thinks 64 (or 65) teams is perfect, you’ll get over this, much like I got over the wild card in baseball or an NHL purist got over hockey being played in states such as Florida, Texas and California. Liking it more the old way rarely stops anyone from paying as much attention to the new way.

Still, even though expansion is inevitable and unavoidable, a 96-team field will be far from perfect, particularly for the mid-majors and those who root for them. For us, the new NCAA Tournament will sound a lot better in pitch form than in reality—kind of how that new long-distance or cable plan sounds great when you’re enticed to agree to it during a phone call but how it looks a lot different, and less awesome, once the first bill arrives and you read the fine print.

This will no doubt be pitched as a way of including more mid-majors in the field. You got screwed in 2006? Not anymore! More teams mean more room for the mid-majors!

That is technically true, but it also means a lot more room for the bubble BCS league teams, and anyone who thinks a mid-major is any more likely to win a future battle for one of the last spots in the field than it is now is crazy. For proof, check out last year’s NIT field.

The NIT is owned by the NCAA and will almost certainly cease to exist if the NCAA expands to 96, so let’s assume that the 27 at-large teams that were invited to the NIT last year would have made a 96-team NCAA field. The other five bids went to teams that won the regular season title in a mid-major conference but lost in their conference tournament (and you can forget about those schools getting an automatic bid to the new NCAA Tournament).

Of the 27 at-large bids, 20 went to schools from the big six BCS conferences, Conference USA or the Mountain West. That total increases to 22 if you consider the Atlantic 10 a major conference and thus discount Duquesne and Rhode Island.

In addition, eight BCS schools with fewer than 20 wins—including 17-15 Washington State and 16-14 Georgetown—reached the NIT last year, almost half the total of the 20-win teams left out of the NCAA and NIT (17).

I wouldn’t expect the ratio of at-large bids awarded to true mid-majors to increase much at all in a 96-team field. Three true mid-majors (Xavier, Dayton and Butler) received invites last year, a mere nine percent of the at-large field. That translates to about six invites in a 96-team tournament with 65 at-large bids.

So there probably would have been room for Hofstra and Northern Iowa in 2006 (no accounting for Selection Committee politics, of course), or Creighton, St. Mary’s and Niagara last year, as well as a couple others. But I’d bet that Illinois State, a five seed in last year’s NIT, and George Mason, a seven seed, would have been perilously perched on the bubble of a 96-team field.

And those mid-majors that do make the field will have an even longer hill to climb and more obstacles to overcome than they do now. Expect the Round of 96 to look a lot like Bracket Buster weekend, with mid-majors opposing one another and automatically cutting the list of possible Cinderellas in half. The ultimate end game here is a Sweet Sixteen weekend in which the closest thing to a cuddly underdog is 17-13 Arizona, the no. 18 seed in the West.

The 64-team field existed for 21 years before Mason made the Final Four. How long do you think it’ll take before a mid-major a team wins FIVE games to reach the Final Four? If the NCAA has its way, forever. That should be the most worrisome side effect of a 96-team tournament, not hard-to-read brackets.

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

Hofstra 68, James Madison 48 (Or: When I thought I was ready to give up on the season…the Dutchmen go AND TOTALLY REDEEM THEMSELVES!)

Me and Sully Ray--err, Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne--sport ear-to-ear grins after a cold drive home from James Madison this morning.

The task ahead of the Flying Dutchmen eight days ago was deceptively simple: Win three in a row, over a trio of teams that were sub-.500 in the CAA and overall, and suddenly the first home game of February against championship contender Northeastern would matter.

Of course, three wins in as many games seemed to be an awful lot to expect out of the Dutchmen, who won just twice in their first nine games of the conference season and were in the midst of a five-game losing streak in which each defeat was more demoralizing than the last.

As fans, it was better not to think too much about the possibility of a three-game winning streak for fear of setting ourselves up for more heartache. Just assume the Dutchmen would stumble somewhere along the way and win just once or twice during the three games against UNC Wilmington, Delaware and James Madison, hold out hope for a potential Towson-like run in the CAA tournament and look ahead to better days in 2010-11.

But now…now they’ve done it. Now they’ve gone and won three in a row. Now, after a 68-48 win over James Madison last night that was the Dutchmen’s most thorough and impressive in months, we are so very tempted to believe again.

The Dutchmen are 5-7 in the CAA, all alone in seventh place and a mere two games behind suddenly skidding William & Mary for sixth place. They are only the second team since the CAA expanded in 2001-02 to start 2-7 or worse and enjoy a three-game winning streak in the second half and one of only two teams in the CAA currently in the midst of a three-game winning streak (VCU has also beaten three straight sub-.500 teams).

Time to salivate over a quarterfinal rematch with George Mason in the tournament quarterfinals? Maybe not, but all the flaws of January looked fixed last night, when the Dutchmen were efficient on offense, dominant on defense and ruthless when presented with an opportunity to finish off James Madison in the second half.

“I think it was similar to the way we played at Towson in early December,” Tom Pecora said via phone after the Dutchmen landed back on Long Island. “I just thought it was a team effort to play within themselves. It was good. It’s good to be healthy. It’s good to be able to go to the bench and know they’re at full strength when they get their minutes.”

Five Dutchmen had at least nine points, led by Charles Jenkins with 20 points. Chaz Williams had just two points but oversaw an offense that produced 15 assists, the Dutchmen’s most in a win since they had 20 against Fairfield Nov. 30. He also continually broke the Dukes’ full-court press in the second half, when the Dutchmen had just five turnovers—less than half their first half total of 11.

Defensively, the Dutchmen limited James Madison to 34 percent shooting, the third straight game in which an opponent has shot 36 percent or less. The Dutchmen allowed opponents to shoot at least 45 percent in each of the final four losses of the five-game skid.

James Madison’s top two scorers, forwards Denzel Bowles and Julius Wells, scored 15 points apiece, but constant double teams on the 6-foot-10 Bowles limited his effectiveness and didn’t allow him to have the type of monster game that big men such as Charlotte’s Shamari Spears and VCU’s Larry Sanders have had against the Dutchmen. Bowles entered the game averaging 21 points and 9.9 rebounds a game but had just two boards and drew four fouls, which rendered him almost invisible in the second half.

“He was tired—we kept throwing different bodies at him, doubling him a bunch of different ways,” Pecora said. “We kind of got him out of rhythm early.”

Cornelius Vines, meanwhile, continued his strong defensive play by draping Wells, who was just 4-of-15 from the field and scored 11 of his points after the Dutchmen already led by double digits.

The most encouraging development of the night for Pecora was the performance of the Dutchmen’s oft-maligned veterans, who accounted for 87 percent of the Dutchmen’s offense (59 of 68 points).

That was the largest percentile of points by upperclassmen in a victory this season and second-largest overall behind the loss to VCU (the veterans accounted for 66 of the 68 points the Dutchmen scored in a game in which Williams did not play). Against Delaware Saturday, the veterans accounted for just 51 percent of the points (39 of 77), the lowest percentage in a victory this season and the second-lowest overall behind the loss to George Mason Jan. 4.

The veterans were particularly effective in the second half, when they combined to score 33 of the Dutchmen’s 38 points, including the first 21 as the Dutchmen turned a 30-25 halftime lead into a 51-39 advantage. Sparked by five points from Jenkins and four points from Greg Washington, the Dutchmen went on an 11-0 run immediately after James Madison missed two 3-pointers that would have tied the game at 32.

Washington scored eight of his nine points and pulled down nine of his 12 rebounds in the second half (and, it should be noted, was pulled immediately after hitting a layup for the Dutchmen’s final points with 1:25 left even though he was one point shy of the double-double. You know why? Because Pecora sweats class and elegance, that’s why!).

Other second half stalwarts for the Dutchmen included Miklos Szabo, who had six of his 12 points and six of his eight rebounds after intermission, and Nathaniel Lester, who scored eight of his nine points and pulled down both rebounds in the final 20 minutes.

Lester scored all his points in a span of 2:24 as the Dutchmen maintained a double-digit lead. He’s had eight points or fewer in 14 games this season, including seven of his previous eight entering Wednesday.

There would be no second half fade for the Dutchmen, who have blown second half leads of at least six points in five losses this year but whose lead remained at least 10 points for the final 16 minutes Wednesday.

“I think we played like a mature team,” Pecora said. “Our seniors playing the way they did really [lifted] us. Our ability to extend the lead in the second half, in their building, was very important, I thought.”

Of course, as encouraging as the victory was, plenty of caveats apply: Much like UNC Wilmington and Delaware, James Madison is another lower-tier squad enduring a nightmarish season. The Dutchmen are 5-0 against teams in the bottom half of the conference but have yet to author a performance anything like Wednesday’s against anyone in the top six, against whom they are 0-7.

Still, though, it seems appropriate the win Wednesday evened the Dutchmen’s overall record at 12-12— right back to square one as they prepare for Northeastern and another chance at that elusive Signature Win. It’s getting to be awfully tempting, this idea that the first half of the conference season was a matter of everything going wrong at once—a brutal schedule, an undermanned roster and some general bad luck combining to suck all the confidence out of the Dutchmen—and that February is once again shaping up as the best month of the season for the Dutchmen, who are 39-11 in regular season games played after Feb. 1 the last seven years.

“[It] can really define our season, if we find a way to win Saturday and keep our climb up the standings,” Pecora said. “If we play the way we played tonight, we can beat anybody. No doubt about that.”

3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. James Madison, 2/3)

3: Charles Jenkins

2: Miklos Szabo

1: Greg Washington

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 44

Chaz Williams 24

Halil Kanacevic 19

Nathaniel Lester 18

Miklos Szabo 17

Greg Washington 12

Cornelius Vines 9

Yves Jules 1

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

Pixelvision goes national!

Forgive the flash ending up in the picture and the general crappiness of this, I failed photography in high school. Seriously. But visual proof was needed: ESPN can fire Whelliston but it cannot keep Bally down!

Of previews, Petty and Pixelvision

Your intrepid blogger gets ready for a night of college hoops, tweeting and PIXELVISION!

Big game tonight for the Flying Dutchmen, who can cement their status as The Best of the Rest in the CAA and officially suck all of us back on to the bandwagon by beating James Madison in Virginia.

As lousy as the Dutchmen’s luck has been this season, they’ve been lottery winners compared to the Dukes, who emerged as one of the league’s true up-and-comers last year under first-year coach Matt Brady. His second year hasn’t been quite as smooth: The Dukes’ progress has been stalled by season-ending injuries to guard Devon Moore and forward Andrey Semenov and the academic-related absence of Daz Thornton.

Virginia has been a nightmare for the Dutchmen the last three years in general and the last five weeks in particular, but James Madison is the one Virginia school at which Hofstra tends to fare well: The Dutchmen’s only two regular season wins in Virginia since 2007-08 were one-point victories in Harrisonburg.

The Dutchmen will need a better effort than the one they produced in the victory over similarly hexed Delaware at the Arena Saturday, especially from big men Greg Washington and Miklos Szabo. Their task will be to slow down 6-foot-11 Denzel Bowles, a transfer from Texas A&M who has been a monster for the Dukes (21 points and 9.9 rebounds per game) since he became eligible at midseason.

The Dutchmen’s self-confidence is mostly restored after routing UNC Wilmington and fending off Delaware late and hanging on for a second straight wire-to-wire victory. “Hey, you’ve got to win close games,” Tom Pecora said Saturday. “This is what tournament games are going to be like in Virginia at the end of the year. There’s no blowouts. You go down there and you’re going to battle and it’s going to come down to a possession or two with a minute or two left in the game. So it’s a good experience for us.”

A win tonight and the Dutchmen will become the first team since Towson in 2001-02 to win three straight CAA games following a 2-7 start. A victory would also threaten to turn Saturday’s game against second-place Northeastern into something very interesting.

Sorry for the lack of an earlier post today, I’ll make up for it tomorrow with the JMU recap as well as my rantings on the possibility of the NCAA Tournament expanding to 96 teams and, perhaps, a look back at a long-ago Hofstra legend. Intriguing, yes?

And if you’re following the JMU game along with me on Twitter, stick around afterward as I watch the Utah State at Idaho game as part of the Mid-Majority’s National Pixelvision Day. If you thought I was in a bad mood after the Mason loss, wait ‘til you see me if Whelliston doesn’t play “Into The Great Wide Open” during the Tom Petty halftime show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3: Chaz Williams

2: Charles Jenkins

1: Halil Kanacevic

SEASON STANDINGS

Charles Jenkins 41

Chaz Williams 24

Halil Kanacevic 19

Nathaniel Lester 18

Miklos Szabo 15

Greg Washington 11

Cornelius Vines 9

Yves Jules 1

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