There’s always something magic, there’s always something new

To become a mid-major basketball fan means being born with a healthy sense of self-awareness. We are ever cognizant that, generally speaking, those poor folks who root for BCS programs view us with bemusement, if they acknowledge our existence at all.

We also know that much of our fandom is repetitive. Every year, with almost no exception, the entire season comes down to the weekend of the conference tournament. Because we realize that the odds of winning the ultimate prize are slim even in the best of years, we believe in savoring regular season moments others might not even acknowledge.

And in doing so, we are sensitive to the idea that we’re going to the well too many times. How often can we declare that a January game was a multi-act melodrama with a Wagnerian soundtrack? At what point do we become a self-parody in gushing over a small stretch of games that are unlikely to add up to something tangible in March?

But here’s the beautiful, Yogi-esque secret of mid-major basketball: Even when everything’s the same, it’s still different and new.

Sure, we’ve seen the Dutchmen stumble into CAA play in January looking like a team that might never actually win a game, only to immediately turn their season around over a three- or four-game span that includes a resounding win at home over one of the CAA’s best teams.

We’ve seen a star senior lay claim to his CAA Player of the Year candidacy by fueling a stirring comeback from a double-digit deficit at home. We’ve seen little moments that don’t necessarily show up in the boxscore of exciting victories, but may lay the foundation for future prosperity.

We just haven’t seen ANY of this in three seasons. That’s a lifetime in college basketball. And given all the crap the Flying Dutchmen program has endured in the previous two seasons, what happened in January and February of 2011—way back when Charles Jenkins channeled The Wolf in leading the Dutchmen to a 14-4 conference record that included seismic comeback wins over James Madison and William & Mary as well as a cathartic trouncing of George Mason—feels like it was experienced by another fanbase, one that never had to question whether or not it was actually worthwhile to root for a college basketball program.

So yeah. While there was nothing new in the historical sense about the three-game winning streak from Jan. 11 through Jan. 22 that momentarily vaulted the Dutchmen into second place in the CAA, it all FELT decidedly new and magical to us.

The 75-71 win over College of Charleston on Jan. 11—when the Dutchmen overcame a 14-point deficit to record their biggest comeback win since the 92-90 win over James Madison on Jan. 24, 2011—was sparked by senior star Zeke Upshaw, whose back story is far different yet perhaps even more compelling than Jenkins’ was.

While Jenkins was perhaps the most established superstar in the country, Upshaw has come out of nowhere—or at least the end of the bench at Illinois State—to become the go-to guy the Dutchmen have lacked since Jenkins graduated.

Upshaw drained 3-pointers on consecutive trips late in the first half to begin the comeback. Those six points were more than he scored in 55 of his 62 games at Illinois State, and were perhaps the baskets that infused him with the self-confidence to carry himself like the best player on the team.

“I think Zeke just finally said ‘Let me start making some plays for my team—I’m not going to wait around for something, I’m going to be aggressive and make plays,” Joe Mihalich said afterward. “That’s what the great players do. He basically said ‘Give me the ball. Give me the ball.’ Went down there, made a couple tough shots.”

Upshaw finished with 22 points against Charleston. Four nights later, he tied a school record with seven 3-pointers in a 69-64 win over UNC Wilmington. He had just 17 3-pointers in three seasons at Illinois State.

“I met with Zeke after the FDU game [an 86-67 loss on Jan. 2],” Mihalich said. “He said ‘Coach I’m just not used to this.’ It was an incredibly profound statement, because nothing could be more true. He’s not used to being the best player on the team, the leading scorer on the team and having somebody climbing him all the time because they [expect] so much.”

While the newcomer Upshaw scored 16 of his points after the Dutchmen fell behind by 14, Stephen Nwaukoni—the only holdover left from the 2010-11 season, when he capped the James Madison win with the decisive free throws with 3.9 seconds left in overtime—hit six free throws in the final 77 seconds, including the free throw that gave the Dutchmen the lead for good and a free throw that iced the game with less than two seconds left.

“Freshman year was a long time ago,” a grinning Nwaukoni said as he dragged out “long.”

The Dutchmen generated some resiliency prior to Nwaukoni’s go-ahead free throw, and some will immediately after it. In the 11 minutes and 54 seconds before Nwaukoni’s free throw, the Dutchmen had 14 possessions in which they could have tied the score or gone ahead. They scored just 14 points and were 6-of-13 from the line on those possessions, none of which ended with the Dutchmen taking the lead.

After draining the first free throw, Nwaukoni missed the second, but Moussa Kone grabbed the rebound, was fouled and hit the first free throw before missing the second. Nwaukoni promptly grabbed the rebound and hit both free throws to give the Dutchmen a 69-65 lead in a three-possession sequence that took just one second off the clock.

Just as Upshaw put to use his new-found aggressiveness against UNC Wilmington, the Dutchmen yielded immediate benefits from their collective grittiness when they blew all of a 10-point second half lead at Trask Coliseum. But the Seahawks failed to take the lead, even though they had seven possessions in which they had an opportunity to do so.

The resiliency manifested itself again last Wednesday, when the Dutchmen not only bounced back from a resounding loss to SMU but buried William & Mary in the second half of a 77-60 win. The Dutchmen lost Jordan Allen to a broken nose and a concussion on the final play of the first half, fell behind 35-34 in the first half-minute of the second half but went on a 17-0 run and eventually led the Tribe by as many as 23.

It wasn’t as cathartic a victory as the 87-74 trouncing of George Mason on Jan. 5, 2011, but routing William & Mary—which was one of just two CAA teams with multiple double-digit league wins—offered the same type we-need-to-pinch-ourselves hope that the win over George Mason offered.

Look, opening 3-1 in what is left of the CAA in 2013-14 is a whole lot different than opening up 8-1 in 2010-11. But the path between then and now reinforces why we should enjoy it just as much.

We know not to assume that the little moments from this start will ever add up to anything. Three years ago, when Shemiye McLendon provided instant offense off the bench and literally did not miss a clutch free throw as a freshman—he was 15-of-15 from the line in the final five minutes of games in which the two teams were separated by 10 points or less—I thought we were watching Hofstra’s next homegrown 1,000-point scorer. He scored 370 points before transferring to South Florida.

And when Mo Cassara raced up and down the home sideline during the win over George Mason—pissing off a dour Jaime Larranaga, who pleaded the entire second half for Cassara to be issued a technical for leaving the coach’s box—we thought we were watching a coach whose will to win was trickling down to his players. Alas, most of the players Cassara recruited cared much less about him and basketball than the players he inherited.

Maybe the resiliency and will displayed in the three-game winning streak will be as hard to maintain as it was to develop. And maybe the impact from Mihalich’s halftime tirade on Jan. 11—when he first screamed at officials and then CAA deputy commissioner of basketball Ron Bertovich after no whistle was blown when Upshaw was mugged going to the basket in the final seconds—will be limited only to the immediate aftermath. (Charleston out-fouled Hofstra, 18-6, in the final 20 minutes)

Maybe Saturday afternoon—when the Dutchmen scored the first seven points of the game before falling to Northeastern, 70-57—will prove to be the end of this 2014 resurgence. With a brutal week ahead—at Towson tonight, home for Drexel Wednesday, at Charleston Saturday—the Dutchmen could fall to 3-4 just as quickly as they improved to 3-1.

Of course, we’ll hope it was just a hiccup, as it was in January 2011, when the previously unbeaten Dutchmen recovered from a 75-64 loss to Old Dominion—a game in which Hofstra scored the first 11 points—by winning their next three games.

But if Saturday was the start of reality setting in for an undermanned team, so what? Players and fans alike will still have those little moments that seemed so big as they happened.

Upshaw will have the satisfaction of having maximized his unexpected fifth year of college basketball. Nwaukoni, who knows more than anyone where Hofstra basketball once was and how far it has fallen, gets to smile like he did as a freshman, and perhaps embark upon a senior season sprint similar to the one authored by Roberto Gittens in 2000-01. Nwaukoni had a career-high 15 rebounds against Charleston and is averaging 12.8 rebounds a game in six league contests this month.

As for us? After watching every high-profile transfer on the Hofstra bench flame out in spectacular fashion last year, we get the satisfaction of knowing that everyone else in the country will be searching for the next Zeke Upshaw while we get to enjoy watching the FIRST Zeke Upshaw. We get to see a good kid like Nwaukoni remind us that the bad kids were the aberration, and not the norm.

Whether it ended Saturday, or lasts for another seven weeks, we get to remember what it felt like to find magic in the commonplace, to savor good wins like we would good wine, to daydream of unlikely CAA Tournament runs and to walk into the Arena with a sense of excitement instead of trudging in out of a sense of obligation.

It’s nothing new. It’s all new.

“Can’t wait for the next game now,” Mihalich said Jan. 11.

Finally, neither can we.

I found something sacred, something sacred I’d lost

The first sign this Hofstra basketball thing might be more than an activity to merely pass time on campus between baseball seasons appeared on Dec. 18, 1993.

It was the first Saturday following my first semester and I was back home in Connecticut. I should have been doing what any 20-year-old was doing upon returning home from college—it’s been a long time since I was 20 years old, but I assumed it involved nursing a hangover suffered the night before, when I partook in copious amounts of underage drinking while yelling “THIS IS HOW WE DO IT IN THE 11550!”—but instead I was perched in the living room watching MSG, which was broadcasting the Hofstra-Manhattan game from Nassau Coliseum.

The game, which was part of the ECAC Challenge, unfolded like most Hofstra games that year—the Flying Dutchmen lost 75-59 in front of a crowd that could generously be called sparse—but my Dad called from the gym during a second half rally by Hofstra, the details of which I breathlessly recited to him.

It was the first time I realized that my default setting for Hofstra basketball was unbridled optimism. It didn’t matter that the Dutchmen were on the fringes of Division I and in a five-way tie with the remainder of the East Coast Conference—a league that I may or may not have concocted entirely inside my head—as the least likely team in the country to reach the NCAA Tournament, never mind win it. When the Dutchmen went on a run, I believed anything was possible.

“You sound excited,” Dad said, and I was. I mean, here I was in Connecticut, two hours from Hofstra, watching the Flying Dutchmen play IN an actual tournament, AT Nassau Coliseum, ON the Madison Square Garden network!

I was 20 years old, I was new to Long Island and I was absolutely sure nothing got bigger than playing in an arena that houses a professional sports team and on a network that airs games played by professional sports teams.

Two decades later, that wonder and innocence has been replaced by realistic cynicism.

Nassau Coliseum is a dump that cannot be torn down and replaced soon enough. Its professional sports tenant, the Islanders, were seven months removed from a trip to the conference finals in December 1993. They are now 20 years removed from their last postseason series win.

Hofstra no longer needs the ECAC’s assistance to fill out its non-conference schedule, which usually includes neutral site games that involve traveling out of state instead of across the street. And nobody gets excited about being on TV anymore, not with an alphabet soup of regional sports networks all searching for inventory and every non-televised game available for viewing online.

In 1993, I was in the midst of that wonderfully youthful, naïve and impossible-to-replicate part of life in which you root for student-athletes who are also your peers. We laughed upon seeing them at the bar or hearing about their foibles that wormed their way through the pre-social media grapevine, which is what happens when we are all of the age in which we are not fully appreciative of the opportunities we have been afforded and proud of getting away with stuff we probably shouldn’t be doing.

You start pushing 40 and you start wishing everyone was like Charles Jenkins, who became the best player in school history and still appreciated the privileges of college in a way you wish you could have emulated.

And when you realize that the guys wearing the Hofstra uniforms are half your age and doing stuff that’s 100,000 times as dumb as the stuff you and your peers did as collegians, well, you start to think about what Long Islander Jerry Seinfeld—a best-selling author 20 years ago this fall—said about rooting for laundry and wondering if there’s a better outlet for your passion.

That’s where I was last March, when the depleted Dutchmen concluded one of the worst seasons any Hofstra program has ever endured. When Mo Cassara was fired 13 days after the CAA Tournament loss to Delaware and replaced 19 days later by Joe Mihalich, I didn’t join the chorus of those looking to a brighter future, even though Mihalich immediately struck me as a good choice who, much like his predecessors, would “get” Hofstra.

Initially, my silence—or, as a good friend whose passion for Hofstra sports extends even further back than 1993 put it, my “disengagement”—was out of respect for Cassara. I know what it feels like to be fired after imperfectly trying to make the best out of an imperfect dream job, as well as the loneliness of being on the outside looking in at former co-workers and friends in the industry all moving on without me. It stung, and I wasn’t going to contribute to those feelings for Cassara, even in an unintentional manner.

Days turned into weeks turned into months and took with it the proper period of radio silence. Yet I remained disengaged. Mihalich brought aboard Speedy Claxton as an assistant coach and signed a bunch of promising recruits, including five transfers. And my response – offered not entirely in jest – was that at least Hofstra didn’t screw it up with Speedy and I didn’t want anything to do ever again with transfers.

Even as the season approached and I began to feel a bit of the familiar itch in embarking upon annual customs—renewing season tickets, immediately memorizing all the dates of the home games, planning road trips that’ll probably never come off even though George Mason alums are presumably no longer actively trying to kill me and daydreaming about the Dutchmen following in the footsteps of an unexpected championship contender (this year it’s the Red Sox) in pro sports—I wondered how much of it was just muscle memory. Would the passion still be there?

It began flickering Nov. 7, when I mentioned to my Dad that Hofstra’s season would tip off the next evening.

Dad has never been to a Hofstra basketball game, but he took an interest in the Flying Dutchmen along with his son in the winter of 1993-94. He’s not a gambler, but as an old-school guy, he’d scan the America’s Line (GOOGLE IT CRAIN) in the newspaper (GOOGLE IT CRAIN) the morning of a Hofstra game to gauge how they were expected to fare.

And the next morning, the first thing he’d do is look in the newspaper to see how Hofstra did. When I was home for Intersession or the random winter weekend, he’d wake me up by telling me whether or not the Dutchmen had won. This is how I learned I was going to see Bryan Adams at the same time the Dutchmen would play for the ECC title in Buffalo on March 6, 1994. No. I’m still not over it.

That first year at Hofstra featured almost daily calls to my Dad’s office, an unspoken acknowledgment on both of our parts that he was having a tougher time than anticipated adjusting to his firstborn leaving the house and going to an out-of-state college.

Our nightly phone calls 20 years later are much different. Now Dad is a widower with legs that are all but shot due to nerve damage, so he spends most of his days limping around alone in the house he once shared with my Mom, surrounded by memories that comfort him as much as they remind him of what he has lost.

These calls, too, are filled with unspoken acknowledgment, this time of how much life has changed for all of us since Mom died. But a little shred of long-gone normalcy pops up when we talk sports, just as we’ve done for as long as I can remember.

“How they looking this year?” he asked me about the Dutchmen.

Before I knew it, 10 minutes had gone by. Other than a smattering of Tweets buried beneath an avalanche of 140-character hiccups about baseball, football, hockey and general slapdickery, I hadn’t written about the basketball team or about the upheaval within the CAA.

But I’d apparently managed to absorb enough to talk his ear off about the five returning players, the four newcomers who could play right away, the three transfers who would sit out a year, the two teams Hofstra was going to play over the weekend and the CAA in a pear tree.

My anticipation built throughout Friday. I figured it was a good sign when I walked to my car in my mother-in-law’s apartment complex and saw a truck from “ECC Construction” parked next to me.

In case Litos thinks I'm making up construction companies now, too.

My wife and I spent the car ride to the Arena quoting “Major League” in reference to the new cast of characters awaiting us. During the game, meanwhile, we helped each other figure out who was who.

“Four is Jenkins, right?”

“Right.”

“So the grad seniors—11 is Upshaw and three is Nesmith?”

“No, other way around.”

“Got it, thanks.”

We also realized that while our wonder and innocence regarding college basketball is gone, we can still experience those sensations through our Molly.

Not only was Molly subjected to a whole lot of depressing home games in her first few months, but she had to watch them from the confines of the car seat in which we carried her. At the home opener, though, we learned immediately that she was coordinated enough to sit in her own chair and snack on her Cheerios.

Once the game started, we learned she could slide into a standing position, lean on and bang the chair in front of hers and gaze intently at the action taking place on the floor. And you can imagine the parental pride we felt when Molly followed suit as the cheerleaders raised their hands prior to a Hofstra foul shot.

"I hope Daddy's a better writer than he is a photographer," Molly said.

Meanwhile, as Molly ate and clapped, Hofstra jumped out to an early lead over Monmouth as her Daddy lapsed into familiar habits.

Payen putbacks a thunderous dunk. 31-19 #Hofstra. Monmouth calls TO I BELIEVE AGAIN IT ONLY TOOK 15 MINUTES
— Jerry Beach (@defiantlydutch) November 9, 2013

The Dutchmen ended up losing 88-84. But at some point that night, I realized that while it’s impossible to replicate the wide-eyed delight that accompanied our initial introduction to Hofstra sports, we could still get to know a Flying Dutchmen team in the type of organic and surprising way we did in our first year on campus—which, of course, for me was 1993-94.

As Hofstra newcomers 20 years ago, we had no expectations of a team full of strangers but already knew we were naturally invested. And with no idea who would coach the team the next season—or if Hofstra would find a real league in which to play—we were able to enjoy the moment without worrying about what was ahead.

The future is considerably less clouded today. There’s a little of Butch van Breda Kolff to Mihalich, whom I could see living at Twin Oaks, if only there was still a Twin Oaks. But Mihalich is just saying hello 20 years after VBK’s season-long goodbye. And we also know a year from now that Hofstra will be in a league with an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Yet with our new approach to transfers—get excited about ‘em when they suit up and not a moment before—we can view next season as a present we haven’t peeked at, or even shook for a hint at what’s inside.

And with grad transfers Zeke Upshaw and Dion Nesmith playing vital roles this year in their one-and-done seasons—and no expectations accompanying Hofstra, which was picked last in its conference for the first time since joining the NAC in 1994-95—there’s a purity and a certain this-will-never-be-repeated-again vibe to the season that we felt when the Dutchmen were competing in a temporary, piecemeal conference.

The full circle continued arcing outward two weeks ago last night. I was at the Islanders game at Nassau Coliseum as Hofstra played defending national champion Louisville in the first game of the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame Tipoff, which is a tournament Hofstra participated in back in 1993-94.

This time, instead of recapping what I’d seen to my Dad, I was trying to get information on what had just happened via the Coliseum’s familiarly awful wireless. Joining me in my efforts was an Islanders media relations intern, a Hofstra student who may or may not have been born yet in December 1993.

We knew Hofstra was down by more than 20 in the first half, but by just 15 at intermission. And the Dutchmen were getting even closer, judging by the Tweets that managed to sneak their way through the force field surrounding the Coliseum early in the second half/second period.

Finally, she got an up-to-the-second report.

“We’re down 59-54,” she said.

WE’RE DOWN 59-54?! Twenty years later, I was as excited as that kid in the living room in Connecticut—except this time over Hofstra threatening LOUISVILLE. No matter how you measure it, this is progress.

Now, like then, I got some funny looks from people when I expressed my enthusiasm over Hofstra’s comparatively meek fortunes. I yelled the score to a writer friend one row in front of me.

“Dude, they’re facing LOUISVILLE,” said the writer whom I thought was my friend.

Still: This, too, qualifies as progress for a guy who headed home after his first year at Hofstra and bragged to his UConn friends that Hofstra won a conference that I may or may not have made up.

As you know, Louisville immediately became LOUISVILLE and buried the Dutchmen with 17 straight points on its way to a lopsided victory that counted as a loss, as far as the wise guys in Vegas were concerned.

“Hey Jer,” my Dad said in picking up the phone a couple hours later.

“We covered,” I said.

“I know,” he said. Twenty years later, he still checks the America’s Line in the morning but keeps track of Hofstra via the modern version of the agate page: The scrolling ticker on ESPN.

A season that began with no engagement and no expectations has morphed into one filled with interactivity and optimism. There were plenty of fist pumps from my recliner over the previous eight days as I watched the Dutchmen lead wire-to-wire at Richmond before losing in overtime, edge Hartford in the final minute (no line in The Hartford Courant for that game, per Dad, but there was an article the next day) and lead giant slayer Belmont for more than 23 minutes in a 10-point loss.

The final two games were played in Connecticut at the Mohegan Sun Arena, the home of the WNBA's Connecticut Sun. That’s right: I am now excitedly watching on Long Island as Hofstra plays games in an arena in my home state that houses a professional sports team.

And as the smattering of fans at Mohegan Sun learned Saturday and Sunday, the undermanned but high-scoring Dutchmen are fun to watch and should, at the least, avoid the basement in a CAA that looks like a former top 10 TV show whose best-known actors have all left for movie gigs. And the Dutchmen are building chemistry and cohesiveness while at least four of their league rivals—James Madison, Delaware, William & Mary and Towson—have already suspended a player.

I’m trying not to fall completely back into old habits and start daydreaming of someone I didn’t even recognize three weeks ago flinging the ball skyward at the buzzer as the 17 Hofstra fans that made their way to the CAA Tournament storm the court at Richmond, err, Baltimore and begin celebrating the Dutchmen’s first NCAA Tournament trip since 2001.

But when my wife bought us tickets last week to see Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden on March 21, you damn well better believe my first thought was there’s an obvious scheduling conflict. That’s the Friday of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. And guess what city is among the hosts?

Buffalo.

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

Hofstra vs. defending national champions

Holy crap I have a blog? *shakes off the dust and cobwebs that have accumulated, coughs*

Anyway, I have a longer post about shedding the awfulness of last year to come at some point, but with the Flying Dutchmen less than two hours away from upsetting sneakily athletic Who is Luke Hancock and defending national champion Louisville, I thought now would be a good time to look at how Hofstra's sports teams have fared when playing the defending national champ since moving to Division I.

This will be the 33rd time Hofstra faces a reigning national champ, including the 29th time during the regular season. And tonight will be the sixth time Hofstra wins! This is an interactive blog, one in which you are encouraged to do the math!

The first five Hofstra squads to knock off a defending national champ were the 1999 football team (wait, what, we had a football team?), the 2000 softball team and the 2003, 2004 and 2008 men's lacrosse teams. See below for the entire list of games in which Hofstra has faced a reigning national champion. Said champion is listed with the year in which it won the title while the following year's result in parentheses.
 

MEN’S BASKETBALL

’83 North Carolina State (L 82-56)

MEN’S LACROSSE

’71 Cornell (L 5-3)

’72 Virginia (L 12-5 in 1973 NCAAT)

’88 Syracuse (L 16-7)

’89 Syracuse (L 20-9)

’90 Syracuse (L 30-10)

’92 Princeton (L 9-6)

’00 Syracuse (L 18-13 in 2001 NCAAT)

’01 Princeton (L 12-4)

’02 Syracuse (W 8-6)

’05 Johns Hopkins (W 11-6)

’07 Johns Hopkins (W 8-7)

FOOTBALL

’98 UMass (W 27-14)

’99 Georgia Southern (L 48-20 in 2000 playoffs)

’01 Montana (L 21-0)

’03 Delaware (03) (L 20-19)

’04 James Madison (L 42-10)

’08 Richmond (L 47-0)

WRESTLING

’99 Iowa (L 34-3)

’00 Iowa (L 40-3)

’01 Minnesota (L 33-10)

’04 Oklahoma State (L 30-10)

’05 Oklahoma State (L 34-9)

WOMEN’S LACROSSE

’05 Northwestern (L 16-9)

’06 Northwestern (L 16-4)

’07 Northwestern (L 22-4)

’08 Northwestern (L 20-6)

SOFTBALL

’99 UCLA (W 10-5)

’05 Michigan (L 5-3)

’07 Arizona (L 10-0 in 2008 NCAAT)

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

’09 UConn (L 91-46)

FIELD HOCKEY

’89 North Carolina (L 8-0)

Quotebook: Joe Mihalich

Photo courtesy Hofstra athletics

Joe Mihalich sat down with a handful of ink- and pixel-stained wretches for an informal Q&A this afternoon at Hofstra’s University Clun. Here’s an edited transcript of his chat.

On leaving Niagara:

We were gonna be good next year up there. Great bunch of guys. Believe me, I spoke to the team last night. It was one of the toughest things I ever did in my life. There’s no way to keep it together during that. So I wasn’t looking. As I said [at the podium] and I said it many times, when people asked me up there ‘You gonna leave? You gonna leave?’ I would only leave if it was a great opportunity—great school, all that stuff. Here’s a chance to do something else. Is the timing perfect? That’s life. That’s life. You can’t choose opportunity the opportunity comes and then you have to make a choice. Do I wish everybody had graduated and nobody was there? I wish, but that’s not the way it was. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I sat down with Jeff, we met down in Atlanta, and the more he talked, the more excited I became. Came down yesterday and with each person I met I got more and more excited. Been on campus [before] but never saw it the way I saw it yesterday. I didn’t need the plane last night, I just could have flown home myself.

On meeting with the remaining Hofstra players:

What a great bunch of guys. I’m not going to lie to you, I didn’t know them, this was my first chance to be with them. So Jeff just put us in a room downstairs, we took the coats off and just hung out for about half an hour. We could still be there now talking. It was just great—and again, not because of me, because of them. Just a great bunch of guys. They want to be good. They want to be good, and that’s the first thing you pick up as a coach—they want to be good. So I can’t wait to coach people like that.

On Hofstra’s facilities:

Just terrific. Everything’s in place. And I said up there before, this time of year, [people ask] is that a good job? Is that a good job? Is that a good job? And that’s my answer: Who’s the president, who’s the athletic director? We have a president that wants to win, we have an athletic director that wants to win the right way. But you look at the facilities, that speaks to the commitment that you need to be successful.

On his staff and if he’ll bring anyone with him from Niagara:

I’m not trying to be a wise guy, but we’re going to have a great staff. We’re going to have a great staff. I’m still working through that, I’m going about 20 steps at a time right now never mind one day at a time. But we’re going to have a great staff.

On his style of ball:

We like to play fast. You’ve got to dance with the girl you brung, so we’ll see what kind of guards we can bring in here. We bring in guys that still keep that 10-second rule in effect to get the ball over half-court, we won’t be running much. But we do like to play fast. I played for Paul Westhead in college, coached with Morgan Wooten and Speedy Morris I think the up-tempo style is fun. Fun to play that way, fun to coach that way, it’s fun to watch. We’re hoping to have an up-tempo type of team, hope it’ll be high-scoring, but again, we’re an incomplete picture right now. We’ve got some pieces to put in the puzzle.

On what attracted him to the job despite the short-term struggles Hofstra may have:

Just everything. The arena, the people, we talked about resources. It’s not just facilities, it’s people. I’m learning the people here are the greatest resources we have. We have a beautiful arena? Yes. A great weight room? Yes. Locker room? Yes. All the offices? The whole campus? Gorgeous. But it’s the people. It’s the people that are the greatest resource we have.

On recruiting:

We’ve got to get some players. I was on the phone this morning and I think we’re close to a guy already, actually. So trying to close the deal with a couple guys. There were some verbal commitments, I’m reaching out to those guys. And my message to them is maybe the most important part of the reason for your commitment was to the university itself, and that hasn’t changed. This is still a fantastic university. I know the coaches changed, and that’s [why] we’ve got to get to know each other to hopefully complete that.

On the challenge ahead:

That’s what excites you. If you didn’t—maybe it’s the wrong word—but if you didn’t like that it was a bad situation—and again, that’s a poor choice of words—but that’s a challenge. It’s a tough situation, it’s going to be more gratifying, it’ll just be more gratifying when you surprise everybody. One of my idols is a Niagara guy, Frank Layden. He always says ‘It’s better to surprise ‘em than disappoint ‘em.’ And so our goal is going to be to surprise everybody and be better than what they thought we were going to be.

Jeff explained the situation, whether it was the number of scholarships remaining, verbal commitments, APR situation—he explained everything. So it’s not the perfect situation, but again, we’re not going to talk about our problems. I mean, I love that Lou Holtz saying, it’s the truth. It really is. ‘Half the people don’t care, the other half are glad you have [problems].’ So we’re not going to do that.

On building his type of team:

Continuity is important, it really is, and Jeff Hathaway convinced me that he wants to do this the right way. He knows it’s going to be brick by brick. Sometimes, when you go for a quick fix, you take chances, they don’t work out. We’re going to be very careful about doing things the right away.

I like to play fast, so you look to speed, you look for quickness, as opposed to big, bulky guys, IF they have both, they’re [going] to the ACC, right? So probably speed and quickness more than anything else. I’ve got no problem with a guy who can make a lot of shots, It’s easier to count by 3s than by 2s.

On his hectic travel schedule leading into Wednesday:

I was going to leave [the Final Four] Sunday, Jeff asked me to stay down the day to visit. So I changed my flight to Monday morning. Monday morning flew from Atlanta to Buffalo. Tuesday back and forth, Buffalo to JFK. This morning, [got up at] 5:45, I was with my staff all last night, went to bed about 3, got up at 4. Sleep’s overrated. And then I don’t know when I’m getting home. I’m going to stay down here until I get three guys that can play.

More on his final meeting with his Niagara players:

I went back to speak to the team. I think that’s the right thing to do, is go do it in person. And believe me, it was as emotional a tine as I’ve ever been through in my life. I love those guys, I love that team. It was a hard thing to do. And as I’ve said a couple times before, that speaks to how excited I am about this opportunity, because it would have been easy to say you know what, I’m just going to stay here.

On his timetable to compete in the CAA:

I think it’s hard to put a timetable on it. I’m not trying to avoid the question. I keep coming back to the same thing: It depends on the players we can get. If we can get a couple good ones late, a couple good kids late, we can be a little better a little quicker than everybody thinks, But the important thing is to get the right kids. We want to get the right kids. And if it means a little more patience, might take a year or two to get the right kids, then I think that’s what we’re going to do. We will leave no stone unturned.

On the CAA:

I love the CAA. I thin it’s a great conference. The landscape of all the conferences right now—it just doesn’t change every day, it changes every five minutes. But I love the conference. That’s part of what excited me, that level, the conference is a terrific conference. Great leadership in the conference, great coaches in the conference, great schools in the conference. It’s going to be a real challenge, but it’s something you want to be a part of.

On if, after having just two jobs in the last 32 years, he sees Hofstra as a place at which he can retire:

When you’re a basketball coach you just think about one season, one year—not that you don’t build for the future—but one season, at a time, one year at a time. I don’t think you really plan too far ahead.

On how much he enjoys coaching:

I love what I do. I’m so lucky to do what I do. I say it everyday: I’m living the dream. I pinch myself everyday that I get to be a basketball coach. And I want everybody that I’m with to be having fun and enjoying it. Its not that it’s not hard work, not that you don’t feel like punching the wall once in a while, But I want my coaches to be that way, I want my players to be that way. I think it’s a culture that you want to build. It’s a lot better to be good and having dun doing what we’re doing. I have fun. People look at me after a game…you’ve got to understand something I am having the time of my life. Maybe we lost by one on a last-second shot and I’m not going to sleep that night. But to be coaching—just so lucky, just so lucky.

More on meeting with Hofstra’s players for the first time:

My goal wasn’t to earn their trust. My goal was just to let them know who I was and what I stood for and what I was all about. And I wanted to know what they were about, And if the trust comes with it, that’s great. But I didn’t go in there and say ‘I’ve got to earn their trust.’ I just went in there and I wanted them to feel comfortable with me. [That’s] the first thing I want to do with the players, because those poor kids have been without a coach for three weeks and they don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know who’s coming, what to expect. I’ve got three sons. If they were going through that, I’d feel horrible for them. So they needed some reassurance that they were going to be OK. And I tell you what, I was so impressed. What a great bunch of guys.

On what he’d say to a fan base reeling after the last few years:

I would say ‘Com on out.’ You’re going to have ago do time. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure you enjoy Hofstra basketball. We’re going to do everything we can. We want you to walk out of the building saying ‘that’s the hardest-working team out there.’ We want you to walk out of the building saying ‘Those guys play hard. It’s fun to watch them play.’ We want to be exciting and enjoyable.

On his memories of playing Hofstra at La Salle from 1975-78:

Richie Laurel getting about 50 on us one time. Roger Gaeckler was the coach, I think it was 1976[-77] they came to the Palestra and beat us. That wasn’t supposed to happen. [Grins] Richie was from Philly, so he was extra juiced. He was great. They had a good team.

More on recruiting:

We’re going to recruit anywhere and everywhere. When you are where I was for 15 years, you have no restrictions. You answer every email and you make every phone call. You look at every tape that comes in. And if there’s a genuine mutual interest, you pursue it. We’ve had kids from Texas, Florida and California.

There’s not a player in New York City that can’t think that this isn’t a great place to go to school. It might not be the school, they might go to another one, but there can’t be a player in New York City that doesn’t think ‘Boy that would be a good option.’

On knowing Jay Wright:

I remember him when he was in high school and college. Played at Bucknell. I remember one time, he was working at Drexel, I was working at La Salle [and] we had to drive to Pittsburgh, Drexel had a station wagon that they let the coaches use called the “Dragon Wagon.” He drove and it was just one of those things you remember, the trip out to Five Star. We just talked the whole way He’s just a first-class guy. Obviously a fantastic coach, but he’s a better person than coach.

Really, I think [Wright is] probably why I was familiar with [Hofstra]. Always liked him and always knew it could be a great place.

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

Press Conference Q&A: Stephen Nwaukoni

What have the last three weeks been like for you?

Just with the team and the coaches, everybody just patiently waiting. After coach Mo got fired, everybody’s been [wondering] ‘So who’s gonna be our next coach? Which assistants will we have? What’s going to happen to the recruits?’ I was just hoping and I was waiting myself, but I was hoping it would be a guy right for the job, and it definitely seems to be.

What was the first meeting with Mihalich like?

They say you can read a person from your first impression. My first impression is I think he’s a phenomenal guy, I think he’s a fabulous guy. I think he’s going to be perfect for the job. Just the way he was talking to us, he seems like a very passionate person—not just there for the checks, not just there for anything else Just there to be there for us. Everybody knows that he’s a good coach, everybody knows that he’s here to win. So this is what we’re all hoping for.

You were one of Mo’s first recruits and the last one remaining from his first year. How bittersweet have these few weeks been for you?

I know it’s a business, I know that’s how it is. But at the end of the day, I can’t control that. People always tell me—especially my guy [video coordinator] Jay Posner over there [pointing across the room]—worry about everything you can control. That was something I couldn’t control. So I was just waiting like everybody else and I was hoping it was a good guy. And like I said before, he’s a great guy. I can tell he’s a great guy.

As one of just four scholarship players left, what kind of role do you think you’ll take on over the next few months and next season?

Me being here for three years already, going into my fourth year, like Mr. Hathaway said, the president said, they expect me to steer the ship this year. They expect me to be that leader. They expect me to be that person to guide all the younger guys, guide all the older guys, just lead everybody. And that’s what I’m looking forward to doing.

Like I told a whole bunch of people and the former coaches, I’ve told them what we had to work on as a team is just bringing everybody together as a team, as one unit [interlocks hands]. Not just having different cliques, but forming a whole sum, more like a team and a unit. Because I feel like whatever we do off the court—whether it’s being in the weight room, in class, anything—the way we act and the way we conduct ourselves, that’s all going to translate to the court. And if we’re always moving together, doing things together, that unity, it’s going to build. So I just feel like me being a [senior] and taking on a new role, I feel like that’s got to happen. I’m going to do the best job to the best of my abilities to make that happen.

Did you feel that, for whatever reason, with all the moving parts and transfers who were sitting out and freshmen that didn’t work out, that there were different factions the last couple years?

I’ll just give you an example: My first year here at Hofstra, I played with Charles Jenkins, Greg Washington, Brad Kelleher, Nathaniel Lester. We were a team. We were more of a team. I feel like the more we got all these players—like transfers and freshmen—the more we started to disintegrate, you know what I’m saying? I don’t know [why], but whatever the case was, I felt like we weren’t a unit anymore. I felt like every year it got worse, you know?

But now I feel like just this group we have here today will be more of a team. I feel we’re going to be more of a unit. I can feel it. And the coach feels it. Coach Mihalich feels it. He feels a great vibe in all of us.

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

Hofstra hires Mihalich

Nineteen days later, the Flying Dutchmen have a new basketball coach. As first reported by Defiantly Dutch #JournalisticDingalingSwinging, Hofstra spent yesterday closing the deal with former Niagara coach Joe Mihalich and will introduce him as the 12th coach in school history (unless you count Tim Welsh, which you shouldn’t) at the University Club at noon today.

According to Newsday, Mihalich, 56, has agreed to a six-year deal. Steven Marcus Tweeted that Mihalich will be paid in excess of $400,000 per year.

As is often the case with mid-major hires, Mihalich was not Hofstra’s first choice—Kansas assistant Joe Dooley turned the job down last week and Hofstra could not agree to terms with Iona’s Tim Cluess, whose contract at the New Rochelle school carried with it an onerous buyout—but he arrives in Hempstead with impressive credentials.

Mihalich spent 15 years at Niagara, where he won two MAAC titles and a MAAC-record 265 games. He has won accolades for his coaching acumen in turning a small upstate New York school into a perennial contender in the MAAC and is recognized as one of the good guys in the industry by both his peers and those who have covered him.

Prior to taking over at Niagara, Mihalich spent 17 years as an assistant at his alma mater, La Salle, where he helped recruit five future NBA players, including Lionel Simmons.

Mihalich played four seasons at La Salle – which played in the ECC, the same conference as Hofstra, and went 3-2 against the Flying Dutchmen during Mihalich’s career – and helped the Explorers to NCAA Tournament bids as a freshman and as a senior. His junior year ended with a 92-81 loss to Hofstra in the ECC title game.

More than 35 years later, Mihalich is tasked with trying to return Hofstra to the NCAA Tournament. And in choosing to embark upon a lucrative yet massive rebuilding job at Hofstra—which has just four scholarship players remaining after a 7-25 season, the worst in the program’s Division I history—Mihalich leaves behind a loaded Niagara squad that graduates just one player from the team that won the MAAC’s regular season title this season.

Niagara became the first team in MAAC history to place two sophomores (Juan’ya Green and Antoine Mason, the son of former Knicks star Anthony Mason) on the all-league team.

Sound familiar? Three years ago last month, Tom Pecora left behind a stocked cupboard at Hofstra—including reigning CAA player of the year Charles Jenkins and two members of the league’s all-freshmen team—for Fordham, which doubled his salary to lure him to rebuild a program that had just bottomed out with a 2-26 record.

The good news for Mihalich is the CAA is not the Atlantic 10—not after the A10 picked apart the CAA like a Thanksgiving turkey—and that Hofstra has actually proven it has the budget and the facilities to compete in its current conference.

But make no mistake, there’s a tightrope-walking, failure-is-not-an-option sense of urgency to Mihalich’s hiring. This is the most important athletic department hire Hofstra has made since 19 years ago this week, when the late Jim Garvey hired Jay Wright to navigate the Flying Dutchmen out of the depths of Division I.

There was nowhere to go but up back then, and no alternative now—especially after the 2009 decision to euthanize football turned basketball into the spotlight sport at Hofstra—but to resume the climb back to where Hofstra men’s basketball once resided under Wright and Pecora, who turned the Flying Dutchmen into the most successful program in the metro area. That becomes Mihalich’s goal today, the moment he steps off the podium and into day one at Hofstra.

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

In the end, Cassara done in by the good others did not do

Mo Cassara with the winners of a cake decorating contest he judged at Hofstra's Student Center in November 2011.

Days like two Fridays ago, when there’s so much news to filter and the head is filled with pinballing thoughts, lend themselves to paying particularly close attention to the random vagaries of life, such as songs on the radio or street signs, in hopes that something will provide some clarity and, in particular, a column-worthy hook that will tie everything together.

Two Fridays ago, clarity and the hook were found on a bumper sticker. As I walked into the University Club for the press conference officially announcing the dismissal of Mo Cassara, I saw a car adorned with a sticker that contained the Voltaire quote “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”

(I would like to tell you that I minored in philosophy at Hofstra, which is true, and that I didn’t need to go to Google to find the author of the quote, which is false. Transparency, and all that.)

And while we’re on the subject of transparency, I suppose I should get this out of the way: If you’re looking for a coolly unemotional, middle-of-the-road take on Cassara’s firing, a.) I don’t do that here and b.) I REALLY won’t be doing that here today.

Mo Cassara is a friend of mine, and it is both fortunate and unfortunate that he’ll be a friend of mine for a far longer period of time than he was coach at Hofstra. I imagine that some people, particularly Cassara critics, will think I am simply the house organ for all things Cassara—remember, my wife and I may or may not have named our daughter after him!—or that I like him simply because he talks to me.

And while I suppose my fondness for Cassara is a byproduct of his open access policies, I am certain, after knowing him for the last three years, that it would have been my loss if I didn’t have such an avenue by which to meet and get to know him.

So with all that said: Cassara is the former coach of the Flying Dutchmen because he is a good man done in by the guiltiness of others.

I get why Hofstra athletic director Jeff Hathaway and/or president Stuart Rabinowitz made the decision he/they made. I get how bad the events of this season and the six arrests of ex-players look for the university, and that the pride the administration takes in Hofstra is far different than the pride we take as alums.

I respect that it wasn’t an easy choice—if it was, Cassara would have been fired on March 10, or Dec. 1—and that running an athletic department or a university often means telling very nice people that their services are no longer needed.

But just because I get and respect the decision in the black-and-white sense doesn’t mean I agree with it in a world awash with sepia and tones.

Basketball-wise, I think Cassara deserved a chance to try and turn this around. There’s no sugarcoating this: His first attempt to rebuild the Dutchmen was a disaster. He’d be the first to tell you that the process failed. After his successful first season, he tried to patch holes in a decaying foundation, instead of stripping it down and starting from scratch.

But he was getting ready to do that, and going in a completely opposite direction recruiting-wise after getting burned this year by true freshmen and troubled transfers. By focusing on prep schoolers (six of the seven recruits he signed for next year are in the midst of a post-grad year right now), Cassara was bringing people to campus who were used to living away from home and surely more mature than most of the knuckleheads who ended up costing him his job.

He said numerous times over the last few months that he was looking forward to moving the troublemakers out of the program, via graduation or outright dismissal, so that he could start anew. Looking back, he spoke with a certain sense of desperation and worry, as if he feared some of these guys would manage to get into more trouble before he could get them off campus. If that was the case, he was right to worry.

In addition, recent history suggests that schools set themselves back by firing a head coach after three years or less. Between 1993 and 2009, 56 schools that played in conferences possessing an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament dismissed a coach before his fourth season. Eight more have done so since 2010, but I’m not judging their post-firing performance yet because their current coaches haven’t had four recruiting classes.

In addition, I didn’t count schools that fired coaches following NCAA investigations, a la Binghamton and Kevin Broadus, or because of poisonous personalities, a la Rutgers and Mike Rice.

Of the 56 schools to make a change in three years or less from 1993 through 2009, just 21 made the NCAA Tournament under their next coach. Maybe Cassara never would have taken the Dutchmen dancing, but Hathaway will have his hands full finding the guy who can do so—especially with a program that has a grand total of four scholarship players heading into next year.

He’ll also have quite a challenge finding someone who can match Cassara’s intangibles. I’ve followed Hofstra basketball for 20 years, and in that time nobody has tried to do more good for Hofstra basketball—or worked harder or cared more—than Cassara. And believe me, Butch van Breda Kolff, Jay Wright and Tom Pecora weren’t exactly mailing it in during their time on Hempstead Turnpike.

If anything, Cassara worked and cared too much. An avid Seinfeld fan, Cassara probably could have benefited from pulling a Costanza, and doing the exact opposite of everything, if only he had it in him to half-ass something.

Cassara got the job after a whirlwind five-day period in late April and early May 2010 where he thought he’d be out of a job, and right up until his late afternoon meeting with Hathaway March 21, he worked every day as if he’d be fired the next day.

I remember exchanging texts with him after the loss to Drexel in January 2011, when Charles Jenkins broke the school scoring record in front of a sellout crowd. It was one of just 10 losses in an often-magical season, but Cassara was despondent—quite literally to the point where he couldn’t move off his office couch, several hours after the final buzzer—over the missed opportunity to win and turn some of the first-timers into the crowd into repeat visitors.

Perhaps the most indelible image of the Cassara era is of him running parallel to a loose ball during a game against James Madison in December 2011, looking as if he might actually dive on it himself so that the Dutchmen could retain possession.

Cassara’s teams embodied their coach. As beaten up as the Dutchmen were this year, they impressed impartial writers and opposing fans alike with their effort and hustle. He should have gotten an extended chance to coach kids whose character matched their effort.

And he should have gotten an extended chance to find kids whose pride in Hofstra matched his. In the last 20 years, nobody connected with Hofstra basketball loved Hofstra more than Cassara—even if Hofstra can be a tough place to love.

It’s so easy to obsess over what Hofstra isn’t. It isn’t a giant sprawling campus far away from home with a party life that draws the attention of US News and World Report (presuming they still rank party schools). It is close to Manhattan, but it’s not in Manhattan. We play Division I sports, but not the Division I sports you see on TV. With so many commuters, added on to the plethora of students who are just going to college because it’s the thing you do from 18 to 22, it isn’t a place that easily engenders the unity we associate with college life.

But it can still be great, if you love and embrace Hofstra for what it is—instead of obsessing over what it isn’t—and realize how rewarding the place can be if you immerse yourself in it, all the while working to make the school as great as we want it to be.

Cassara GOT that. He attended club functions throughout campus and went to athletic events and was on a first-name basis with the staff at the Student Center cafeteria because he was one of us, and one of them. He supported those who loved Hofstra and were working to turn it into something even greater because he was doing exactly that.

Instead of griping that Hofstra didn’t have a practice facility, like so many of its mid-major rivals, he began planning one. Instead of complaining about the meager crowds, he reinforced relationships with those who did show up to the Arena and daydreamed of the upcoming seasons in which the Dutchmen would regularly play in front of 4,000 fans or more.

He also got that the people who truly love Hofstra are fundamentally decent people who treat one another well and have no patience for those oozing arrogance or phoniness.

I heard an amazing story this season about how Cassara lugged his own luggage—and that of his girlfriend—through the airport on the way to or from a game. A member of the traveling party, watching Cassara struggle to balance everything, said, half-kiddingly, that he should have the student managers carry his luggage. Cassara said he’d been a student manager, and that carrying luggage was a demeaning part of the job and that he always swore he’d carry his own luggage if he ever became a head coach.

I don’t know a single Hofstra staffer who has anything bad to say about Cassara. Employees wept the morning of his dismissal. One athletic department staffer whom I trust implicitly said Cassara was the nicest head coach he’s ever encountered at the school.

For every single of the 811 days he was head coach of the Flying Dutchmen, Cassara unconditionally loved Hofstra and all those connected to it. And that’s the cruelest, saddest irony here: Few people did more to generate and spread Hofstra pride than Cassara, and he was undermined by those unappreciative of the university and the opportunities (often of the second chance variety) it provided.

Hell, Cassara was undermined almost from day one. If Welsh was smart enough to call a cab the night of April 29, 2010—less than 48 hours after sermonizing about the responsibilities of a head coach—I’m not writing these words right now.

More recently, I have gone out of my way to not mention the four thieves who ruined a season and so much more. They are unworthy of the keystrokes needed to type their names and I don’t want the traffic that would come from those Googling them.

But I hope Shaq Stokes, Jimmy Hall, Kentrell Washington and Dallas Anglin have it in them to feel remorse for what they did to Cassara, and the repercussions it will have for their former school in the years to come.

I get that Taran Buie and Jamal Coombs-McDaniel are complex people trying to emerge from exceedingly difficult upbringings, and that neither one, despite their recent arrests, is necessarily a bad guy.

Athletic staffers marveled at Buie’s politeness—he always addressed staffers by“ Mr.” and “Mrs.” even when they said it was fine for him to call them by their first names.

Personally, I’ll always remember running into Buie on the Arena concourse after a game and being moved by the gentleness he displayed upon being introduced to my daughter, who returned Buie’s broad smile as he touched her hand.

And I get that so much about this season would have been different if Coombs-McDaniel didn’t have the knees of a 40-year-old. If he’s playing this season, he’s engaged. He’s kicking Buie and everyone else in the ass—Cassara always said leadership was Coombs-McDaniel’s strongest trait—and maybe he’s able to steer four foolish newcomers away from doing something they—and we—would regret forever in October and November.

Instead, he was just one of many men, young and old, guilty of the good they did not do, and guilty of getting a good man fired.

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