Hofstra’s 2010-11 Success Was All About Skill

John Templon, the author of the very informational and fun to read Big Apple Buckets site, does a lot of statistical analysis of teams.  Recently, he has been doing a series of “Team Similarities”, comparing teams from this past season to teams of recent past.   One of those teams in his series was Hofstra.  In his Hofstra Team Similarity, John states that Ken Pomeroy's “luck metric” notes that

NCAA puts Georgia Tech on 4 years’ probation

The NCAA’s Committee on Infractions has placed Georgia Tech on four years’ probation, vacated its 2009 ACC championship game victory and placed limits on official men’s basketball recruiting visits after citing the school with rules violations.

Georgia Tech Basketball’s NCAA Violations Affect Former Coach Paul Hewitt

The focus of the NCAA violations involving Georgia Tec h center around the football team, but the basketball team also were hit with some violations during the time that current George Mason basketball coach Paul Hewitt coached there. The violations aren’t serious and will only serve to hamper current Georgia Tech coach Brian Gregory in his recruiting efforts, though not significantly. However, the one interesting thing about it is that Hewitt’s buyout with Georgia Tech could technically be terminated if he was fired “with cause.” Does this count? Here’s the relevant section of his contract. Willfully violating an NCAA or ACC regulation or rule which results, after hearing, in probation or loss of scholarships or knowingly allowing a member of the Men's Basketball coaching staff to engage in conduct which results in similar sanctions; provided, however, that “Cause” shall be deemed to exist only after Hewitt has been given written notice of the basis upon which “Cause” is deemed to have occurred and thirty (30) days have expired since Hewitt's receipt of such written notice without Hewitt having cured such circumstance that has been alleged to constitute ”Cause” and further provided that the President of the Association or the President's designee approves that such “Cause” exists.Should Hewitt disagree with the Association's assertion that “Cause” exists, Hewitt may, within ten (10) days of receipt of such written notice, give written notice of his objection to the Association and seek arbitration pursuant to the terms of this Agreement. Is that enough to forego the buyout. SB Nation Atlanta says probably not. So don’t worry, George Mason fans. Hewitt is still going to make a lot of money from Georgia Tech to coach your team.

VCU wins “Best Upset” ESPY Award

Virginia Commonwealth University wins the ESPY for “Best Upset” for beating Kansas in the Southwest Regional final their 2011 NCAA Final Four run.

There’s nothing wrong with going nowhere but we should be going nowhere fast

Your homework between now and whenever I post again: Watch the criminally underrated, should-have-been-an-’80s-classic Streets of Fire . Three words: Teenaged Diane Lane! A pair of familiar and friendly faces welcomed me as I walked into Bogart’s, err, Chrebet’s, err, Bar Social June 23 for the NBA Draft party hosted by Mo Cassara and his staff. I shook hands, slapped shoulders and exchanged inside jokes with loyal readers HUSID80 and Jojogunne, both of whom had the same question: “Is the blog done?” I can’t blame them for asking—at the time, the only update I’d made since my April Fools’ Day post was a quick Q&A with Patrick Stevens previewing the NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament—and wondering if I’d gone the way of Beanie Babies, the Macarena and the idea people could get paid to write on the Internet. But even though I knew the blog wasn’t done (whoops—spoiler alert!), the question created an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach and guilt in my conscience. I already felt bad about neglecting the blog since the end of the season. I was disappointed with the inconsistency of the posts during the 2010-11 season, having had a job all year for the first time since I started Defiantly Dutch in August 2008, but figured I would finally try to use this off-season to get into a good routine and prepare myself for next year. I had some good ideas on chronicling (get it?) Charles Jenkins’ preparation for the draft along with the usual analysis and half-baked ideas I specialize in around here. Except—and you might not know this judging by my rather active Twitter feed, more on that shortly—I have been swamped at work. I mean, SWAMPED. My boss would be the first to admit she doesn’t know the first thing about basketball, but I’d swear she waited until the final buzzer sounded in UConn’s win over Butler in the national championship game to engage in some corporate reshuffling (translation: someone got fired) and entrust me with more responsibilities. That’s a good thing, because I get to contribute once again to the nitty gritty of adult life such as paying bills and buying groceries, but it has come at the price of the blog. I also have a regular freelance sportswriting gig that takes up a couple hours each day, so while it’s easy to plan to compile some DD posts come the weekend, by the time Friday afternoon arrives I just want to go out to dinner with my wife, sprawl out in the recliner and curse/cheer over the fate of my fantasy baseball team. Plus, as much as I’d like to, I usually can’t just whip up a blog post. A 500-word post turns into 1,000 words or more in no time flat (you know, like now). This is just something I spend a lot of time on, I can’t help that. Still, I feel bad that I haven’t followed in the footsteps of Mike Litos and Brian Mull and posted once or twice a week with the latest bits and bytes. I can’t say I feel bad about not following the day-to-day grind of recruiting, because I’ve never liked writing about recruiting and I never will and I’ll never try to bluff you and do a half-assed job of covering it. I admire those who do a good job with it and have established contacts on a challenging beat, and am glad to retweet the likes of Adam Zagoria of SNY and Zach Braziller of the New York Post who are the best at what they do. Still, while my general rule of thumb is I’ll write about a guy once he’s actually enrolled for the fall semester—an instinct proven correct by the Malik Nichols saga—I wish I could have been a bit better about posting about the signing of highly touted BCS transfers Jamal Coombs-McDaniel and Taran Buie, if only to fire back and take potshots at the handful of clueless Mason donks who don’t own a mirror and who are still under the delusion that so many of the players recruited by Jim Larranaga were of the high or even low character variety. Oh, wait, look at that, mission accomplished! (And speaking of Larranaga and his gloriously awesome departure to a retirement community in south Florida, I have a rant that is three-quarters finished, but I can’t decide if posting it would make me look like a stark raving psychopath or not. I mean, even a bigger stark raving psychopath than usual.) I hate that anyone sees my Twitter feed, where I rant about just about everything except Hofstra sports, and thinks I’ve ditched the blog. Twitter is a great way to blow off some steam during otherwise monotonous days and nights of work and I enjoy the interaction with people. But I haven’t forgotten that, despite all the occasionally R-rated ramblings about baseball and Scrubs and heaven only knows what else, the Twitter account name is still defiantlydutch. I’d also hate to think that anyone sees the blog inactivity and thinks of me as some unabashed fanboy (well, OK, that part is true) who thought it would be cool to write a blog and then quit when it got too hard and I found out that not everyone can be a writer. I’ve been doing this a long-ass time—more than half my life. If it was up to me, I’d still be getting paid for it, but if that was the case, I probably wouldn’t be doing Defiantly Dutch. And while I am disappointed every single day that I’m not covering baseball, and miss it more than just about anything, the truth is DD is a simpler and purer form of fun and that Cassara and, before him, Tom Pecora are far nicer to deal with than certain executives who work in one of Cassara’s old zip codes. Plus, with this post, I have officially presided over Defiantly Dutch longer than I went to Hofstra, which is pretty wild and something I take seriously. So, you know, this is a pretty good deal, even if it’s not optimal and even if I have to spend many more hours on real world grunt work and even if doing DD requires I develop the time management skills that have eluded me for 37 years and change. Ironically, in that it’s just pure coincidence, I wrote this as Bob Seger’s “Against The Wind” popped up on XM. My good friend Gary Moore already wrote about the struggles of running against the wind and writing a blog , so I won’t tread the same ground here except to say the line “deadlines and commitments, what to leave in, what to leave out” has never rang so true. I may have to leave in less Defiantly Dutch during the off-season, but the only thing that would drive me from here is a full-time paying job in sports journHAHAHAHAHAH I almost wrote that with a straight face. But seriously, I’m not going anywhere unless someone pays me to write about sports full-time. I’m sure the urgency of the start of the season (three months from Friday, but who’s counting?) will bring with it a sudden ability to find enough hours in the day to do everything, even if it means spending less time than I would like putting together posts. But until then, I’ll do my best to post here sporadically. There’s a lot to chew on, both looking back and looking ahead, and hopefully I can get to most of it. I’ve already had a nice sit-down with new assistant coach Patrick Sellers and I’ll have a story about him soon. And I spent two hours at Hofstra Friday making copies of Flying Dutchmen year-end statistics dating back to 1972-73, and it would be a crime against humanity if I failed to find several blog posts out of that treasure trove of geeky information. So while we may be going nowhere lately, don’t worry, we’re going nowhere fast. Hang on for the ride—whenever I start the Blue Beetle, that is. Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch .

Expectation Setting…

The dearth of information this summer is somewhat by design. The real world work explodes, golf courses beckon to be brought to their knees, and there isn’t any real news outside of recruiting. Others do that very well. The time is passed analyzing what last year told us, within the framework of past years and expectations for the coming season. I can tell you I’ve banged out close to 1,000 words surrounding the ongoing CAA Arms Race, and I haven’t yet hit the meat of the topic. Names like Capaccio have been referenced, so consider yourself warned. Another warning: we try to work in some Eastern philosophy to keep you thinking; perhaps thinking in a different way about college basketball. This past weekend I went to see the Dalai Lama speak–big hitter the Lama–so you can expect more of that this season. The rest of the summertime is spent digging into statistics and attempting to uncover trends, anomalies, and those things that slip past us is the heat of the season. It makes for better questions to the coaches when I call them for Blue Ribbon preview articles. I got to eight coaches before they hit the road, and have to finish up once they’re finished crisscrossing the globe. Until then, here’s three nuggets to sate you until I can pick up my head again: Monte Ross on Devon Saddler: “There’s a difference in liking basketball and loving basketball. Someone who loves basketball works just as hard when you’re not there and that’s what he does. On his own. I’m not afraid to say he’s going to garner some national attention this year. He’s impossible to stop when he gets into the lane and with his added jump shot he is harder to guard. The best part is that he embraces that.” Bruiser Flint, on his team’s offense: “Everybody thinks we don’t like to run but we try to run. We try to push the ball but we like to post it. We’re not prolific three point shooters and we have to improve that, shoot the ball better from three, but we don’t run to shoot threes. We run to post. I don’t think we did a bad job offensively last year but we were a terrible foul shooting team. When you get the ball to the post a lot you get to the foul line and we have to make those.” Shaka Smart, on Rob Brandenberg: “He’s got to be really good as a sophomore. He’s excited and working very hard. The thing is, he doesn’t know yet how good he can be. I wouldn’t change anything that happened last year because it worked out pretty well, but if I got 10 extra minutes a game to give to someone I’d give them to Rob to give him more experience.”

Freddie Jackson through NCAA Clearinghouse

Former New Hanover star makes grades with NCAA, could enroll at UNCW in August

DeMarco, Grimes and Pierce On Early-Season Payton Watch List

The race for the 2011 Walter Payton Award, sponsored by Fathead.com, kicked off Monday when The Sports Network announced Old Dominion's Thomas DeMarco, William and Mary's Jonathan Grimes and Delaware's Andrew Pierce were among a stellar 20-player Watch List for the Football Championship Subdivision's top individual honor.

#ESPN’s @BFeldmanESPN Lists Delaware’s Pierce as a Top Non-FBS Player

ESPN The Magazine’s Senior Writer Bruce Feldman ( @BFeldmanESPN ) lists Delaware running back Andrew Pierce, CAA Football’s 2010 Offensive Rookie of the Year, as part of his Top-10 Non-FBS players going into 2011. For the full story logon as an ESPNInsider after clicking this link: Ranking the Top Non-FBS Players Occasionally, I get some emails from folks wanting to hear more about non-FBS football. The subject doesn’t usually get much time in the spotlight, outside of a little coverage during the FCS playoffs in December or when there’s a rising prospect flashing on the NFL radar come draft time. So this week’s list is dedicated to the subject: the top 10 non-BCS players (at four-year schools) that college football fans should know about in 2011: No. 10 (tie). Andrew Pierce, RB, Delaware This guy was a revelation for the Blue Hens in 2010. Pierce is a former walk-on who came to the 1-AA powerhouse after a prolific prep career in New Jersey both as a runner and as a javelin thrower. Some college scouts, though, were skeptical if the 5-11, 200-pound back was a bit too stiff. Pierce, who has wowed his coaches with his instincts, certainly didn’t look stiff as he ran all over the CAA, slashing his way to 1,655 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns. And don’t expect him to slow down in 2011 since the Blue Hens have four starting O-linemen back as well as their tight end. For more logon to CAAFootball.com

Hofstra’s Jenkins drafted by Golden State

Golden State wasn’t one of a dozen NBA teams to host Charles Jenkins in a

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