MBB Game 1 - vs Mount St. Marys 11/9 7:30 PM

[cactus]

The longest offseason in sports comes to an end when Hofstra welcomes the Mountaineers of Mt. St. Mary's to the Mack this Friday. Tipoff is scheduled for 7:30 PM.

Anyone with any info about Mt. St. Mary's?
They've already played 1 game, and were in it against NC State (who has UNCW transfer CJ Bryce) into the second half yesterday (although they did end up losing by 50).
Looks like only two guys were any kind of scoring threat in that game - guards Vado Morse and Jalen Gibbs.

[EvanJ]

North Carolina State had 9 of the top 11 scorers. Mount St. Mary's shot horribly and allowed North Carolina State to get offensive rebounds of half their misses. Mount St. Mary's went 16-14 last year with a horrible SOS. They went 4-3 in away games against the bottom 100 of the RPI. They lost at Bryant, who had 3 wins and was 337th of 351 in the RPI.

https://gohofstra.com/news/2018/11/7/me ... riday.aspx is titled "MBB: Hofstra Opens Season At Home On Friday." The teams are 4-4 against each other, but they haven't played since the first game of 1962-1963. Hofstra says they return 10 players, but that includes Coburn and Schutte who didn't play last season.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/ ... 9game1.pdf is Hofstra's Game Notes.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/ ... _Guide.pdf is Hofstra's season Media Guide.

http://www.mountathletics.com is Mount St. Mary's website, but they don't have a preview yet.

[HofstraMathew]

https://gohofstra.com/news/2018/11/8/ge ... vance.aspx

Article referring to limited ticket availability for the game tomorrow. Doesn't day how many tickets have been sold but definitely encouraging news.

[cactus]

https://gohofstra.com/news/2018/11/8/ge ... vance.aspx

Article referring to limited ticket availability for the game tomorrow. Doesn't day how many tickets have been sold but definitely encouraging news.

Premium tickets are sold out.

[Pride97]

Game day!

Can't wait to get back to the Mack today and get this season started. Let the optimism run wild!

[stuball888]

NCState blew this team out by 50. What should be our margin of victory tonite? They have 2 good players and not much of a bench

[cactus]

NCState blew this team out by 50. What should be our margin of victory tonite? They have 2 good players and not much of a bench

It's game 1 and the team has had injuries. I'll be happy with any kind of win.

[triplec2195]

NCState blew this team out by 50. What should be our margin of victory tonite? They have 2 good players and not much of a bench

It's game 1 and the team has had injuries. I'll be happy with any kind of win.

Yeah let's not get cocky but the crowd should be a big plus for a change.

[EvanJ]

Hofstra announced that it is sold out including tickets for students. Our March 22, 2006 NIT Quarterfinal against Old Dominion got 5,047, so that's the capacity. Last season's opener got 2,703, which made it only 53.6 percent full. In Jenkins's season season in 2010-2011, the home opener wasn't close to sold out at 3,727. It was against Farmingdale State. On one hand, they could have provided a few fans. On the other hand, Hofstra fans could be less likely to see a team that isn't in Division I. In 2015-2016 when Green and Tanksley were seniors, the opener got only 2,106. Hopefully fans like the video boards and sound and we improve our attendance. We've averaged under 2,000 in the last six seasons. I don't have our rank memorized, but last season we were about 40th percentile among the 351 Division I teams.

Edit: We were 217th in attendance, which was the 38th percentile. I think Hofstra could be among the leaders for the amount of people whose nearest Division I team is each team. Nassau County has more people than some states.

http://mountathletics.com/sports/mbkb/2 ... 1108jl2co5 is Mount St. Mary's preview, but it's a set of articles like blogs have where later on the preview won't be at the top.

https://d2o2figo6ddd0g.cloudfront.net/i ... ofstra.pdf is Mount Saint Mary's Game Notes. They were picked last in the Northeast Conference, which was 28th out of 32 in the Conference RPI last season. They have won only 1 of the last 13 games against CAA teams including teams who left. That was an 81-70 double overtime win hosting James Madison on November 14, 2006, and James Madison went 7-23 that season. Contrary to what I posted above, it says the capacity is 5,023.

[daHUPride]

I'll start.
Speakers of the new system are to loud. Way to loud. The visuals are GREAT.
Nice showing by all fans - especially the student section.
Rather hear more from the Pep Band then canned YMCA blasted through our new sound system.
I am a proud American - love hearing our anthem and other patriotic songs - but at half time tonight I thought I was at Trump Rally and a Hofstra BB game broke out
A win is a win.
Terrible start. Good ending results. Once we started moving the ball away from the overloading MtStM D we started getting some wide open 3's.
JAM seems calmer. He also seems to have longer leash and shorter memory when giving some player some slack instead of banishing them to the JAM Dog House.
We are going to see a lot offer 4 guard set (Buie, JFW, Ep and Ray) and one of the big men.
Taylor was much better in 2nd half then 1st. Some nice plays, passes, blocks.
Dwyer is fundamentally sound but slow - also a few nice blocks a pass or two.
Couborn looks like a high energy player (a more skilled Nicols) - didn't get much PT so I didn't get much feel for him.
We are deeper with guys that - it seems - can give us minutes at few spots.
One win down and more to go.

[HofstraPride1]

I'll start.
Speakers of the new system are to loud. Way to loud. The visuals are GREAT.
Nice showing by all fans - especially the student section.
Rather hear more from the Pep Band then canned YMCA blasted through our new sound system.
I am a proud American - love hearing our anthem and other patriotic songs - but at half time tonight I thought I was at Trump Rally and a Hofstra BB game broke out
A win is a win.
Terrible start. Good ending results. Once we started moving the ball away from the overloading MtStM D we started getting some wide open 3's.
JAM seems calmer. He also seems to have longer leash and shorter memory when giving some player some slack instead of banishing them to the JAM Dog House.
We are going to see a lot offer 4 guard set (Buie, JFW, Ep and Ray) and one of the big men.
Taylor was much better in 2nd half then 1st. Some nice plays, passes, blocks.
Dwyer is fundamentally sound but slow - also a few nice blocks a pass or two.
Couborn looks like a high energy player (a more skilled Nicols) - didn't get much PT so I didn't get much feel for him.
We are deeper with guys that - it seems - can give us minutes at few spots.
One win down and more to go.

Completely agree that they need to let pep band play more! They are much better than in past and deserve to get more air time.
Overall atmosphere was great and love the video boards!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[EvanJ]

Wright-Foreman scored 20 and Pemberton and Buie scored 18. If Buie can shoot this well, we will be hard to stop. He made 6 out of 9 field goals including both threes. Wright-Foreman didn't shoot well, but he had 7 rebounds and 5 assists. He didn't have 7 rebounds in a game last season, and it was his first career game with at least 7 rebounds and at least 5 assists. Buie also had 5 assists. Five players had at least 6 rebounds. Taylor led with 10, Trueheart had 7, Pemberton had 6, and Dwyer had 6. Dwyer made 1 out of 2 field goals and 1 out of 2 free throws, so he only scored 3, but it wasn't due to poor shooting. He had 6 rebounds and 2 blocked shots in 18 minutes. The starters, Dwyer, and Ray played at least 18 minutes. Coburn and Wormley played 9. Schutte and Klementowicz played 1 minute (less than 1 at the end but it rounds to 1), and all of their numbers other than minutes and +/- were 0. We didn't shoot free throws well at 12 out of 18, with 5 out of 9 from Wright-Foreman and Pemberton and 7 out of 9 for everybody else. We had 3 turnovers before our first assist, but we finished with 15 assists and had only 5 turnovers after our first assist to make 8. In our last 14 games, we are averaging only 8.1 turnovers. Our great 2005-2006 team averaged 13.5 turnovers. The fewest turnovers per game last season was 8.5 by Virginia. Our average of 10.8 was 22nd out of 351 teams last season. In our last 15 games, our most turnovers is 12.

The statistics at http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=237109 added Analytics that weren't there last season. A formula that tells how many points each player scored and allowed adds up to 25.4 for Hofstra and -4.2 for Mount St. Mary's, which is way off from the +/-. They also have a shot chart. We made 9 out of 23 threes, 9 out of 22 twos that were not layups or dunks, and 11 out of 19 layups or dunks.

The attendance was 4,645, which doesn't match Hofstra's announcement of a sellout, but it's still our highest home attendance since 5,050 people saw Jenkins's final home game on February 26, 2011.

http://defiantlydutch.blogspot.com/2018 ... marys.html is Jerry Beach's preview.

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basket ... =401083853 is the Associated Press recap titled "Hofstra overcomes slow start, beats Mount St. Mary's 79-61." Just like last season, the link in Justin Wright-Foreman ends after "Wright" and goes to a Justin Wright who played years ago.

James Madison blew an 11 point lead at East Carolina. With 8.1 seconds left, East Carolina took their first lead of the second half at 72-71, but they did two things wrong. They could have held for the final shot. They got a basket and foul but missed the free throw. Stuckey Mosley was triple-teamed and made shot off the backboard at the buzzer to win 73-73. The CAA went 3-3 today. Northeastern was the other CAA team to win. Elon lost 116-67 hosting North Carolina. North Carolina attempted a whopping 87 field goals. Hofstra's record is 94, and Hofstra's most attempts since 2005-2006 is 85.

[Flying Dutchmen]

Overall, it was a very nice win, tough to grade the performance because Mount St. Mary's is projected to be very bad and we looked like we had a big physical advantage.

We came out tight, we weren't moving well on either side of the ball, thinking too much. First set of subs, getting Dwyer in there calmed us down, and we started to execute. Overall, I thought the last 25 minutes of the game we executed very well offensively.

Definitely In Guards We Trust this year, 56 from JWF/Pemba/Buie, they really dominated the second half. Ray gave us good minutes too. We slaughtered them in transition, a lot of heads up guard play offensively as the game progressed.

Too early to give true assessments of the new guys, but some things I noticed: I thought Taylor was a bit stiff; stiff lower body actions, didn't move particularly well, but he looked more comfortable in the second half. I thought Dwyer played pretty damn hard, I'm satisfied that both of the senior bigs will give us something this year, I will reserve my judgement until I see them play against higher competition.

I thought Trueheart looked like a solid starter, his athleticism is really good, and he crashed the boards pretty hard. We need him to keep developing to have a chance at a title this year, definitely liked the start though. I would like to see him in the 28-30 M/G range to see what type of impact we would get out of him.

Didn't get much of a feel on Coburn to be honest, and Schutte only got in for about a minute at the end. Wormley was ok, and we didn't see any of Radovic, perhaps he's redshirting.

Defensively, I'm concerned. Total lack of killer instinct, same crap with the switching in the man to man, which led to open shots for MSM all day. A good team would have fried us tonight. We definitely played harder in the second half defensively, but the opposing ball handler was always moving too freely against our defensive sets. If we have nine guys playing regular minutes, we have to make some of these games uglier, we dominate in transition with our guards, we have to generate more turnovers and bad shots.

I am a proud American - love hearing our anthem and other patriotic songs - but at half time tonight I thought I was at Trump Rally and a Hofstra BB game broke out.

Man, that halftime show was bordering on the surreal.

Other than that, the atmosphere was great. The new scoreboards look amazing! The students showed up! It was labeled a sell out, it definitely wasn't close, but there were still a good amount of people there, and they got to see a big win, and a dominant second half. Kudos to the staff for doing a great job for the opener.

Excited for Marshall, which should be a great early test for us.

[HUclassof19]

my thoughts.

team was clearly nervous to start. first game gitters. big crowd. new like arena. so im not putting any stock in first eight minutes.

and after the first eight minutes we ROLLED. won by like 30. defense was good. intensity was good.

loved seeing desure play well. eli was tremendous. jwf was jwf. taylor can play a litle bit and so can dwyer. they will help us a lot. want to see some more of coburn before judging. but trueheart is an important piece. does so many little things.

arena was rocking. i dont know who to thank for everything they did - jay? chrissy? mike? but its awesome. boards are awesome. sound was awesome. crowd was awesome. it felt new in there.

ive never seen us in the student center go up to top of the lions den. that was cool.

[garyg]

Keep in mind this is a very weak program that we beat and we will have to play significantly better to be competitive with Marshall...

On another note where is Polito ?????

[garyg]

Very nice crowd even if not a sellout... shows that it can be done with a concentrated marketing effort

[HofstraPride1]

Very nice crowd even if not a sellout... shows that it can be done with a concentrated marketing effort

It was a sellout in the sense that one of upper corner sections was removed for the fanfest so if you still that brought down capacity by about 400 seats,

[EvanJ]

Very nice crowd even if not a sellout... shows that it can be done with a concentrated marketing effort

It was a sellout in the sense that one of upper corner sections was removed for the fanfest so if you still that brought down capacity by about 400 seats,

That explains it. The attendance of 4,645 is 378 lower than the announced capacity. We have 7 out of conference home games compared to 6 last season. Casual fans won't care about the next two teams to come to us, North Carolina A&T and Cal State Fullerton. After that, Siena, Monmouth, and Rider are in the MAAC, and then we host non-Division I Rosemont. If more fans come to see us against northern CAA teams, our attendance could get worse because our first three CAA games are hosting Delaware, Drexel, and Northeastern. If we're in contention for the regular season title, it could be bad for attendance that our last 6 games are 4 away and hosting Towson and James Madison, who are unlikely to be in contention.

Edit: Jerry Beach said Hofstra was favored by 12 and KenPom predicted 82-68. Hofstra was picked third and Mount St. Mary's was picked last. In last season's Sagarin, Towson (third in the CAA) would have been expected to win by 20 if they hosted Bryant (last in the Northeast).

[Cards]

Pretty much agree with all that has been said. I liked most of what I saw, but am weighting it knowing the reality that MSM (except for #'s 1 and 35) are a very weak team. We will need to play much better (in all phases of the game) to beat Marshall (who was predicted by some to win thier conference). Jury still out on our new bigs as MSM had nothing at the 5 spot. I like that we seem to have more depth this year. Just my opinion, but I though EP is not moving at 100% and still is recovering from ankle injury (anyone else feel that way)?


New boards are awesome - what an upgrade!


BTW, last night Stony Brook beat South Carolina. Looks like out OOC schedule is not that easy (Marshall, UM, Fullerton, VCU, SB, Rider).

[HUSID74]

Kudos go to our new AD for pushing this opening doubleheader HARD. Hoping to see similar effort going forward...things had gotten real stale and complacent...new energy....good!