Flying Dutchmen Fans

Starting a thread for our first NCAA Tournament game.

Please post comments about other aspects of the NCAA Tournament here:

viewtopic.php?t=48763.

Follow the action on TruTV and WRHU (88.7 FM).

So much buzz about us having a real chance to bust the bracket. The back page of the Newsday yes that paper has the headlines "CINDERELLA'S BALL". A lot of hype out there hope that the team doesn't get caught up in all of this and they just play their game. Would love for us to get our first NCAA tourney win against BAMA!

A lot of great story lines for this game: the Holloway arrest, Estrada, the 2020 team and Joe, our guards, esp Preston Edmead!
Lots to cover.

Line has held steady at 11.5 for a few days now without Holloway. Speaking of the name Holloway Speedy mentioned his buddy Shaheen Holloway and the hope that we can make a St. Peter's type run. To me the first 5-10 minutes will be HUGE. Do we come out tight and flat as pancake like against Monmouth? Let's hope the staff does what they can to help us avoid that since Bama obviously has the tournament and big game experience. Crowd will obviously also heavily favor Bama unless it's close and the neutral crowd gets into it for us. Roll Pride.

Kevin Maher from New 12 made a hilarious Instagram reel to introduce Alabama to Hofstra.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWEOhCfES_Q/?l=1

Hofstra's chances have increased with Troy and Hawai'i getting blown out.

Maybe 4 seeds will go 4-0, but there's at least a decent chance that at least one 13 seed will win, and Hofstra seems to have a lot better chance than the other remaining 13 seed, Cal Baptist.

Two press conferences before Friday's big game:

Hofstra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPcRKKXfEH4

Alabama:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsglIRp2IVc

Jojogunne wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 10:34 pm Two press conferences before Friday's big game:

Hofstra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPcRKKXfEH4

German: Describing himself "As an unc of the team..." (Cruz and Preston laugh) This team is so likeable

Preston and Cruz on Speedy:

Preston: He gives us the most confidence that you could play with. Coming here was the best decision of my life because he just gave me so much confidence to go out there and play my game.

Cruz: He just developed me a lot as a player. He’s helped me be the best version of myself on and off the court. He’s changed my life [and has] helped me out a lot.

The praise for Speedy now should be as loud as it was from those who criticized him before and said Hofstra could never get to this stage with him, and that it was time to move on from him. Maybe what they run is too 1-on-1 sometimes because he has maybe too much faith in guys like Cruz and Preston at times, but even before they play Alabama, they have already accomplished what critics thought they never would, and Speedy's personal relationships with his players are an overlooked and undervalued part of that.

I love that Cruz, Preston, and German all took their name placards with them after the interview, and I've seen players from other teams do similar things. Gotta love college basketball and what it means to the players, the coaching staffs, the communities. You'd never see NBA players do something like that. It means so much more in college (as Speedy said too, he talks with his college teammates today, and not really with his high school or NBA teammates, not even the ones he won a title with except for Malik Rose - and even that might be because of the Drexel/Hofstra rivalry).

Great post wags, and I’ll be first in here as likely one of the more demanding fans of this university, program, staff, and team.

I am on my flight now to experience something I’ve truly dreamed about being able to do - and I have to thank Speedy, his staff, this team, and all the support folks involved from the university. And I am eager to thank them all in person today.

I’ve learned a lot about Speedy and his style these last couple of weeks - and I think I finally ‘get it’. That’s not to say it’s always right or that we couldn’t benefit from some varying tactics, but it is to say I understand what Speedy is about, his goals, what he’s doing, and more importantly, why. And I’m sure there’s still much more for to grasp, and I look forward to it.

There are many things to improve upon, and I don’t always agree with our approaches, but there is no denying these things:

- HU and Speedy run a quality program with high character kids.
- We have been privileged to land develop and witness some truly great players in this game.
- Speedy bleeds it - just like I and all of us do. Have to appreciate and be grateful for that.

Everyone involved, included this fanbase, have earned this - and we’re not done. This can be a catapult for the future - this can be just the beginning of something truly special. And I am a believer that it will be.

Now let’s go put some more respect on our name!

ROLL PRIDE

Well said Polito! Being a former scholarship athlete at Hofstra makes me extremely critical of this university and the athletic teams. I am extremely pumped and excited about today’s game and the fact that we made the tourney. However, I believe we should consider this the “norm” and is to be expected of our Bball program moving forward. Let’s enjoy today’s game!!!

Polito wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2026 8:16 am - HU and Speedy run a quality program with high character kids.
- We have been privileged to land develop and witness some truly great players in this game.
- Speedy bleeds it - just like I and all of us do. Have to appreciate and be grateful for that.

Let's all try to remember this even when they have a five-game losing streak and even when they don't reach the NCAA tournament.

Those things have been constants and should be celebrated regardless of how much they win or lose on the court.

Hofstra is only one of two teams in the tournament that had a 5 game losing streak.

So we have to take the good with the sometimes bad!! AMEN to this!!

Speedy brings a ton of intangibles and is outstanding with player development in every sense of the word. He is loyal and a high character guy. I sometimes question some in-game tactics, but the team plays hard for him, and that is probably the most important. We are fortunate to have him.

triplec2195 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2026 11:33 am So we have to take the good with the sometimes bad!! AMEN to this!!

And not just give up on the program when it's bad, and then hop back on when it's a moment like now, would be preferable.

joeg1 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2026 11:42 am Speedy brings a ton of intangibles and is outstanding with player development in every sense of the word. He is loyal and a high character guy. I sometimes question some in-game tactics, but the team plays hard for him, and that is probably the most important. We are fortunate to have him.

Right. What coach can't you question in-game tactics with at times? Even the best make big mistakes at times. We all think we know better at certain times, but that's a lot easier from the couch or from the stands, and it's a continual learning process for coaches, just as it is for players. If Speedy ends up being a head coach for 10, 15, 20 years, what he will do then will be better than what he's doing now in Year 5. It's like that for any good coach. To be fair to him and his growth, I think that should be the larger perspective rather than so often being prisoners of the moment and taking the temperature so drastically game to game.

Tyler Thomas chimed in with some very high praise about Speedy's player development this week and Cruz and Preston have mentioned it as well. There's a reason why until Speedy, no CAA team had ever had a POY and ROY in the same season before Part of that is recruiting luck, sure. And a good part of it is Cruz's and Preston's talent and hard work, but not exclusively. It's also Speedy's ability to develop them. I'd rather have a coach do that well and live with the in-game things you'd like to see fixed than a more sound in-game coach whose players don't display significant growth over time.

cactus wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2026 11:32 am Hofstra is only one of two teams in the tournament that had a 5 game losing streak.

I wonder how many teams had a season with a losing streak of at least 5 games and no double-digit losses all season. We are one of five teams that has not lost by double-digits, and the other four have 8 losses combined, which is fewer than we have. They are Arizona, Duke, Miami (Ohio), and Michigan.

https://defiantlydutch.blogspot.com/202 ... ament.html is Jerry Beach's "I’ll Be Quirky: Alabama (NCAA Tournament First Round)." He started that in 2008, so this is the first time he got to preview us in the NCAA Tournament. Davis is 9 points behind Ted Jackson for 32nd.

Claxton and North Carolina's Hubert Davis are the only NCAA Tournament coaches to coach their alma mater and play in the NBA. VCU came back from down 19 with 14 minutes left to defeat North Carolina 82-78 in overtime yesterday, so Claxton is the only remaining coach who can say that. Jerry listed the coaches who are coaching their alma mater and the coaches who played in the NBA without thinking about which coaches did both. While down 2 with 4 seconds left in overtime, North Carolina's Henri Veesaar missed the first free throw, so he had to intentionally miss the second. He did not know that the free throw must hit the rim in order to have an offensive rebound. His miss hit the backboard, but not the rim, which made it a deadball team rebound for VCU.

Of the twelve teams that won conference tournaments in 2020 before COVID shut things down, four of them have not made one of the six NCAA Tournaments since then.

https://www.ncaa.com/march-madness-live/game/228 will have statistics. I do not like the NCAA's statistics format as much as StatBroadcast.

In the first game of our doubleheader, 5 seed Texas Tech leads 12 seed Akron by 24-17. Jerry would call that a football score.

EvanJ wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2026 1:02 pm Of the twelve teams that won conference tournaments in 2020 before COVID shut things down, four of them have not made one of the six NCAA Tournaments since then.

Yup, Belmont, Boston U., Bradley, and East Tennessee State.

Hofstra, Liberty, Winthrop, Northern Kentucky, Utah State, Robert Morris, North Dakota State, and Gonzaga have all since been back.

EvanJ wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2026 1:02 pm https://www.ncaa.com/march-madness-live/game/228 will have statistics. I do not like the NCAA's statistics format as much as StatBroadcast.

Password for Statbroadcast: NCAAMedia

Mihalich is here sitting front row of the Hofstra section, wearing an old school Claxton shirt. Got a nice hand as he arrived from hofstra fans already here early 2nd half of the Tech Akron game

Charles Barkley and Clark Kellogg takin Hofstra basketball on national TV. That's gotta be a good thing for recruiting.