By Kyle Kandetzki - SPORTS EDITOR With only days until the season kicks off, there is some excitement from scanning this year’s Hofstra Men’s Basketball slate. Take a look at the most notable fixtures and observations this season:
1. Mihalich ties throughout
The 2015-16 slate will start off with schools that head coach Joe Mihalich knows a lot about, and saw in the past. The connections made will be apparent on opening night when Hofstra takes on Canisius College on Nov. 13. Canisius plays in the MAAC, the conference he coached with at Niagara for 15 years, and the campuses are only separated by a half-hour trip.
Other connections: a second installment of Hofstra vs. La Salle, Mihalich’s alma mater and where he was an assistant coach from 1981-1998. Also coming from the MAAC is Siena on Dec 9.
2. Molloy an interesting addition
As evidence from last year’s thrilling game versus Stony Brook, local rivalries are great for getting fans to the bleachers. Yet, I’m not so sure a matchup with Rockville Center’s Molloy College will bring the same type of energy. Molloy went 16-13 … but they are Division II and on a completely different level of competition from Hofstra.
This game will be all but an automatic win for Hofstra, but it does negative favors for the difficulty of Hofstra’s schedule and will not prepare Hofstra for the grind of CAA play. On one end, strength of schedule does not matter in mid-major basketball, where at-large bids are all but non-existent. However, from a different perspective, a very weak non-conference slate did not seem to do Hofstra any favors last season.
Then again, Division II “University of Sciences” beat Drexel last year, so who knows.
3. Neutral site games en masse
Hofstra has five neutral site games on tap in 2015, four at Paradise Jam at the U.S. Virgin Islands, and one at Madison Square Garden. For the Paradise Jam, the possibilities are great. The players will get a chance to play on a beautiful island, the games will be televised nationally on CBS Sports Network and the team will play a very formidable opponent in Florida State to open things up on Nov. 20. They also have the chance to play even better teams like South Carolina and Tulsa (50th in RPI).
As for Hofstra’s appearance at MSG, there is nothing cooler for a college athlete than to play at “The World’s Most Famous Arena.” But some things about the game itself are worth noting, for better or worse. They will play Appalachian State, a subpar team from North Carolina, so only the most hardcore fans will come to fill out some seats (unlike last year’s appearance at the Barclays, where both schools were from NY). And even worse for the attendance figures, the Jets play the Giants on the same day (Dec. 6) and many might be inclined to tune in for that instead.
4. Stony Brook rivalry renewed … but not at the best time
It was a no-brainer to put Stony Brook on the schedule after last year’s game when excitement roared as Hofstra won in the final moments of play.
This year the matchup switches to Stony Brook’s campus, and one can hope Pride fans make the march to attend. The energy is expected to be in full swing for Seawolves fans which will only push the rivalry to new heights … but there is one problem.
The game is being played on Dec. 20. Fall commencement for SBU occurs three days beforehand, while the semester officially ends at Hofstra the day before, though most students will be long gone before that. It seems pretty certain the energy from this rivalry will take a vacation this year, just like students on Stony Brook’s campus.
5. CAA redemption
There are two big team match-ups that all Hofstra fans and players will circle as the calendar turns to 2016: games against CAA champ Northeastern, and the team that eliminated Hofstra last season, William & Mary. The first times that Hofstra will see either team will come in back-to-back games on Jan. 21 and 23. The latter comes at home vs. W&M, and as students move back in for the spring semester.
The biggest match for the program as a whole comes a month later when Hofstra faces Northeastern at the Mack, a chance to not only establish their place as the premiere CAA team, but to show tournament prowess on the national stage, as the game will be televised on NBC Sports Network.
6. Staying local, but not for all the preferred programs
Mihalich mentioned during the schedule review that Hofstra struggled to schedule more well-known and premiere programs in the New York area, in a sense that they were not cooperating with Hofstra. It is interesting to wonder what the issue would be for a school like St. John’s to include Hofstra on their slate. Hofstra, though mid-major, is looking to be consistently competitive and it is a shame for fans that they can’t see a marquee matchup.
7. First semester failure?
For the first semester of men’s basketball, there are only two home games between the season opener and the final day of classes, and they fall within four days of each other (11/13 vs. Canisius and 11/16 vs. Molloy). This will provide a small window for Pride fans to get a feel for their team in person, as the only other chance they will get after that will mean traveling to MSG on 12/6.
The second semester provides plenty of exciting CAA matchups, but the hype will not get traction early like it did last year with the Stony Brook Game.
8. Overall, an improvement
Though the schedule is not challenging top to bottom, it is much tougher than last season’s, which featured some extremely weak teams. The Pride played four nonconference teams in the bottom 300 of the postseason RPI of all 351 DI programs. They played Central Connecticut (343), Jacksonville (339), Jackson State (317) and Coppin State (311), which was a sub-300 team in the CAA, to further pad their record.
This season features just one team that was below 300 last season, and though RPI will dramatically shift, things look a lot tougher for the Pride – in a good sense. Hofstra will face 305 ranked FAU and beyond that they are scheduled to face a heaping of teams in the top half of last year’s rankings in Florida State, Canisius, La Salle, Stony Brook, Saint Bonaventure, and potentially Tulsa and South Carolina.