By Ed Morrone
RICHMOND, Va.-When Greg Johnson’s wayward layup attempt landed harmlessly in Will Thomas’ mitts to place the stamp on Mason’s stunning 64-61 victory over the Pride in Saturday’s CAA quarterfinals game, the 200 or so Hofstra students that had made the trek down to Richmond must have borrowed Jack Buck’s classic line after Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series: I don’t believe what I just saw!
Unfortunately for them, they didn’t share Buck’s euphoria in how the game turned out. In a tournament (and entire season, for that matter) that started with so much promise, Johnson’s head-scratching two-point attempt marked the second consecutive gut-wrenching end to the Pride’s NCAA Tournament chances. Following last season’s unfulfilling chase for an at-large berth and Mason’s subsequent march to the Final Four, this year’s Hofstra team fell short of the monumental expectations that fans pinned on the team almost as soon as last season ended.
Perhaps these expectations were unfair considering the unique circumstances that unfolded between the Pride and Patriots last year, but the bottom line is that Hofstra failed to put themselves in the driver’s seat for the second straight year. By losing to UNC-Wilmington in last year’s championship game, the Pride left its fate up to the NCAA selection committee, which, as we all know by now, went with Mason as an at large and ended up looking pretty smart in doing so.
This time around, the ball was in Hofstra’s court to snatch a conference title that was pretty much up for grabs. The Pride held a 3-2 record against the other top CAA teams (VCU, Old Dominion and Drexel) and won its only game against eventual champion VCU, so the team was indeed capable of getting the job done.
So with that being said, what happened? How could the Pride again let the CAA title slips through its fingers, in a year where it brought back its three best players and all the other top teams suffered key losses?
Well, for one, the CAA is a stunningly deep conference that saw each team make the necessary adjustments despite the loss of so many marquee players. After losing its top three scorers from the Final Four team, Mason banded together with the resources it had left: scrappy players and a fantastic head coach, which is how most teams gain success in this conference.
But getting back to Hofstra, the loss of senior forwards Aurimas Kieza and Adrian Uter proved to be too much to overcome, as the Pride’s suspect and inexperienced frontcourt often played like it was overwhelmed. Chris Gadley and Mike Davis-Sabb never got into any type of groove, and freshman Greg Washington’s academic ineligibility issues certainly didn’t help matters, either.
The loss to George Mason basically symbolized the Pride’s entire season: an incomplete, sometimes enigmatic performance that ultimately ended in disappointment.
And this isn’t attempting to take anything away from the job Tom Pecora has done, because 22 wins is quite an accomplishment (Hofstra’s third straight 20-win season). But losses such as this one against Mason, the first three to start the season as well as the headscratchers at Delaware and Northeastern probably shouldn’t have happened, and every Hofstra player and coach will be the first one to tell you that. Those puzzling losses show that it may have just been one of those years.
Amongst all of this, one thing does remain clear: the eventual failures of the Hofstra men’s basketball team don’t rest squarely on the shoulders of Playstation Johnson. Yes, his play over those final 8.4 seconds would have got him kicked out of Basketball Fundamentals 101 and yes Hofstra could have tied the game on that possession, but the blame can (and should) be spread around. From Loren Stokes and Antoine Agudio’s nightmare performances in the title game to the inconsistency of the frontcourt to the lack of depth that placed such a heavy burden on the backcourt in the first place to constant free throw woes, all of these factors added into an equation that didn’t equate to a CAA Championship and an NCAA Tournament berth for the sixth straight year.
Again it’s the NIT and again it’s wait until next year. But in a year that started with so much hope, you can’t help but look at the Mason game and wonder what could have been.
Unfortunately for the Pride, nobody can believe what they just saw.