By Ed Morrone

From an outsider’s perspective, Antoine Agudio and Steve Nisenson couldn’t be more different.

Agudio is a local kid from Suffolk County who always seemed destined for great things when he chose to play basketball in Hempstead five years ago. Meanwhile, Nisenson is a New Jersey guy who had initially never even heard of Hofstra, and almost wound up on the hoops team at Temple University. At 23 years old, Agudio has thrived in the three-point era of college basketball, as his 350 career trey bombs clearly indicate. Nisenson, now 64, played only three years of college basketball in a day where freshmen were ineligible to play.

But, if you take a closer look at the past and present of Hofstra men’s basketball, which has been on an intriguing collision course this season, you’ll see more similarities than you would originally anticipate. For one, both boast the quality of being prolific scorers. Nisenson racked up 2,222 career points, and by the time readers find this story, Agudio will most likely have just a few more than Nisenson’s final tally, which has stood as the Hofstra record since 1965. Also, those who regularly attend Pride games know that Agudio dons a No. 13 Hofstra jersey, but did you also know that Nisenson wore the exact same number when he last played here 43 years ago?

Unfortunately for Agudio, he hasn’t had too much time to focus on the fact that he’s about to surpass a record that until now seemed unbreakable. The reason? Well, he’s scored 548 total points going into last night’s game against Delaware, and Hofstra has often needed every single one of them to even stay competitive this year, often against mediocre opponents. With Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera gone, Agudio is the only senior on the roster who plays important minutes, and he is often joined in the starting lineup by three players who before this season had never suited up in a Hofstra uniform.

But none of this record talk has even mattered, anyway, because the always-humble Agudio almost always decides to deflect talk about him becoming the scoring king, choosing instead to talk about how much he desperately wants to win in his senior season. So far that has been easier said than done since the Pride has been stuck under .500 for most of the season (11-16 overall when the Chronicle went to press).

As for Nisenson, he insists he has nothing but good feelings for Agudio, the guy who is about to break his record that has stood for more than four decades. “Listen, he has had a terrific career,” Nisenson told Newsday on Feb. 18. “He’s a great shooter, a great scorer and I am happy. I know it sounds like a cliché, but everything I have now is the result of my being at Hofstra.”

With the Pride playing its best basketball of the season (seven wins in its last 10 games), Agudio would love to be able to enjoy the record if it means his team continues to play the way that is making them look like CAA Tournament sleeper.

“I really don’t think about it too much, but at the end of the day it’s in the back of my mind,” Agudio said after Saturday’s win at Iona. “The most important thing I want to think about is the win. That’s more important than anything. I know the record is going to come sooner or later. When it comes, I’ll be happy I broke it, move on from there and hopefully win the CAA [Tournament].”

For the first time, presumably during Saturday’s regular season finale that will also serve as Agudio’s final home game in Hempstead, Nisenson and Antoine will meet face-to-face for the very first time. It has the potential to be quite the Hofstra farewell for Agudio, who should expect a lengthy standing ovation from a hopefully packed Mack Sports Complex crowd on Senior Day.

Either way, Agudio is keeping it all in perspective, hoping it’s not too late to achieve his dream of playing the NCAA Tournament, something Stokes and Rivera never accomplished either.

And what if someone else eventually comes along (Charles Jenkins, maybe?) and breaks Agudio’s record?

“If I do break the record, I wouldn’t mind somebody else getting it down the road,” he said. “Because that’s what it’s made for.”