By Ed Morrone

As bad as this men’s basketball season has often gone (see: losses to St. Francis, Stony Brook, Fordham, etc.), somehow, someway, there is still hope. As miniscule as that glimmer of hope may be, it’s still floating above the hardwood floor at the Mack Sports Complex.

We all know the story by now. After winning 20-plus games the past three seasons and coming tantalizingly close to their first NCAA Tournament berth since the 2000-01 season, the program came across a road block this year. Several of them, in fact.

The team came armed with a youthful roster containing only one senior (a fellow by the name of Antoine Agudio, you may have heard of him) and several promising new faces whose raw talent needed to be honed.

While the skills of players such as Nathaniel Lester, Darren Townes, Dane Johnson and Charles Jenkins were being discovered and Agudio missed three games with an ankle injury, the losses piled on. Fifteen of them, to be precise. Winning streaks are defined by three or more consecutive victories, and the Pride has not corralled one of those yet. When reviewing these facts, most would consider it a lost season. But not so fast.

Clearly, the 2007-08 campaign has not been one in which most of the Pride fans have been left jumping for joy after every game like so many times the past three seasons. However, as many CAA teams have proven in recent years, how you finish is so much more significant than how the season starts. (Don’t believe me? Check up on last year’s VCU team, or the Final Four George Mason Patriots from two seasons ago.)

With five extremely winnable conference games remaining (including last night’s contest against Northeastern, which was still being played when the Chronicle went to press), a strong conclusion is not extremely out of the question.

Let’s review the remaining schedule. By default, the Northeastern game is one Hofstra almost has to have, if for no better reason that one of the Pride’s two road victories came against the Huskies in Boston on Jan. 26. After Northeastern, Hofstra will travel to James Madison to take on the Dukes. For a team that is 2-11 away from Hempstead, no road wins are ever guaranteed, but JMU has troubles of its own, losing nine out of its last 11 games. The Pride knocked off the Dukes for its first conference win back on Jan. 5, and Tom Pecora has his team playing much better now than they were five weeks ago.

From there, it’s a home game against Towson, a team Hofstra fell to on Jan. 30 and also one with a 9-14 record-not too much better than the Pride’s 8-15 mark. We’ll ignore the Bracket Buster game at Iona because that one is not important by any stretch of the imagination. Then, it’s at Delaware, which is probably the most difficult game left, but the Pride caged the Blue Hens at home on Feb. 2. The last game before the CAA Tournament starts is home against Drexel, a team having major rebuilding issues of its own.

In a perfect world, Hofstra would win all of these remaining games to finish with an 11-8 mark in the conference. Since this season has been far from perfect, let’s be realistic and say the Pride ends up with eight or nine conference wins. That won’t put Hofstra in the top four, which would mean the Pride would have to improbably win four straight in the conference tournament to advance to the postseason.

Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? Not totally. Last year, a George Mason team that finished 9-9 in conference nearly won four straight games in Richmond…heck, they would have if not for the title game heroics of the guy who would later become a March Madness darling-VCU’s Eric Maynor.

While all has often seemed lost, that faint sliver of hope still remains. And what was it that Andy Dufresne said in The Shawshank Redemption? Ah, yes:

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”