Campus Confidential

By Erik Boland

That seemed to be the question making its way around the Mack Sports Complex last night after Hofstra's surprisingly close 67-64 victory over St. Francis, which came into the game winless. Hofstra has won six straight but questions abound about its potential as an NCAA Tournament team because, as has been correctly pointed out by just about everyone, including head coach Tom Pecora, the Pride has not looked particularly impressive in any of those wins.

My reaction to the early-season knee-jerk reaction to Hofstra's sometimes unimpressive play is, well, what did you expect? To steal from Cardinals' coach Dennis Green during his hysterical rant after that Bears loss, "They are what we thought they were."

Hofstra's guards were a given, post play was question mark. Well, nine games into the season Loren Stokes averages 21.8 points, Antoine Agudio averages 18 and Carlos Rivera is at 11.7. Next has been the surprise of the young season, sophomore Zygis Sestokas, a guard/forward who plays almost exclusively on the wing, who averages 9.7 points and has hit 50 percent of his three-pointers. It has been a mess in the post, with undersized Mike-Davis Sabb mixing solid performances with indifferent ones, Chris Gadley rarely getting off the bench and Arminas Urbutis, a 6-9 sophomore who plays hard but is physically overmatched. Hofstra is outrebounded by a 34-31 average per game and its difficult to imagine that suddenly improving over the final 2/3 of the season.

The good news is the three guards will be a challenging matchup for whomever Hofstra is playing, particularly in the conference. The Pride will struggle against teams with size, or even teams that simply have athletic front courts without size, but those same teams will be unlikely to come up with defensive schemes to stop Hofstra's high-scoring quartet on the perimeter. That adds up to close games, which have been a trend nine games into the season and will likely continue the rest of the way. And keep in mind, for better or worse, the way teams play in November rarely resemble how they play in late February and early March. Some teams progress, others digress.

What's wrong with Hofstra? The same thing that was wrong with it before the season started: killer guards with a questionable frontcourt. They are what we thought they were. And it's too early to determine whether that's good or bad.