HEMPSTEAD, N.Y — Like many head men’s basketball coaches across the nation, Craig “Speedy” Claxton is quite understandably no fan of the new Name Image Likeness (NIL) landscape that has essentially turned Claxton’s sport into a free agency free-for-all. Yet, like his counterparts, Claxton will have to find a way to navigate through that with a roster that has undergone a lot of turnover.
Had things remained the same, Claxton’s Hofstra Pride would have picked up from where it left off last season, trying to build off of last year’s semi-successful campaign with the same key players returning. But when NIL money lures those players away to others schools — as it did for Claxton’s key core from a year ago — Hofstra, along with much of the rest of the country is now forced to retool and somehow quickly make it all work on the fly.
For better or (likely and unfortunately) worse, it has basically become organized pickup-games, only for a season, instead for a single day at the park. But such is college basketball’s new world and coaches like Claxton are suddenly in the same boat as many others whether they wanted to be or not.
For the Pride, this year’s challenge may be greater than for many other schools as Hofstra, due to NIL losses and graduation, is returning just 22.8 percent of its minutes, 15.8 percent of its scoring, 18.7 percent of its rebounding, and 12.6 percent of its assists from last season.
It’ll take some time — by Claxton’s estimate, at least a couple of months — to truly see how well his newcomers may jell. The first indication of how that may go wasn’t much of a test during Hofstra’s 2024-25 season-opening 89-62 win over the Division III Old Westbury Panthers at the David S. Mack Sports Complex on Monday night.
And yet the first 14 minutes even provided cause for concern, as the Pride surprisingly found itself down, 25-18, before scoring the next nine points. After the Panthers answered that with a 9-1 run, to go up, 34-28, Hofstra closed the half with the final six points to tie the game at 34 apiece by halftime.
Although that small spurt was more encouraging, it was still far from what Claxton and his new roster — playing its first official game together or not — expected to that point against a Division III opponent, especially at home.
However, that’s when things got serious for the new-look Pride, which extended its first-half closing stretch to 21 straight points with the first 15 points of the second half.
Old Westbury never got closer than within 10 points (less than a minute later) before Hofstra went up 58-40 with 12:04 remaining and by as much as 29 points with just under three minutes left.
“A great job in the second half,” Claxton said afterward. “We picked up our energy and effort and that was the tell of the game. The first half, I thought, we came out slow. We didn’t have the energy that we needed to play [with] but we got [that energy] up in the second half and that’s why we were able to pull away.”
The sharp contrast in play between most of the first half and that in the second half was a carry-over of what Claxton saw in unofficial preseason contests for a new team trying to find its way in the early going.
“If we can build off of the way we played in the second half, that’s the way we’ve got to compete, for 40 minutes, not 20,” Claxton said. “We did the same thing on our two scrimmages, we only played one half [in those].”
While roles and minutes need to be figured out as the season progresses, the Pride’s first game counted — whether it should have or not, against a D-III team, which is an example another less serious issue than NIL influence is for college basketball in general — provided a possible glimpse of where Claxton may look for top scoring options.
Hofstra, long-known as Guard U. for its ability to recruit and develop quality guards, may have found a trio of guards through the transfer portal that it can heavily rely on this year.
At least such was the case against Old Westbury, as sophomores Jean Aranguren (from Iona) and Cruz Davis (from Iona and then St. John’s), and junior Jaquan Sanders (from Seton Hall) combined for just three fewer points than the Panthers’ total, with Aranguren posting a career-best 25 points while being complemented by 19 points, a game-high eight assists, and seven rebounds from Davis (12-for-14 at the foul line) and 15 from Sanders (5-for-12 from 3-point range).
Up front, freshman forward Joshua Decady looked good with 11 points and five rebounds in 21 minutes off the bench.
One returnee from last season, sophomore guard KiJan Robinson, recorded his first career double-double with 10 points and a game-best 10 rebounds, plus four assists.
Claxton also had to like the leadership mindset of Aranguren who after adding five rebounds and three assists along with his scoring, said, “I love playing hard, I love doing a little bit of everything, I love playing defense.”
As his head coach noted, Davis agreed, “The first half, it wasn’t too good. The second half, we just picked up the energy.
“The first real game, it was just first-game jitters [in] the first half, and the second half, we just played how we play in practice.”
For now, Claxton is willing to wait for eventual growth through the inevitable growing pains that naturally come with a new roster getting to know each other’s tendencies while trying to blend well in a sport that often depends heavily on fostering good team chemistry.
“The execution on both sides of the basketball wasn’t [always] there but it’s a lot of new guys,” Claxton acknowledged. “We’ve got to be patient with these kids. Hopefully, come January, February, [it’ll be] where we want it to be.”
Until then, Claxton is taking the same approach that many of his colleagues are forced to follow in a new era nationally, noting that perhaps a rough first half with a quick correction in the second half wasn’t such a bad way to start.
“It’s a great first game for us,” Claxton said. “With so many new guys, we’ve got to work the kinks out. It’s hard in this [new] landscape of college basketball but hopefully, we can just keep building off of this one and take it game by game.”