Hofstra Grinds Out Win with CAA Tourney Feel

Lee S. Weissman GoHofstra.com

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y — The standard sports cliché when key people are missing is “next man up.” Often, that refers to players. On occasion, it could be a coach. Rarely does it mean trying to gut out a big win without a head coach, a starter, and a key rotational player, but that’s exactly what the Hofstra Pride faced on Saturday afternoon.

No matter though.

Despite missing fourth-year head coach Craig “Speedy” Claxton and starting junior guard Jaquan Sanders (both out for personal reasons), as well as senior guard German Plotnikov (who had a lower leg injury), Hofstra built an 11-point second-half lead and held on for a 66-63 Colonial Athletic Association win over the North Carolina-Wilmington Seahawks at the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex.

With assistant coach Mike DePaoli, redshirt sophomore guard Khalil Farmer, and others picking up the slack, the Pride (10-7, 2-2 CAA) got a much-needed win early in conference play that Hofstra may be able to draw off of during the CAA tournament in March.

Senior guard Jean Aranguren’s drive down the lane and free throw for a three-point play provided the game’s seventh tie and ninth lead change, and put Hofstra ahead for good with 31.1 seconds left, but a lot happened to reach that point, starting with some news early in the day.

I found out this morning,” said DePaoli on when he knew he would be filling in for Claxton.

Next, DePaoli had to work on shuffling the starting lineup and rotation with the additional revelation that Plotnikov (averaging 21.8 minutes with six starts this year) would be missing his first game of the season and that Sanders (averaging 26.2 minutes with 13 starts) would be missing his second consecutive game (and basically his third straight, having played only two minutes in his most recent outing).

After playing a total of just 18 minutes over the Pride’s prior four games, Farmer had his best game against a Division I opponent with 13 points (about 10 points higher than his season average), in a career-high 38 minutes, on the strength of 3-for-6 shooting from 3-point range. Farmer also turned in a good defensive performance down the stretch against graduate guard Donavan Newby, who with a game-high 30 points, was UNCW’s only double-figure scorer.

Newby did most of his damage while carrying the Seahawks on his back with 21 of UNCW’s 39 second-half points but Aranguren nearly canceled that out with 17 of his team-best 20 points after halftime.

After Newby gave the Seahawks an 11-6 edge on a 3-pointer a little more than five minutes in, the Pride — as it often has this season — clamped down defensively and finished the half on a 23-13 run to reverse the earlier five-point margin for a 29-24 lead by intermission.

Hofstra twice pushed that advantage to as much as 11 points, first on a second-chance tip-in by graduate forward Michael Graham (11 points on 5-for-5 shooting and a game-high 11 rebounds in 21 minutes off the bench), with 14:04 left, and again, on an Aranguren step-back 3-pointer that moved the Pride’s lead to 48-37, less than a minute later.

UNCW answered with the next seven points — the last five, from Newby — on a pair of free throws and a 3-pointer with 11:49 left.

Newby had 25 of his team’s 44 points by then but mainly with Farmer harassing him, Newby scored only five points the rest of the way.

The Pride twice increased its lead to 10 points, the second time, on a Graham second-chance hook shot with 8:23 left. Hofstra was shooting 51.2 percent (21-for-41) at that point but the Pride missed its next six shots and nine of its next 10 before Aranguren’s game-tying drive in the final minute. The only made shot for Hofstra in that stretch was a clutch 3-pointer from Farmer that put the Hofstra up, 61-54, with 4:19 to go.

While Newby only had those last five points over the final 11:48, they were big ones at the time. Newby capped a run of nine straight Seahawk points with a game-tying trey with 1:15 remaining before giving UNCW its final lead, at 63-61, on a pair of free throws with 55.3 seconds left.

That set the stage for Aranguren’s late-game heroics, which prompted DePaoli to say, “What I love about Jean more than anything — and he does a million things to help us win — is his toughness just stands out every single day. It’s not just his physical toughness, it’s his mental toughness. He runs to the fight.”

That much was evident when Aranguren — who went 5-for-9 from 3 and is 9-for-14 from there over Hofstra’s past two games after starting the season shooting 30.3 percent (23-for-76) from 3 — posted up on the left wing, drove aggressively into the paint, and finished strongly through contact.

Aranguren lost a rebound out of bounds with 15.9 seconds left on the next possession, giving the Seahawks a chance to win, but a 15-foot, left-wing jumper from Newby (who missed his last three shots over the final 1:18) was contested by Farmer. The shot fell short off the rim and was rebounded by Farmer, who calmly hit two free throws to close the scoring with 1.9 seconds left. A long 3-point heave on the final play was blocked by sophomore guard Cruz Davis (who led despite scoring just seven points on 2-for-9 shooting, recorded a game-high seven assists).

This one was for Coach Speedy today,” DePaoli said. “It’s a testament to his leadership that he wasn’t here today and we performed the way we did. [Our] guys didn’t miss a beat… but this one was absolutely for Coach Speedy.”

Stepped in unexpectedly as Fordham’s interim head coach for six games nearly four years ago helped DePaoli with the sudden adjustment of replacing Claxton for a day.

January 26, 2021, I found out that morning, too,” DePaoli recalled. “I found out that I was going to be the interim coach for the rest of the season, so [that] kind of helped, having been through it. But again, it’s really a credit to Coach Speedy because these guys were so prepared [and] our culture is so strong.”

DePaoli added, “It’s not just me stepping up, it’s every single person in that locker room, our coaching staff included. Everyone across the board stepped up today.”

In particular, DePaoli pointed to the contributions from Aranguren, Farmer and Hofstra’s bigs — Graham and junior forward Silas Sunday (six points and seven rebounds in 19 starting minutes) — at each end of the floor.

DePaoli said, “It was going to take everyone and we just kept saying, ‘Together, together, together’ and you can go down the line from what our 5s did — a combined 17 (points) and 18 (rebounds) [and holding UNCW’s] 5s to 10 (points) and five (rebounds) — Jean Aranguren was terrific, this guy (Farmer) sitting to my left, I can’t say enough good stuff about him. He comes out and has 13 points, and when Newby gets it going, he goes and guards him.”

Sunday, who was making his first start this season and only his third in 75 career games over three years (the past two with Hofstra), didn’t back down against a fellow 7-foot, 280-pounder, UNCW junior forward Harlan Obioha, who recorded just two points and four rebounds in 18 minutes.

Sunday explained, “I played against Obioha before so I already knew the type of player he is — tough, physical — [I was] just going in there with a physical mindset, ready to get hit, ready to hit back, and doing what we do with our gameplan.”

Outplaying the Seahawks’ bigs, “was a big point of emphasis going into the game,” DePaoli said. “They are really tough to deal with down there and they run a ton of good stuff to get them the ball in good position… it’s a credit to our 5s, but it’s a credit to everyone else because it is a five-man effort to stop those guys.”

Missing Claxton didn’t throw Sunday or his teammates off either. That, was instead, a source of inspiration.

I think we reacted good,” Sunday said. “The energy on the bench was the highest it’s been this whole season and we just had fun with it, and we went out there and competed. Prior to the game, we said, ‘This is for Coach Speedy.’ Dealing with what he’s dealing with, we hope he’s okay and we dedicated this one to him.”

DePaoli jumped in, “When you’re playing like that, with that kind of emotion, for someone [who] we really care about, you could see it on the bench — I’m really happy for them because we deserved that one.”

After recording its third win by three points or less, along with two others in overtime this season, DePaoli noted, “These guys should feel really good about themselves. We have shown resolve this year. We had to play with fight [and] grit, and our guys did that.

Just proud of our effort, just proud of everyone coming together and rallying around to get that win.”

Helping the Pride get the victory was its consistently good shooting from the behind the arc, where Hofstra went 6-for-14 in each half.

Crediting Claxton for keeping the Pride’s shooters self-assured, DePaoli said, “Khalil goes 3-for-6, Jean Aranguren, 5-for-9, we want these guys to be confident in who they are as players. I think that’s Coach Speedy’s greatest gift, is he lets talent be talent, and he really gives them a lot of life to believe in themselves.”

For Farmer, that meant listening to Claxton, DePaoli, and the rest of the staff, and waiting for his chance to do more. “Over the past few games, the coaches, as a unit, kept me mentally sharp, [telling me], ‘Whenever your number is called, just stay ready,’” Farmer said.

If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready, and for him to respond the way he did [was great],” DePaoli said.

As much as the shooting helped, it was Hofstra’s primary staple — its defense, especially over the first half and down the stretch — that sealed the win.

We didn’t steal this one, we earned this one,” DePaoli said. “That’s a really good team we just played. The defense is the foundation of our program. Defense is what allows you to win games, offense determines how much you win them by, and today, our offense determined that we won by three.

I wish our defense was a little bit better in the second half. We held them to 24 in the first half, they did get 39 in the second half, a lot of that being Newby.”

As DePaoli noted, it’s the Pride’s players taking pride in defending that makes it difficult for the opposition to score against Hofstra.

Good teams are led by coaches, great teams are player-led,” DePaoli said. “What allows us to defend is [the players] taking ownership in it. It’s getting to the point now where we (as coaches) don’t even need to say anything and they’re holding each other accountable. The energy has been off the charts in practice… [the players] have really bought in to making (being defense-first) our DNA.”

Asked if there is a meaningful psychological difference with getting back to .500 in conference play over starting CAA play by losing three-quarters of Hofstra’s games at the start, DePaoli said, “Yeah, 2-2 sounds a lot better than 1-3.”

Although it was only the fourth of 18 regular season conference games for each team, the grind of a lower-scoring, hard-fought game that went down to the end between teams that were picked third (UNCW) and fourth (Hofstra) in the league during the preseason felt more like March than January. Winning that type of contest, along with the other similar type of wins the Pride has had this season could help Hofstra in a couple of months.

It absolutely had a CAA tournament feel,” DePaoli said. “We knew what we were going against. They’re really good… two years ago, they knocked us out in the [CAA] semis (in overtime), so we knew what we were stepping into and we talked to our guys about [being] ‘gritty, not pretty.’ We’re not going to be perfect but we’re after a perfect effort. I thought for the most part today, we were pretty good… and I think it’ll really help us moving forward.”

About the Author

Jon Wagner

Jon has been a credentialed writer with New York Sports Day since 2009, primarily covering the New York Knicks and Hofstra men's basketball. He has also occasionally covered other college basketball and New York's pro teams including the Mets, Giants, Jets, Islanders, Rangers and Cosmos (including their three most recent championship seasons). Jon is former Yahoo Sports contributor who previously covered various sports for the Queens Ledger. He's a proud alum of Hofstra University and the Connecticut School of Broadcasting (which he attended on a full scholarship). He remains convinced to this day that John Starks would have won the Knicks a championship in 1994 had Hakeem Olajuwon not blocked Starks' shot in Game 6 of the 1994 NBA Finals.

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