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Some Random Updates on Monmouth University Men’s Basketball
August 7th, 2011 | Added to Sports | No Comments »

The other day I received a very nice “thank you” letter from the folks at the Monmouth University Athletics Department for a recent donation I sent to the college. I noted that the college should direct the funds towards the Monmouth University men’s basketball team and both that donation and the nice “thank you” letter got me to thinking that I haven’t really written anything about the Hawks in quite a while.

MU Head Coach King Rice has his coaching staff set for the 2011 - 2012 basketball season

In fact, towards the end of the last season I actually stopped posting pictures up on the blog because the entire atmosphere around the program was dull, lethargic, and all-around crappy. Frankly, going to the games became a bit of a bummer because who wants to see their team fight to win a game and then wind up losing in the fourth quarter? I mean those players were fighting their asses off and something just wasn’t clicking. I can’t imagine how it must have felt for the guys in the uniforms, but for the fans in the stands (at least those of us who continued to go to the games until the dire end) it was pretty miserable. Blech.

But if any team in the Northeast Conference has managed to turn the “excitement tide” during this off-season, it has got to be the Hawks. Not only did the Hawks welcome a brand new head coach a few months ago, but there is an entirely brand new coaching staff. Plus, Monmouth sophomore Marcus Ware was named to the All-NEC Rookie Team during this off-season – very impressive!

However, I really think the change that has most fans excited is the change in the head coach position. At the end of March, Monmouth hired King David Rice to replace Dave Calloway (who is now working with a consulting firm). There is a lot of hope pinned to Coach Rice and I’m sure he understands the job that lies ahead of him. As was expected, one of his first steps in making this program his own was hiring an entirely brand new coaching staff. I think it was a great move and one that has the potential to pay dividends, but I understand that some long-time fans were annoyed at seeing the previous Assistant Coach let go (his name escapes me – I’m talking about Coach K) because of his long tenure at the university. I mean, I get that he had a long time to work within the Monmouth University system, but sometimes you have to move on, I guess.

The guys who were on the old coaching staff are talented in their own ways and I’m sure that they’ll land on their feet wherever it is that they decide to go.

Back to the point – Coach Rice has a big job ahead of him. Not only does he have to rebuild a broken program (let’s face it folks, the program is broken), but he has to do that while filling up that still-brand new arena, igniting a fire under the asses of the student population and the fan base, and developing relationships with existing supporters of the program (more on this momentarily). Most importantly, though, Coach Rice has to ensure that the young men on his team are getting the education that they are in college to receive. I blogged on here many times during the last season that it was totally unacceptable that freshmen – FRESHMEN – were suspended at the beginning of the season because of poor academic performance. Absolutely, without a doubt unacceptable. Talk about a student athlete support system not keeping their eye on the ball. Good grief!

Sorry, I get mad about that every time I think about it… because it’s ridiculous.

But back to the point about developing existing supporters of the program – I’ve been a supporter of the program for the past several years (three, I think). And I tried to attend all of the post-game mingle sessions after each of the home games. Sure, I’d hear the previous head coach talk about the game and how the team performed, but other than that – I didn’t see much development going on. When I write “development” I’m talking about fundraising. I don’t think anyone expects the head coach or the coaching staff to do fundraising, but I think everyone expects them to do the friendraising part of the equation. I didn’t see the previous coaching staff doing much friendraising after the games ended and the team’s supporters were in the Varsity Club. Hopefully, Coach Rice and his staff will completely engage the folks upstairs because the more support that can be generated for the team, the better off the program will be in the long run.

Anyway, that’s about all that I’ve been thinking about for the team during the off-season. I’m waiting for Monmouth to announce that season tickets are on-sale so I can renew both of my tickets. I’m a little bit of a salesman for the university for those tickets, by the way. During the first season in the new arena, I bought two season tickets. Then because of being invited to sit in my extra seat for a few games, my buddy down the street bought two tickets during the second season in the new arena to go along with my two seats (that’s four season tickets in total). And for this coming year, both of my roommates are going to buy season tickets so that’s a total of six season tickets that I’m somewhat responsible for helping the university sell. I mean as a fan I’m doing my part, I think!

Here’s hoping that Coach Rice and his new staff do their part. I think it’s going to be a great season!

Just a Few Pictures from Monmouth’s Last Home Game
March 1st, 2011 | Added to Sports | No Comments »

Hey everyone – I know that these photos are over a week late, but as I was cleaning out the pictures in my BlackBerry, I thought that I would upload these four pictures for your enjoyment. These are pictures from the Monmouth Hawks’ last home game this season against the Robert Morris Colonials.

This game actually wound up to be pretty exciting. It came down to the final seconds (as usual for this season) and the Hawks lost the game in the final moments. Games ending like this one did almost certainly pushed the university to strongly suggest to Head Coach Dave Calloway that he resign before his contract wasn’t renewed. More on that developing story in the coming days, though…

Monmouth Loses to St. Francis (New York) at Home, 62 – 61
January 28th, 2011 | Added to Sports | No Comments »

No pictures (not many folks look at them anyway so I’m probably just wasting time – especially when Monmouth keeps losing) and no major comments about last night’s game. Monmouth lost another one at home – this time to St. Francis (New York) who happens to be another Northeast Conference competitor. This drops the Monmouth Hawks down to 6 wins and 15 losses for the season. It’s getting pretty bad in West Long Branch… pretty bad indeed.

Once again, there was something missing in the air at the MAC tonight. It was a relatively close game, but from this fan’s perspective there’s something about watching Monmouth closely compete against teams that they should be dominating that is just upsetting. I can’t really point to a single player’s out of this world performance for Monmouth or St. Francis for that matter. Here are some post-game quotes courtesy of the Monmouth University athletics website:

“The game was at a good pace for us,” commented head coach Dave Calloway. “We settled down defensively in the second half.”

Head coach Calloway went on to say this about his team’s management of the basketball and sinking some more foul shots:

“If we had taken care of the ball, made some more foul shots and layups, we would have been in a great position to win tonight,” added Calloway.

I guess that’s all there is to say, huh? Making more points = not losing the game in the last second of play.

I’ll be going to this Saturday’s 2:00pm game against Long Island University. The game is going to be broadcast on MSG so I’ll be DVR’ing the game just in case there are any good action shots to post on the blog. We’ll see you back here this weekend. Until then, enjoy.

Central Connecticut Hands Monmouth Another Loss at Home, 66 – 47
January 20th, 2011 | Added to Sports | No Comments »

Well, there isn’t much to say about tonight’s game because it wasn’t much to watch. The Monmouth Hawks played pretty well for the first 5 – 10 minutes of the game and then they started to slow down and the whole team just seemed to fall flat. You know, the last time Monmouth played at home was in a fifteen point loss against Sacred Heart. I was at the game with a buddy of mine and he turned to me towards the end of the game and said, “Wow. This wheels really fell off of this one, huh?”

Finkel at his best

That thought went through my head watching the game tonight. The wheels fell off of the whole thing tonight and it wasn’t fun or exciting to watch most of the game.

Amid all of the doom and gloom, I really feel bad for the student athletes who are out there giving it their all for the entire game. With four students suspended, Monmouth is down to an eight man team. That’s tough for any team to overcome, I don’t care who they are. However, over the last few home games I’ve noticed that there’s something missing from the Monmouth team – there’s a spark missing, there’s an excitement missing, there’s an aggressive determination to win at all costs missing – hell, there’s a student cheering section missing!

Something’s not right in West Long Branch.

Something needs to be done. I don’t know what because I admit that I don’t know enough about running a Division 1 basketball program to know how to bring in what’s missing. But I do know enough to know that these games are getting sadder and sadder.

You can get all of the stats for the game on the official Hawks website. There are 32 pictures of the game below. Enjoy!

: Finkel at his best

Sacred Heart Defeats Monmouth at the MAC, 80 – 65
January 8th, 2011 | Added to Sports | No Comments »

Yesterday, I wrote about how I was genuinely upset (in a sports kind of way) that the Monmouth University Hawks lost to the Quinnipiac University Bobcats. Well, I’m not as upset about tonight’s loss to the Sacred Heart University Pioneers because, frankly, the whole thing just fell apart. Whereas the Hawks competed aggressively against Quinnipiac, it appeared as though the team was generally tired during tonight’s game and that they were off a step or two the entire night.

Mike Myers Keitt on defense

I’m not into the blame game so I don’t know if it was a coaching issue or the fact that the Haws are down four players in their rotation or whatever. What I do know, though, is that the team simply got outplayed tonight. Look – sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and tonight, the Hawks appeared to be outplayed by a decent Sacred Heart team. I have to stress, though, that the Pioneers were a “decent” team – not the type of team where you have to call someone up and tell them, “Oh my God! These guys are AMAZING!!!” But a decent team nonetheless.

So far this season, what I’ve found interesting while watching the Hawks is that they tend to play to their competition’s level. When they played against Villanova they had moments of real greatness where, as a fan in the audience, I was extremely impressed. When they played against Quinnipiac the Hawks looked like they should have been ranked the number one team in the conference. And just 48 hours after that great performance against the Bobcats, the Hawks played down a little bit (sure, exhaustion had to play into it, too) and they wound up getting routed at home in front of more than 850 fans.

By the way, 850+ fans in bad weather – nice showing!

The Monmouth Hawks website has some quotes from after the game and I think Head Coach Dave Calloway hit the nail right on the head with this one about the poor defense tonight:

We were just not good enough on the defensive end. I thought we scored enough points, but we gave up too many. We gave up 51 points in the second half and you aren’t going to win many games if you give up that many points.

Here’s hoping that things turnaround for the Hawks – and soon. I’ve got 32 pictures from the game below for you to peruse through at your leisure. I kept the same close up/larger style that I had in the Quinnipiac pictures since I thought that they looked pretty good. I hope that you enjoy them!