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!

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!

Who knows?

Jesse Steele and the Hawks on defense

In any event, I do have some thoughts on last night’s game. First, I can’t tell you enough how impressed I was with the Monmouth players after all of the crap that they’ve had to deal with in the last week.

I think that Quinnipiac might have been a little bit better conditioned than some of the Monmouth squad, but the Bobcats also had the ability to sub in more players more frequently. Although, I’m not sure if it was such a bad thing that Monmouth didn’t have a large pool of players to draw from on the bench. At some point last night it seemed like there was some cohesion and energy among the five active Monmouth players and part of me wants to believe that was because they were able to play together for longer periods of time. However, there was one point when Mike Myers Keitt – Monmouth’s leading scorer last night – motioned to his bench that he needed to be taken out for a moment.

But what do I know? I’m just a guy sitting in the crowd.

Tony Graham at the Hawks Nest has a good review of the game with some quotes from all of the gang. For example, since Monmouth missed five foull shots in a row, most folks who watched last night’s game came away saying, “What was the deal with those foul shots at the end?! Come on, Monmouth!” Well, Head Coach Dave Calloway addresses the foul shot issue on the Hawks Nest:

“If you make three more foul shots along the way it’s a different game,” Calloway said. “There’s lots of things we did well in the game but there’s lots of things to work on.”

And the coach is right – you sink those five foul shots in a row and Monmouth wins 75 – 73. But playing that type of second guessing game probably isn’t the most productive use of one’s time. Kevin O’Rourke over at the New Jersey Newsroom’s Pressbox put up some additional quotes from Coach Calloway including:

“We’ve had a lot of games that have gone that way this year, down to the last possession and you come up one short, one possession short,” Calloway said. “We’ll look back at the tape tonight and re-hash some of those possessions, especially the last couple of minutes. If we could have done one thing better, we win the game.”

That seems like a better use of time and efforts, don’t you think? And maybe someone can figure out how in the world Monmouth had 17 turnovers last night. Aside from those foul shots, if the team doesn’t turn the ball over so much, then you have a completely different game. Or, as one the assistant coaches kept yelling last night – if the opposition doesn’t score on the turnover, you essentially negate the impact of turning the ball over. Monmouth wasn’t able to prevent Quinnipiac from scoring on some of those turnovers and do you know what that gives you? A heartbreaking loss at home.

Anyway, below are some 44 pictures from the game last night. And hey – I normally adjust the pictures to be 800 pixels on their largest side (i.e. the pictures are never larger than 800 pixels on any one side). This time around, I tried taking pictures in a slightly different style with more zooming and less wide shots. Also, I adjusted the settings on the pictures so that the largest side is now 1024 pixels. In other words, if you’re looking for a little more detail than usual, these pictures should give you what you want. Let me know if you like the changes and I’ll keep this style of pictures for future home games. Enjoy!

And what’s worse – this is slowly spreading across the New Jersey media. I first heard about the news last night when my roommate told me that the Asbury Park Press was running a story on the suspensions. Hearing this, I went over to the Hawks Nest blog and found the linked article (which I made a comment on, by the way – more on that later). Then this morning I received an e-mail from a friend with a link to a story on the Star-Ledger’s website talking about the suspensions. I’m just waiting for the Pressbox at New Jersey Newsroom to pick up the story and then pretty much all of the sites where I go to get news on the Monmouth basketball team will be covering the story. It’s ridiculous.

The situation itself, though, is pretty pathetic and here’s why. If we believe that there is really an academic problem with these students (and I have no reason to not believe that poor academic performance is the cause for the suspensions), then you have four students who obviously just received their final grades for the fall semester and they failed. Sure, I could go on about how I graduated from Monmouth and the classes aren’t that hard and the students should be able to pass them with flying colors, etc, but that’s not only not the point, it’s also unfair to the students. But what I am pretty aggravated about is the fact that three of these kids are juniors and you don’t just magically underperform academically in your third year of college. If you made it that far in college (especially as an athlete), then you should be performing at a fairly successful level in the classroom.

However, if you’ve made it to your junior year of college and you’re not performing successfully in the classroom and you’re a student athlete, then you shouldn’t be on the team, period. But here’s the part that bothers me – someone had to see this coming with these three junior students! You mean to tell me in a big-time, Division I basketball program that plays in a $57 million building that there’s no one assigned to watch over these student athletes academically? They have no team-based tutor or some other such position that could have said to the coaching staff, “Hey – so and so on the team needs some extra study time because they’re going to fail whatever class.” That doesn’t exist? Come on!

But the biggest concern that I have about this story concerns Jordan Davis, the freshman who is suspended. What is going on at Monmouth that a young kid like Davis can’t pass his first semester classes? Typically, the first semester at Monmouth is filled with 101 or 050 (remedial) classes. These classes are really, really easy to pass because the content is so easy to grasp. Usually first semester classes are more of a test of self-confidence and college preparedness for most college students rather than a test on classroom content. And I don’t really blame Davis for his poor academic performance because if he failed some of these freshmen level classes then he clearly is in need of additional help. And if he’s in need of additional help I absolutely cannot believe that Monmouth was unaware of that fact when they asked him to come and play for them.

So where was the additional help for this young man? And where was the additional help for the three junior students? Where is the concern for a student’s academic performance? Hell, I’d be more than happy to sit down with these students and tutor them – someone needs to watch out for their best interests!

Anyway, you’ll remember that a few paragraphs up I reported that I made a comment on the Hawks Nest blog. It was in response to someone else’s comment that, I thought, was dead on accurate. Here is the comment that I responded to:

As usual, the “bunker mentality’ has taken over. Phone calls not returned etc. The spin may go something like this. “After reviewing the events of this past season which the Administration deems to have been out of his control, we will be extending Coach Callowy’s contract for an additional one year period. The Administration feels confident that Coach Calloway will continue to make the progress that was seen last year up until the unfortuante loss of personnel due to academic suspensions.”

Look, I don’t have anything against Coach Calloway or how he chooses to run his team. I’ve never been a head coach and I don’t think that I ever will be so I really don’t have much to say about any of the anti-Calloway stuff going around. But I have been an organizational leader and a public relations person that had to deal with the press and I have a lot to say about the “bunker mentality” that tends to take over every single situation at Monmouth University. Here is the response that I posted to the comment above:

jflan is right about the “bunker mentality” taking over. It’s like my fellow MU alumni and I have been saying for the last two years – there are 57 million different reasons why that bunker mentality needs to be broken at ALL levels of this school’s administrative structure. You don’t get to spend that type of money to build that type of structure and yet hold on to the quiet vestiges of yesteryear.

Time for the MU administration to grow up and answer the questions. Or… they risk keeping the school an irrelevant “hidden gem.”

Like I said in my response above – you don’t get to spend $57 million on a 4,100 seat arena and then start having media blackouts when big stories like this hit your sports teams. It’s well past time for an upgrade in the university’s administration and public relations that is on par with the upgrade in its facilities.

Jesse Steele on defense

Your best review of the game including post-game quotes from the Hawks head coach Dave Calloway and some of the players will come from Tony Graham at The Hawks Nest. Here is a quote from Jordan Davis that appeared on The Hawks Nest after the game tonight. I think Davis’ quote pretty much sums up the game tonight:

“We just never give up,” Davis said. “We keep fighting and we keep fighting. Today was a perfect example. We came back and finished it up.”

I have a bunch of comments that I’d like to make about this game on a variety of topics, but I’m exhausted and I have to be awake early in the morning to get to work. The two comments that I’ll make right now before I turn in, though, is that Phil Wait had a monster game tonight and I use the term “monster” because I think tonight was the first time that I saw him really dominate on defense. Here’s a guy who is some seven feet tall and the idiots on Bryant’s squad were dumb enough to run directly into him. If I’m not mistaken, that happened twice and both time the poor fool that ran into him fell on their ass with no foul called. The second time it happened I said to my buddy, “That’s what happens when you run directly into a brick wall.”

Here’s hoping that Wait has more performances like he had tonight against the rest of the Northeast Conference competition.

The second comment that I’ll make is that I love when the Hawks get focused and aggressive in their play. Going into the second half, I think it was obvious to any fan watching that something changed in the team’s play. As a guy who played sports at a highly competitive level, I’m always looking for that type of aggressive and diligent performance from the athletes. Sometimes it’s hard to find that with the Hawks (especially during the first half of their home games). However, the Hawks that played in the second half of tonight’s game were focused and aggressive and it showed. They outscored Bryant 36 to 9 in the last 18 minutes of the game.

That’s something to be proud of and the Hawks should be proud of their performance in the second half tonight.

Below are some 36 pictures from tonight’s game. Sorry, no captions right now since I’m rushing to get to bed. I’ll try to come back tomorrow with some additional thoughts on the game embedded within this post. Check back tomorrow after 5pm to see if I have any additional thoughts and some of the captions for these pictures. In the mean time, enjoy!

Mercifully, the game ended

The Hawks were 1 for 19 three point attempts. Ahem… That’s ONE for NINETEEN attempts! Look, everyone in the arena tonight “got it” – the team was down by a significant margin and the best way to gain ground is to get 3 points at a time instead of 2. But when you’re 1 for 5 from three point territory or 1 for 10 or 1 for 15 or 1 for 19, I would think you stop and say, “Ummm, let’s change this strategy. This three point shot stuff ain’t working!”

Then again, the Hawks couldn’t sink a basket for their lives tonight. From the great Tony Graham over at the Asbury Park Press blog The Hawks Nest: “Monmouth shot 25.5 percent (13-for-51) in the game and 1-for-19 from downtown.”

Really? Only 25.5 percent?! Good grief!

Anyway, I’m glad that non-conference play is over and that Monmouth is has some time to lick their wounds before getting into Northeast Conference competition against Bryant in early January. In the mean time, here are some forty pictures from tonight’s game. Look for captions later tomorrow. Enjoy!

What’s an alumnus to do?! Who’s an alumnus to root for?!

The Monmouth Mob Actually Showed Up

Well, as you might imagine I opted to root for Monmouth since it feels a little bit more natural to me. Also, I think I have more of a connection with Monmouth (good or bad). Although no matter what the outcome of the game, I knew that I was leaving the game with my alma mater winning!

But tonight’s game was an interesting one at the MAC Center in West Long Branch, New Jersey. Not only were there a bunch of red shirts in the crowd, but there was a crowd in the first place! Tony Graham over at the Asbury Park Press says that there were 2,852 fans in attendance and I wouldn’t doubt it at all. That building was jumping! Personally, I’m looking forward to this Wednesday night’s game against Villanova which I heard is completely sold out. That’s a 4,200 seat arena that is sold out – should be fun to watch.

Back to tonight’s game.

I was very impressed with the level of competitiveness that Monmouth played with early on tonight, but that would seem to for the Hawks’ style. When the Hawks play against bad teams, they play down to their level. When they play against good teams, they play up to their level. Being so inconsistent isn’t a good thing for any sports team and I wish that Monmouth would just play their game each time they take the court instead of acting like this weird chameleon type of team. Mr. Graham at the APP’s Hawks Nest had a quote from RJ Rutledge regarding Monmouth not playing their style of game in the latter part of the game:

“We hung in with them for most of the game,” Rutledge said. “It’s just that at the end we let the turnovers get to us and we didn’t keep on playing our game.”

The other major issue that bothered me tonight was that the final score didn’t reflect the level of competition that Monmouth played with for most of the game. When you see that Rutgers scored some 79 points to Monmouth’s 56 points, you think, “Wow. Monmouth got blown out.” The truth is that they didn’t get blown out at all and that certain players like RJ Rutledge, Ed Waite, and Nick Del Tufo had phenomenal games tonight. Sure, Del Tufo needs to keep his level of aggression up on defense, but he was one of the stars for Monmouth tonight. I will admit that the final score, though, definitely captured the feeling of the game in the last 5 or 6 minutes.

And that’s the final issue that bothered me about tonight’s game. As a fan sitting in the stands and having played competitive sports against all different types of skill levels of opponents, I’m pretty good at telling when a team packs it in and calls it a day. Somewhere with 4 or 5 minutes left in the second half, it really appeared like Monmouth packed it in and called it a day and that’s a damn shame. I don’t deny that Monmouth was outmatched in terms of skill, but I do believe that if Monmouth was playing at their best and playing their style of game – well, they may have had a chance of beating this Rutgers team tonight.

Here’s hoping that Monmouth can keep their level of aggressive, competitive play up for the Villanova game this Wednesday. If they can believe that a victory can happen, then you never know – something great might happen on Wednesday night.

After double overtime - the Hawks win!

But I digress…

The game on Saturday night was awesome. Even though these aren’t the two most talented teams out there or the two most successful teams playing in either of their conferences, they managed to make an otherwise uneventful game pretty exciting. After about thirteen minutes of play, Monmouth was down 15 – 0. As most of the fans sitting around me were saying, “Is this a college basketball game or are we at some high school game?” How does a team not score a point on its home court for the majority of the first half?

Well, I’m not sure how they don’t score a point for so long, but I am sure about how they come back and win the game. They give the ball to Gary Cox. This kid is probably someone that you haven’t read much about in the local sports media and that’s because he hasn’t had the opportunity that he had the other night. Cox scored 23 points for the Hawks, who eventually came back to win the game 78 – 74. It was an absolutely amazing performance by Cox and the Hawks and a pretty horrendous outcome for Hartford. The Hartford team had some tough guys, but the Hawks played tough the entire game and, especially, during the second half. As a fan watching in the stands, I think the Hawks managed to just overwhelm the Hartford guys in the end.

Tony Graham over at the Asbury Park Press posted a great article reviewing the game. In his article he has some quotes from Head Coach Dave Calloway and some of the players. This comment from Cox stood out to me:

We didn’t have any points when were were down 15 but I still thought we were in the game. I know how hard we play defense and we were going to score some points sooner or later. When I came in I just wanted to run the offense and try not to force anything.

And that’s how you win a basketball game after being down by 15 points. You give the ball to Cox, let him run the offense for a little while, and keep playing an aggressive style of defense. Let’s see if it works again…

Below are some 40 pictures from game day. I hope you enjoy!