The Monmouth Hawks won their home opener over the weekend

The first thing that I noticed was that the people who actually attended the game were excited and into the action. According to various reports there were slightly over 1,800 people in attendance (which means the arena was slightly less than half full) and I’m sure that the young men who were playing for Monmouth enjoyed actually hearing the fans cheer for them when they scored. Remember, by some brilliant stroke of scheduling genius (sarcasm) the Hawks played NINE away games to start their season. Imagine playing 9 away games where there are just a handful of your fans in the stands if any at all. Not smart… And on that topic, Monmouth will only play 2 home games before January 1st this season. Last season, they played 6 home games plus an exhibition game before the new year. The year before they played 5 home games before the new year. Something about scheduling just 2 home games before the new year doesn’t sit right with me as a season ticket holder; not to mention that there are only 12 scheduled home games last year as compared with 15 last year (16 with the exhibition) and 14 the year before. But aside from the head-scratching scheduling, as a season ticket holder and team supporter I’m more concerned with the kids on the team. Up until Saturday night, these kids player this season with nearly no fan support. I’m sure that they enjoyed the standing ovations, chants, and cheers that the fans gave them throughout the game on Saturday night.

And those guys deserved every little bit of the support, too.

The team was led by Jesse Steele’s outstanding performance (which earned him NEC Player of the Week honors) where he scored “18 points while contributing six assists, five boards and a steal.” That quote was from the linked article, which I suggest you read when you get a chance.

Two more comments about Saturday night’s game and then we’ll call it a day for this entry. First, I was very encouraged by the new Head Coach King Rice and his style of motivating his players. Whereas the previous head coach opted to hoot, holler, and yell at nearly every player during what seemed like every second of the game, Coach Rice was cooler, calmer, and more collected than his predecessor. And this may sound like an odd comment to make after only watching one game under the new coach, but it appeared like the players were more confident in their game plan. In other words, it seemed like the dramatic decrease in the constant yelling and screaming coming from the bench made the players more confident in doing what they do best – play basketball.

After the last two seasons of Hawks basketball it was nice to see confident Hawks players for a change.

Second and finally, I have two comments about The Varsity Club. I missed Coach Rice’s post-game speech in The Varsity Club because the two dopes that I went to the game with didn’t want to hang around too late after the game was over. We had a small housewarming party to get to after the game and these two guys acted as though their entire lives depended on running out the MAC and getting to that party. Granted, we did wait around for a little while upstairs to hear Coach Rice talk, but the coach must have been held up doing something downstairs. So, about 30 minutes after the game ended we left The Varsity Club because the dopes that I went to the game with ramped their bitching complaining up to an absurd level. That said, what I heard about Coach Rice’s speech was all positive. The word is that he was very sincere and very thankful for the fans who came out and supported the team.

The second comment about The Varsity Club was that the pregame food preparation was not that good – at all. For starters, for the second time in the last few weeks The Varsity Club was serving chicken on the bone as the main entree and a very weak side dish (pierogies). I’m a firm believer that if you’re serving a large group of diverse people, then you can’t have one (or two) main entrees that feature a meat stuck to a piece of bone. You can have baked chicken on the bone, but then you have to also serve a pasta in red sauce or a tray of sandwiches or something. You can’t just have meat on the bone (cue jokes from my roommates on that comment). But what was more disturbing was that they ran out of food about 45 minutes into the pregame meal! Sure, they brought some more food out about 15 minutes before the game started (including meat that wasn’t stuck to a bone), but I was a little surprised that they didn’t anticipate the demand for space in The Varsity Club for the first home game. All anyone had to do was talk to any of the season ticket holders and they would have realized that there was a huge demand for one of these damn home games already. Of course there were going to be a lot of people in The Varsity Club! I submitted my comments to the gentleman who runs that show up there and he was very cool about it and admitted that they just underestimated the demand for the pregame meal before the game.

Understood. It happens.

Here’s looking forward to the next home game on Thursday, December 22nd!

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!

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…

The Asbury Park Press interviewed Monmouth University head coach Dave Calloway earlier in the week and one comment he made about his team is that they have to be more consistent. Tonight, Monmouth fans almost saw the return of the inconsistency that has plagued the Hawks during the second half of most of their games. They almost saw that return… The run that the team went on in the final minutes was great and I hope that they continue to bring that level of aggressive play to the second half of each of their games.

Enjoy the thirty something pictures from the game below.