Second, Sophomore Andrew Nicholas had a career night with 28 points. It was really something great to watch. In fact, he was named the Northeast Conference’s Co-Player of the Week for his effort.

This is a Monmouth team that has a lot of fan support and a lot of fan investment in the team. One of the primary reasons for the renewed support isn’t just the dedicated players on the court, but the great coaching changes that were made before the beginning of last year’s season. The biggest of those changes was bringing in Head Coach King Rice to help rebuild the program from the bottom up. Rice is an enthusiastic coach and seems to have a very positive, strong connection with his team’s leaders. Here are some of his post-game comments followed by some comments by Nicholas on his career game:

I don’t have much more commentary on the game because you can find much more information at the links below. However, I have a few pictures from the game that I figured I’d post here in case anyone was interested in taking a look. The Asbury Park Press reports that there were some 2,307 fans in attendance last Friday night and it certainly looked like it (and sounded like it). Here’s hoping that the excitement and attendance continues to grow at the MAC.

Normally, I wouldn’t make the full-size images available for viewing (I usually cut these things down in size so that they are easier on my server). However, since I only have six pictures to post, I left the high resolution images available for you to look at if you want. Enjoy!

Read more about the Hawks’ home opening win on Tony Graham’s blog and the Monmouth Athletics website.

2011 – 2012 Monmouth University Men’s Basketball Schedule
Friday, November 11th at Villanova, 7:00 PM

Dick’s Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off Tournament at Virginia Tech
Monday, November 14th at Virginia Tech, TBA
Tuesday, November 15th vs. George Mason or FIU, TBA
Monday, November 21st – Wednesday, November 23rd vs. TBD, TBA

Regular Season
Friday, November 25th at Vanderbilt, 9:00 PM
Thursday, December 1st at St. Francis, PA, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, December 3rd at Robert Morris, 7:00 PM *
Tuesday, December 6th at Navy, 7:00 PM
Saturday, December 10th vs. FORDHAM, 7:00 PM
Monday, December 12th at Rutgers, 7:30 PM
Thursday, December 22nd vs. RIDER, 7:00 PM
Wednesday, December 28th at Lafayette, 7:00 PM
Sunday, January 1st at UNC-Chapel Hill, TBA
Thursday, January 5th vs. MOUNT ST. MARY’S, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, January 7th vs. WAGNER, 7:00 PM *
Tuesday, January 10th vs. HARVARD, 7:00 PM
Thursday, January 12th at St. Francis, NY, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, January 14th at LIU, 7:00 PM *
Thursday, January 19th vs. ST. FRANCIS, PA, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, January 21st vs. ROBERT MORRIS, 7:00 PM *
Thursday, January 26th at CCSU, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, January 28th at Bryant, 7:00 PM *
Thursday, February 2nd vs. SACRED HEART, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, February 4th vs. QUINNIPIAC, 7:00 PM *
Wednesday, February 8th at FDU, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, February 11th vs. FDU, 7:00 PM *
Thursday, February 16th at Mount St. Mary’s, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, February 18th at Wagner, 7:00 PM *
Thursday, February 23rd vs. ST. FRANCIS, NY, 7:00 PM *
Saturday, February 25th vs. LIU, 7:00 PM *

NEC Tournament (if Qualified)
Thursday, March 1st; Sunday, March 4th; and Wednesday, March 7th

* = Northeast Conference Game
Opposing Team’s Name in CAPITAL LETTERS = Home Game

There are a few things that stick out in this schedule to me. First, there are only 12 home games according to this schedule while there were 15 last year. I don’t know whether or not this schedule is truly finalized (I assume that it is not), but I would hope that the powers that be find a way to put a few more home games on the schedule.

Second, the first home game isn’t until nearly the middle of December?! Come on! That ain’t right – not just for the fans, but for the players. These kids should be given an opportunity to play in front of their fellow students and home town crowd during a time that isn’t right smack dab in the middle of preparation for final exams. If there isn’t another home game added to this schedule before the December 10th game, then this is just poor scheduling on someone’s part.

Third, talk about playing against some stiff competition! This is great! I’m so glad that the Hawks are no longer going to go to that silly Basketball Travelers Classic in Idaho. Who gives a damn about that tournament? Getting into the Preseason NIT? Now that’s a step up for the program – nice work! And a game against UNC-Chapel Hill right in the middle of the season? I love it! Very, very good work putting this type of real, tough, competitive schedule together.

Here’s looking forward to the coming season! Read more about this season’s schedule at GoMUHawks.com.

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!

When in doubt, tape it out!

For some reason, I found that very entertaining! Anyway, the more important story is that the Monmouth Hawks won their third game in a row and now are faced with a situation where they need to win two of their remaining three games in order to qualify for the NEC tournament. A few weeks ago I’d say that I’m not sure if the team would be able to make it happen. However, with three wins a row the Hawks might actually be building a slight bit of momentum going into tomorrow’s final home game of the season against Robert Morris University. If you’re in the area, make sure you head over to The MAC to support the Hawks!

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.

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!