DISAPPOINTMENT CREATES OPPORTUNITY


It’s Selection Sunday, 2006. Like many around the country Tom Pecora and his Hofstra Pride have been counting the minutes to unveiling of the field for the NCAA tournament.

For Pecora there was good reason for optimism. His team was 23-6. They had won 12-of-13 before losing to UNC-Wilmington in the Colonial Athletic Association championship game. And they had beaten George Mason, who many believed also had a great chance of going to the NCAA tournament, twice in less then two weeks.

“Plain and simple I thought we were in,” says Pecora.

But as the brackets were unveiled it was becoming more apparent to the head coach that he must take a disappointment and turn it into an opportunity.

“Before we sat down to watch the selection show, I told the team that ten people can’t define our program and our season,” says Pecora. “I truly believed that we deserved to go to the NCAA tournament, but I also knew that, regardless, we would be playing more basketball and we would have to be prepared.”

It would have been easy to attack that ten-man selection committee and complain about some of the many factors that work against mid-major programs, but Pecora opted to use it as a teaching experience. The core of his team would be returning next season and how they responded to this disappointment could go a long ways to determining success or failure in 2006-07.

School President Stuart Rabinowitz decided to visit the practice court on Monday to deliver a message to Pecora and his team. His short speech emphasized all the things that the team had accomplished during the season and all of the things it could further accomplish if it put that disappointment behind them.

“About halfway through his speech I remember turning to one of my assistants and saying that we were going to be fine,” says Pecora. “I could see how much President Rabinowitz’ visit and words meant to the players.”

A win over Nebraska and a win in overtime at St. Joseph’s capped a 26-win campaign. But when the season officially ended on March 22 (61-51 loss at home to Old Dominion), Pecora and his team became very interested spectators.

“It’s funny but a lot of people actually thought we would be rooting against George Mason,” laughs Pecora. “What they accomplished and what Old Dominion accomplished [getting to the NIT Final Four] showed everyone just how good the CAA really is. Sure it’s human nature to think that it could have been us that made that run to the Final Four, but it didn’t happen. Our focus was on now on what could happen in 2007.”

Nobody could have blamed Pecora and his players if they spent their summer like an extended selection Sunday, watching the clock tick towards the start of another season. But in Hempstead, NY it wasn’t a long summer or even an anxious summer -- It was a great summer.

Not big on moral wins Pecora still didn’t want his team to lose sight of what they had done. Four years earlier the program had suffered through an 8-20 season. After dominating the America East Conference, the first two seasons in the Colonial brought little success.

Given the traditional strength of the league, some thought it would be years before The Pride could contend with the league’s upper echelon. And what it would take to get to postseason had still more wondering why they had ever left America East.

But after just two losing seasons Hofstra opened a lot of eyes with a 21-9 in 2004-05. And now a season that matched a school record for wins (26), the highest year-end RPI ever (31) and the program’s first two postseason wins in school history (reached NIT quarterfinals).

Nearly as quickly as former Hofstra star Speedy Claxton could break down a defender off the dribble, the program had turned the corner and turned the page. The Jay Wright era and the domination of America East had given way to a new chapter.

“Geographically the America East was great for Hofstra,” says Pecora who is now in his thirteenth season at Hofstra, six as the head coach. “It was a great fit, but we had out grown the league. Much like when we made the move from the East Coast Conference to America East, we knew it would take a couple of years to right the ship after moving to the CAA. But this isn’t the Tom Pecora era. This is the CAA era.”

It would be difficult to find anyone who thought this much success would be realized in just four years time. Hence, expectations now surround the program after such an historical season.

Hofstra enters the new season with the highest-scoring backcourt in the country. Senior Loren Stokes (17.4 ppg), junior Antoine Agudio (17.2 ppg) and senior Carlos Rivera (11.7 ppg) combined to average 46.3 points per game last year. Pecora’s triple-threat has amassed 3,313 career points between them and could become a 5,000-point backcourt by season's end.

Pecora’s club is also the preseason pick to win the CAA and is on just about everybody’s radar now.

So is he feeling the pressure of expectations?

“Pressure is coming off an 8-20 season,” laughs Pecora. “Coming off a 26-win season is fun, especially when you have the type of talent and quality young men that we have here. You hear coaches say it all the time but it’s really a pleasure to coach these kids. When your three best players are also your hardest workers, everything falls into place. This isn’t pressure. This is a pleasure.”

Agudio, Rivera and Stokes will be anything but a pleasurable experience for the opposition this season. But Pecora also knows that his talented and much talked-about squad will make it that much easier for opposing coaches to get the attention of their respective teams. The new role of ‘the hunted’ and just one non-conference home game through the months of November and December will present a great challenge.

Much like his mentor, Jay Wright, Pecora has continued to do a great job of keeping things in perspective. Of course there is a certain stigma attached to being a native New Yorker, but don’t let the sarcasm and wit fool you. Much like Wright, Pecora is very grounded and he certainly doesn’t take much stock in his own headlines.

“Somehow I have become a great coach in the past couple of years,” laughs Pecora. “It’s funny because we are running the exact same stuff that we were running when we finished 8-20. It makes you look pretty good when you have exceptional talent coming off a ball screen.”