A rebuilding year produces a glimmer of hope

One month from today, the Hofstra men's basketball team will travel down to Richmond, Va. to participate in the CAA Tournament, just as they do the first full weekend of every March. This routine would suggest that things have not changed. But they have. For the first time since the 2003-04 season, it appears the Pride will be playing on the tournament's first day.

With a 7-14 overall record (4-7 in CAA play), it also appears that the Hofstra faithful who take the six-plus hour bus ride down to the unholy state of Virginia will be venturing into the Richmond Coliseum expecting to lose. It's just been that kind of season. With a schedule that includes puzzling losses to the likes of St. Francis, Fordham, Stony Brook and Marist, those expectations have disappeared faster than Tom Brady jersey sightings on campus.

It's the unfortunate reality of a rebuilding season. In a way, it's hard to find fault within this team. After all, they play hard. They compete…most of the time, anyway. Sometimes, they are even fun to watch, something most fans deemed impossible after Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera collected their diplomas. Pair that with the fact that scorer-extraordinaire Antoine Agudio has either been hurt (an ankle sprain forced him to miss three games, the only three he's ever sat out with injury) or constantly double, even triple-teamed, it's almost tempting to let the most popular team in Hempstead off the hook. But on the flip side of that coin, Hofstra has lost a ton of winnable games in a year where the CAA is relatively wide open. Free throws (66 percent as a team) and turnovers (17-plus per game) have been nagging concerns all season, and issues such as these can become crippling, especially to a team that starts three players who didn't even suit up in a Hofstra uniform last season. And when you pile up so many wins (69 the past three seasons) without an NCAA Tournament berth, the negatives tends to outweigh the positives.

As a result, this season has become more about an individual accomplishment (Agudio's chase to break the program's 43-year old career points mark) than the ultimate team goal, at least from a fan's standpoint. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but merely the reality of the situation. And while Agudio (2,071 points) remains ahead of pace to pass Steve Nisenson's all-time record of 2,222 points, there still seems to be a glimmer of hope within this bunch, even if it is an extremely faint one. Even if nearly everybody has given up on them, they still haven't given up on themselves.

With seven winnable conference games remaining, who knows, maybe there's still a surprise or two left in head coach Tom Pecora's bunch. As Pecora said after last Saturday's 64-58 come-from-behind win over Delaware, "It's the CAA, man. It's crazy." Indeed it is. Hey, if not for a fellow named Eric Maynor, sixth-seeded George Mason probably would have won four straight games last March in the CAA Tournament, so nothing is beyond the realm of possibilities in this wacky conference. Theoretically, anything can still happen. But until that thing -- whatever it may be -- can potentially happen, a lot more work still needs to be done, and Hofstra can start by winning two consecutive CAA games, something it has yet to do this season. Currently, the Pride sits in ninth place, which probably won't cut it when it's time to go to Richmond.

Either way, it's safe to say that this season has been an interesting one filled with more dejection than elation. The good thing is that Hofstra is still kind of hanging around, much like a pesky fighter who refuses to get knocked down.

The final chapter of the 2007-08 Hofstra men's basketball team's story has yet to be written, but one thing remains clear: Things have changed, when really all fans want is for them to go back to the way they were.