Perhaps this is the basketball gods’ way of starting to make things right for the Hofstra Pride men’s basketball team after they got robbed of a trip to the NCAA tournament in 2020 thanks to COVID.
In a week where Hofstra was slated to face a nationally ranked team in Charleston, go toe-to-toe with CAA rival Towson and begin a new phase of their longstanding rivalry against Stony Brook, things couldn’t have gone any better than they did. The Pride snapped then-ranked No. 18 Charleston’s 20-game winning streak, had a dramatic comeback win over Towson and then wiped the floor with Stony Brook.
In the middle of all that, Hofstra moved into a tie for first place in the conference with Charleston. That earlier in the week over Charleston looking even bigger now that Hofstra holds the tiebreaker and could put them in the top seed in next month’s CAA tournament.
Safe to say it had been quite the week for the Pride, who have won five straight games and nine of their last 10.
“We are extremely focused right now. We know what’s at stake. I am sure everybody does,” Hofstra coach Speedy Claxton said after Saturday’s win. “We’re going to go from here. There is no looking back. As (Jaquan Carlos) says, ‘It’s no U-turns.’”
The victory at the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex over the weekend was made even sweeter by the fact that Hofstra defeated fellow Long Island CAA member Stony Brook in such definitive fashion in front of a sellout crowd. A capacity crowd of 3,901 was on hand to see the Pride face the Seawolves in CAA play for the first time in the schools’ long-standing rivalry after Stony Brook made the jump this year from the America East Conference.
The game had already been sold out by Wednesday and Claxton enjoyed the ecstatic atmosphere come game time.
“The Island is blue,” Claxton said, referring to Hofstra’s colors. “It was a great atmosphere. I wish every game would be like this. To have a crowd like that is going to raise these kids’ games. Playing for that crowd? Who wouldn’t get up for that?”
Carlo said that Saturday’s game had a bit of a revenge game feel to it after hey lost to Stony Brook.
“Definitely being there last year and not playing and seeing how they beat us, it was just a get back game,” “A revenge game and I knew it was gonna take a lot without Aaron Estrada playing today. It was really an intensity game.”
