Season At A Glance — Hofstra

This is the second of what will eventually be capsules for each of the NYC teams when I’m sure their season has concluded.

Team: Hofstra

Record: 10-22 (3-15 in the CAA); season ended by 85-50 loss to Georgia State in CAA First Round

Season High: There were actually two. A 63-53 win over Cleveland State in November and an 83-75 home win over Iona on Dec. 29.

Season Low: The final game, the worst loss in CAA Tournament history.

Really Good At: Offensive Rebounding — Hofstra was the third best offensive rebounding team in the CAA during conference play. Nathaniel Lester, Stephen Nwaukoni and Moussa Kone all showed an ability to get to glass.

Struggled With: Shooting — The Pride finished 11th in the CAA in effective field goal percentage. They shot poorly from three (29.8%) and two (42.3%). That led to an offense that finished 11th in the CAA in efficiency.

Key Losses:

Mike Moore, Sr., G (20.0 PPG, 4.6 RPG, Second Team All-CAA)
Nathaniel Lester, Sr., F (14.7 PPG, 6.7 RPG, athletic big man)
Dwan McMillan, Sr., G (team-leading 4.9 APG)

Key Returnees:

David Imes, Jr., F — Athletic rebounder that can help replace Lester
Stephen Nwaukoni, So., F — Most efficient scorer on Hofstra this season
Stevie Mejia, Jr., G — A full season of health will help the Pride

Outlook: Cloudy. Hofstra loses its two best players and one of two key playmakers from an offense that just wasn’t very good. If you took Moore out of the equation, the Pride’s offense this season could’ve been classified as miserable. Yes, Hofstra certainly got unlucky during a number of losses in conference play, but they went 4-15 in 2012. All of that leaves Mo Cassara with a lot of work to do in order to field a competitive team again in 2012-13. He continues to bring in big men with high upside. Moussa Kone should improve next season and will be joined in the front court by 6’7″ recruit Jimmy Hall. Still, without a returning player who averaged more than 7.0 points per game it’s tough to predict an improvement next season. There is one potential silver bullet though for Cassara. He’s got two key transfers who will be eligible next season – Jamal Coombs-McDaniel and Taran Buie. Both started their careers at BCS schools (Connecticut and Penn State respectively) and should immediately impact the offense. Coombs-McDaniel in particular was an efficient scorer off the bench on UConn’s National Championship team. He’ll add another key wing. At 6’2″ Buie wasn’t really a pure point guard at Penn State. He didn’t play much for the Nittany Lions in 2010-11, but he did shoot a ton when he was on the court. It should give Cassara another confident backcourt player to add the rotation alongside Mejia.

Season Snapshot: Hofstra

If I could give Hofstra one piece of advice it would be to shoot more threes. (Well not if I was talking to Nathaniel Lester, but everyone else.) The Pride are one of the best three-point shooting teams in the country, but they underutilize the weapon to a criminal degree. Still, at 3-4 the Pride look to be right in line to fulfill expectations at the moment. Maybe they’ll be able to surprise in CAA play, but the projected eighth-place finish seems to be the goal right now.

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SGOTW: St. Francis (NY) at Hofstra

This week’s Saturday Game of the Week features two local teams, Hofstra and St. Francis (NY) battling it out on Long Island. The Pride are coming off a tough loss to Oregon State earlier in the week, but they started the season out by defeating Long Island. The Terriers have lost two close games by a combined 10 points, is this the game St. Francis finally gets over the hump?

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Three Questions – Hofstra

As the season approaches every team has questions. This series is going to look at three key ones.

1. Who or how does Hofstra replace Charles Jenkins? – All right, I started with the obvious one first, but this is definitely the biggest question. Jenkins had the best offensive rating the in the country last season for a player that used at least 28% of his team’s possessions. That’s high volume at high efficiency and it drove the Pride’s offense. And that offense in turn drove Hofstra to a surprisingly competitive campaign in the CAA.

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