PHILADELPHIA – For a mid-major team (from a one-bid conference) like the Hofstra Pride, November and December are less about wins and losses and more about learning before conference play begins in the new calendar year.
Even better if you can learn about your team while winning.
Hofstra head coach Craig “Speedy” Claxton is suddenly experiencing both of those after his squad ended the month by completing a successful three-day stint at the fourth annual Cathedral Classic, which honors the near-century-old legacy of the famed Palestra, home to the Pennsylvania Quakers.
The Pride (5-3) were the only group among a four-team field to go a perfect 3-0 over Thanksgiving weekend in the historic arena, after defeating La Salle in a low-scoring affair by five points on Friday, easily handling Merrimack by 20 the next day, and using a dominating second half to turn a close first half into a 77-60 cakewalk over Penn (5-3) on Sunday.
The earlier undercard saw Merrimack (which lost to Penn on Friday) salvage its stay in Philadelphia with a six-point win over La Salle (which lost to all three teams it faced in the event), to pave the way for the Pride and Quakers to compete for the de facto (though unofficial) Cathedral Classic championship.
During a first half that had six ties and four lead changes, Penn used an 18-8 run to take its biggest lead, 32-26, but the fatigued Quakers – who expended a lot of energy to rally from a 15-point, second-half deficit to edge La Salle by two points the day before – finally wilted under relentless Hofstra pressure thereafter.
“We didn’t finish the [first] half right and that carried over to a bad start to the second half,” said Penn head coach Fran McCaffery.
“I think our pressure wore them down,” Claxton said. “That was one of the biggest things that we wanted to do coming into the game. … We didn’t think that they could handle our pressure.”
At halftime, Claxton recalled, “We just told them to stay with the pressure and we’re going to wear them down eventually, and that’s what happened.”
McCaffrey also noted the Pride’s attack, “I thought the pressure was there the whole game.”
After scoring five of the last six points of the half to get within 33-31 by halftime, the Pride started the second half on a 24-9 run to make it an extended 29-10 surge spanning both halves, while taking a comfortable 55-42 lead, with 11:21 left, on a dunk from junior guard Cruz Davis, off a steal and lob pass from freshman sensation guard Preston Edmead. The margin never got to single digits again, reaching as high as the final score in the waning moments.
Davis and Edmead, Hofstra’s two leading scorers this season, are usually leading the way for the Pride.
While Davis ultimately finished with a game-high 18 points, and Edmead’s 11 points (along with a game-best eight assists) gave Hofstra five double-figure scorers, it was others who continued the positive and eye-opening learning process for Claxton.
Davis scored 10 of Hofstra’s first 18 points to help the Pride to an early 18-14 lead and his eight points over the final 11-plus minutes helped finish Penn off, but he was uncharacteristically quiet offensively during the middle part of the game while Edmead took only three shots (making one).
Instead, graduate guard German Plotnikov (12 points, four rebounds, and three blocks) – after missing all four of his first-half shots – made all four of his shots after intermission, the first three of which came during the opening 5:15 of the second half to spark Hofstra’s push out of the locker room.
Claxton said of Plotnikov (now in his fourth season with Hofstra), “He’s been here a couple years now, so he knows our system. He knows what we expect of him. He always approaches it business-like and I don’t expect anything less from him.”
Plotnikov and senior guard Biggie Patterson (10 points on the night) scored seven points each to account for 14 of the Pride’s first 20 points of the second half. Patterson also scored the final points of the first half, swishing a left-corner 3-pointer, to give Hofstra some good momentum going into halftime.
“That’s the really good thing about this team,” Claxton said, recognizing how others stepped up before eventually turning to his primary scorer late. “You never know where the points are going to come from. They played team basketball and let the offense dictate who was going to get the shots. I did put Cruz in position to make plays for himself and others down the stretch because he’s our go-to guy, and he came through for us.”
Another player who rose to the occasion was junior center Victor Onuetu, whose 10 points and game-high nine rebounds continued a good recent trend that Claxton has been happy to see from the center position, from both Onuetu and senior center Silas Sunday, who had 15 points and seven boards in the Pride’s win over Merrimack.
“We always thought that our five spot would be [strong] for us, and that’s held true,” Claxton said. Speaking of both Onuetu and Sunday, Claxton added, “I thought both those guys were great all weekend.”
While Claxton was confident about that and some other things, he had some pre-game trepidation about the matchup with Penn, particularly with the Quakers’ top two scorers, senior forward Ethan Roberts (20.3 points per game) and junior forward T.J. Power (15.6 points per game).
“They have two 20-point scorers who are really good, so that was a big concern, but we knew that if we could kind of control them, and keep them under their season averages, that we were going to put ourselves in position to win the ballgame,” Claxton said. “So, we really wanted to focus all of our attention on those two guys.”
That wasn’t so successful with Roberts in the first half, as he scored 12 points. But the Pride held Roberts to a harmless four points on 1-of-5 shooting thereafter. Meanwhile, Power was limited to only 10 points on 3-of-10 shooting overall, one day after playing every second of Penn’s comeback win over La Salle and leading the Quakers with 29 points in that one.
“I struggled with playing T.J. forty minutes yesterday, but I felt like I needed to keep him out there to get the win, which we did [get],” said McCaffrey. “We were a little tired today, I thought.”
Not just Roberts and Power, but Penn as a whole, and how the Quakers were playing before meeting his own team made Claxton feel a bit anxious.
“I thought we played a really good game against a really good team,” Claxton said proudly. “Up until this point, I thought they were playing well. They had a couple of really good wins. I was really concerned coming into the game.”
However, the wide range of contributions from all of Hofstra’s starters as well as from his bench, especially from backup junior point guard A.J. Wills, put Claxton at ease.
Wills only had five points on 2-of-6 shooting, but he handled the ball well, ran the offense solidly when needed, played good defense, and both of his makes were timely ones during his season-high 25 minutes (13 more than he had logged in any other game this season).
His pull-up jumper with 14:23 left gave the Pride the game’s first double-digit lead, at 49-38, and his lone 3-pointer was a final dagger that gave Hofstra a 67-53 advantage with 4:03 remaining.
“He was good off the bench,” Claxton said of Wills. “He gave us great minutes. I’m happy that he stayed ready so he didn’t have to get ready.”
The same can be said for everyone throughout the Hofstra roster over the course of a highly fruitful event for the Pride. Hofstra walked into the legendary building known as The Cathedral of College Basketball with a losing record and departed two games over .500 before the Pride enters December at Columbia on Wednesday.
“I think I’m finding out a lot about my team right now,” Claxton said. “We’re pretty good, and I’m happy with the way we played today. … The thing with this team [is] they listen, and they’re learning. I’m still learning about them, but I do like what I’m seeing right now.”
