Lawrence, Kansas (Nov. 13) - The Hofstra Men's Basketball team will open its 2009-10 season when it faces preseason No. 1 Kansas at historic Phog Allen Fieldhouse tonight at 8 p.m. (EST).
The Pride will be facing a top-ranked team for the first time in program history. The highest-ranked Division I team that Hofstra has ever faced was No. 5 Maryland in the 1998-99 season opener (which the Terrapins won 89-59). The last time Hofstra played a top-10 team was in 2004-05, when it took No. 7 Syracuse down to the final seconds before falling 80-75.
Hofstra is coming off a 21-11 season in 2008-09, which marked the program's fourth 20-win season in the last five years. Hofstra has won 102 games in the last five years, an average of 20.4 per season, which is by far the highest total in the Metropolitan New York area. Rider is second among New York-area teams in the last five years with just 85 wins.
The Pride returns only five of its 13 letter-winners from last season's team, although all five earned significant starting experience last winter. Leading the way will be junior guard Charles Jenkins (Queens, NY), who averaged 19.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.3 assists in 2008-09, making him one of only six players in the nation who averaged at least 19 points, four rebounds and four assists per game last year (and the only one returning this season). Jenkins earned the Haggerty Award a year ago as the top player in the Metropolitan New York area, making him only the fifth sophomore to earn that honor. He has a chance to become the first player to win three Haggerty Awards since Chris Mullin of St. John's (1983-85).
Hofstra's other returning players include guards Cornelius Vines (Syracuse, NY) and Nathaniel Lester (Brooklyn, NY), and forwards Greg Washington (Centereach, NY) and Miklos Szabo (Szeghalom, Hungary). The rest of the Pride's roster consists of six freshmen and one junior college transfer.
Kansas returns all five starters from a team which went 27-8 last year and reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. The Jayhawks were a near-unanimous choice for the preseason No. 1 team in the nation, earning 27 of 31 votes in the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll and 55 of 64 votes in the Associated Press poll. Senior point guard Sherron Collins and junior center Cole Aldrich were both named preseason All-Americans by the AP as well.
The WRHU radio broadcast can also be heard on GoHofstra.com. The game will be televised by Jayhawk TV and will be picked up by the ESPN Full Court package on DirecTV. It will also be shown on ESPN360, ESPN's broadband network, at the following link:
http://espn.go.com/broadband/espn360/index?id=293172305
The Hofstra athletic department has three wins over No. 1-ranked teams in its history. The softball team was the first to do it, when it knocked off top-ranked UCLA 10-5 in the 2000 season. Wrestling defeated No. 1 Minnesota 18-17 in the 2006-07 campaign, while men's lacrosse defeated top-ranked Johns Hopkins 8-7 in 2008.
