It took until Sunday afternoon for the strangest offseason of all time to finally end for the Hofstra men’s basketball team, which opened what will surely be a strange 2021-21 campaign by heading to New Jersey and falling to nationally ranked Rutgers.

And because this is 2020-21, the Pride immediately headed back home over those same traffic-choked bridges and roads*** and hosted another New Jersey-based school, Fairleigh Dickinson, on Monday night, when Hofstra got into the win column with a second-half comeback over the Knights.

***we don’t know for sure if the bridges and roads were choked with traffic, but it was the Sunday night of Thanksgiving weekend in the New York City area so you can be assured the bridges and roads were choked with traffic

Hofstra will hope to get two more games under its belt over the next week, beginning tomorrow afternoon with a scheduled clash against local rival Iona and its new coach, some little-known guy named Rick Pitino. Here is a look back at some of the facts and figures from the games against the Scarlet Knights and the, umm, Knights as well as a hopeful look ahead to Iona and Stony Brook.

GOING COLD AGAINST THE SCARLET KNIGHTS

Hofstra missed 21 of its final 25 shots of the first half as Rutgers, ranked no. 24 in the Associated Press poll, opened up a double-digit lead in what turned out to be a 70-56 win. Jalen Ray, whose 3-pointer tied the game for the final time at 10-10 with 15 minutes left in the first half, scored a game-high 22 points and was the only Hofstra player to get into double figures. The Pride got within 10 points three times in the second half. Isaac Kante had a career-high 17 rebounds while freshman KVonn Cramer had an impressive debut with eight points, four rebounds and three steals.

WIRE-TO-WIRE LOSS

The Pride never led Sunday in their first wire-to-wire loss since Jan. 2, when William & Mary cruised to an 88-61 win on Long Island.

BACK IN ACTION

The game against Rutgers marked the first for Hofstra in 263 days dating back to, of course, the CAA championship game win over Northeastern on Mar. 10, one day before the sports world began shutting down due to the coronavirus pandemic. The offseason was the longest for the men’s basketball program since 2002, when the Pride also went 263 days between a CAA Tournament semifinal loss to VCU and a loss Gonzaga in the season opener.

TOUGH GOING AGAINST THE TOP 25

The loss to Rutgers dropped Hofstra to 1-18 in games against top 25 foes since 1993. The Pride’s lone win over a top 25 opponent in that span happened on Feb. 23, 2006, when Hofstra beat no. 25 George Mason, 77-68, to lock up no worse than an at-large spot to the NCAA Tournament. Well, in our minds, anyway.

STUCK IN THE FIFTIES

With the loss to Rutgers, the Pride is 1-14 when scoring fewer than 60 points under Joe Mihalich. However, the majority of those games happened during Mihalich’s first season in 2013-14, when a rebuilding squad went 0-10 when scoring fewer than 60 points. The Pride earned its lone win when scoring fewer than 60 points on Dec. 31, 2016, when it edged Delaware 58-56.

KAN DO

Isaac Kante quite literally picked up where he left off Sunday, when he had a career-high 17 rebounds. It marked the second straight game in which he set a career-high in rebounds. Kante pulled down 16 boards in the CAA title game win over Northeastern.

BOUNCING BACK

Hofstra recovered from another slow first half Monday night to beat Fairleigh Dickinson, 73-58. The Pride trailed 40-31 at the half before mounting one of its stingiest defensive halves ever over the final 20 minutes. Tareq Coburn scored 15 of his game-high 21 points in the second half while freshman KVonn Cramer (12 points, 10 rebounds) had the Pride’s first double-double of the season. Kante (16 points, nine rebounds) just missed a double-double while Omar Silverio added 10 points.

WIN ONE, LOSE ONE

Hofstra is 1-1 for the third straight season, the sixth time in eight seasons under Joe Mihalich and the 42nd time in program history.

THE DEFENSE DIDN’T REST

The Pride nearly produced its most dominant defensive half of the Joe Mihalich era in the second half Monday, when it outscored Fairleigh Dickinson 42-18. Hofstra’s allowed fewer points in a half under Mihalich just once — on Feb. 8, 2014, when the Pride held UNC Wilmington to 17 points in the second half of a 61-52 win. On Monday, The Knights didn’t reach 10 points for the half until John Square Jr’s free throw with 3:25 left and padded their total by scoring seven points in the final 1:52, including a 3-pointer by Brandon Rush with two seconds left.

FARRELLY’S FIRST

Acting head coach Mike Farrelly, who is taking the place of Mihalich while the latter is on a medical leave of absence, earned his first win Monday. He’s the first acting head coach to record a win for Hofstra since Feb. 21, 1994, when the then-Flying Dutchmen beat St. Francis (NY), 96-89, in the first of four games in which Joe Dunleavy filled in for a hospitalized Butch van Breda Kolff.

GIDDY UP

Kvonn Cramer’s double-double in his second game marks the earliest a Hofstra freshman has recorded a double-double since Mihalich became head coach prior to the 2013-14 season. Rokas Gustys recorded his first double-double in his 15th game Jan. 4, 2015, when he had 11 points and 16 rebounds against Delaware.

STILL NOT TWO UNDER

The win over Fairleigh Dickinson kept alive a unique streak for Hofstra, which hasn’t been more than one game under .500 since it finished the 2016-17 season with a 15-17 mark. Only 16 other mid-majors have gone longer without falling at least two games under .500, including CAA rival Charleston, which was last at least two games under .500 at the end of the 2014-15 season (9-24). 

SO WHO HAS A DOUBLE-DIGIT SCORING STREAK NOW?

Jalen Ray’s streak of double-digit scoring efforts ended at five straight games Monday when he had six points against Fairleigh Dickinson. And since Ray was the only Hofstra player to score in double figures against Rutgers, that means Coburn, Kante, Cramer and Silverio all share the team-long streak at…one game apiece. It’s the first time no Hofstra player has had a double-digit scoring streak of more than one game since Mihalich became head coach in 2013-14.

KENPOM PONDERINGS

The Pride remains the CAA’s top-ranked team at KenPom.com through Thursday night. Hofstra is ranked no. 147, five spots up from where it began the week and six spots up from its preseason place. Drexel ranks second in the CAA at no. 153.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Coronavirus-permitting, the Pride is scheduled to take on two of its biggest local rivals over the next week.

Hofstra and Iona hope to renew acquaintances Saturday, when Rick Pitino and the Gaels are scheduled to head to Long Island. While the all-time series is tied at 20-20, the schools last met on Dec. 29, 2011, when the Pride earned an 83-75 win over visiting Iona.

If the game goes off as scheduled, it will mean Pitino has coached three different schools against Hofstra over a 34-year span. Providence beat Hofstra 97-61 on Dec. 29, 1986, months before the Friars made the Final Four, and defending national champion Louisville beat the Pride 97-69 in Mihalich’s third game at the helm on Nov. 12, 2013.

The Pride is also scheduled to host Stony Brook, Long Island’s other Division I school, on Wednesday night. If the teams can play, it’ll mark the seventh straight season the rivals have met following a five-season Cold War-esque span in which the schools did not oppose one another. Hofstra earned a 71-63 win over Stony Brook last Dec. 10 to extend its winning streak in the series to four games and improve to 23-5 all-time against the Seawolves.

Jerry Beach has covered Hofstra sports since arriving on campus in the fall of 1993, when Wayne Chrebet was a junior wide receiver wearing No. 3, Butch van Breda Kolff was the men’s basketball coach for the East Coast Conference champions and Jay Wright was a little-known yet surely well-dressed UNLV assistant coach. Check out Jerry’s book about the 2000 World Series here and follow him on Twitter at @JerryBeach73.