Thirteen. Thirteen equaled the total points Hofstra received in the 2022 preseason Colonial Athletic Association poll, a number designating the Pride for last-place in the league. 

Eighteen is the number of games Hofstra’s won through April 25, nine of which have come against CAA competition. That’s good for third in the conference standings with a little more than a month to go in the regular season. 

Catcher Kevin Bruggeman said “this is one of the better starts for us,” and that’s no exaggeration. The Pride’s have already surpassed their win total for all of 2021, and they have come out significantly stronger than the 4-10 start before COVID-19 ended the 2020 campaign. 

Given Hofstra last finished with a record better than .500 a decade ago, going 34-22 in 2012, one can at least understand why the preseason poll tabbed the Pride for the cellar. 

But that doesn’t mean this team was going to let past results dictate future performance. 

“We kind of took it personally,” said Bruggeman, who has been one of the catalysts behind Hofstra’s breakout performance. 

“People don’t really expect much because we haven’t been great [in past years].” 

What preseason expectations did not account for, Bruggeman noted, was the impact a new coaching staff would have on the Pride. 

Frank Catalanotto came to Hofstra from New York Tech, where he coached the Bears to the 2019 Div. II College World Series. 

The pandemic forced the hiatus of all sports at New York Tech ahead of the 2020-21 academic year. 

“We had no idea,” Catalanotto told Newsday in 2020. 

“The announcement completely blindsided everyone ... The coaches and players should have been told sooner and given the opportunity to figure out what they wanted to do with their careers. This is way too late in the process.” 

After a season without a head-coaching position, Catalanotto is making up for lost time with his guidance of the Pride. He arrived with his staff at the beginning of this academic year, and long before the team ever took the field, began emphasizing the approach Bruggeman credited for Hofstra’s play. 

“From the first day we stepped on campus, we had a meeting and their biggest message was that ‘everything matters,’” Bruggeman said. 

“Everybody bought into that mentality that whatever you’re doing, whether it’s classroom, practice, extra hitting with no coaches, really put your full effort into it.”

Full effort into preparation translates into full team contributions on game days. Hofstra’s has its standouts, including Bruggeman with a .301 batting average and team-high-matching 22 RBI, tied with Brian Morrell. Morrell, meanwhile, has set the pace with an average of .322 and OPS of .920. 

The Pride have also seen contributions from Anthony D’Onofrio and Ryan Morash, each of whom have seven stolen bases, and Will Kennedy has come on strong through the month of April. 

After missing more than a month, Kennedy helped Hofstra end Delaware’s nine-game winning streak and sealed the series win with a 2-for-2 performance in the rubber game. 

Bruggeman delivered on his own monster game recently in a Pride win, too, hitting for the two most difficult legs of the cycle with a homer and triple in a 9-3 defeat of Fairfield on April 19. While the defeat of the Stags doesn’t impact Hofstra’s pursuit of a CAA championship, the strong showing in a midweek, non-conference tilt shows strides in an area that Bruggeman said had been a weakness for the team. 

It marked the Pride’s first midweek win since beating Manhattan on March 18. 

Stacking up more midweek victories will push Hofstra to a plus-.500 finish, should it continue to flourish in the CAA as it has.