NCAA Basketball: 3 teams to watch in first week of 2023 conference tournaments
Hofstra Pride
The Charleston Cougars spent a minute in the AP Top 25 this season, a rarity for a team coming out of the Colonial Athletic Association. They aren’t the top seed in the conference tournament, though.
That distinction, instead, belongs to Long Island’s Hofstra Pride. Speedy Claxton’s team has been sniffing an NCAA Tournament bid in recent years and this may finally be the week that gets the program there.
Both Hofstra and Charleston went 16-2 in league play, though Charleston only lost one other game all season; the Pride lost six. Hofstra has one of the most dynamic players in the sport, star guard Aaron Estrada, who is averaging 20.3 points per game.
Hofstra and Charleston only played once this season. It was the game that ended the Cougars’ time in the Top 25, as the Pride snapped Charleston’s 20-game winning streak. Estrada dropped 25 points in the road victory.
Don’t think we’re on an inevitable march to another Charleston-Hofstra clash in the title game, though. The CAA Tournament is always fairly competitive and there are a handful of teams, including UNC Wilmington, Towson, and Drexel who could steal the title.
Hofstra hasn’t appeared in the NCAA Tournament since 2001. They won the regular season and conference tournament title in 2020, only for the pandemic to scuttle the Big Dance. The year before that – the last for school legend Justin Wright-Foreman – the team won the regular season title, but lost in the championship game and went to the NIT.
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Speedy Claxton is ready to take his alma mater to the promised land for only the second time since his own playing days.