Hofstra suffered through its worst season in 30 years in 2019-20. As second-year head coach Danielle Santos Atkinson starts to stock the roster with her own recruits, will the Pride be able to get out of the basement and back toward its rich history of women’s hoops?
We don’t have to go into the details of how poor a season Hofstra had last year.
We don’t have to talk about how Hofstra was the first team to go winless in CAA play since 1995-96. We don’t have to say that the Pride finished 328th out of 351 DI teams in Her Hoop Stats rankings. Nobody has to know that their three wins was their worst since 1989-90. It can remain a secret that they only had a single player average more than 10 points per game, and that she only put up 11.6.
Ah, well. Nevertheless.
Suffice it to say that Hofstra had a bit of a rough patch last season. There’s really not much to say other than that.
It was a rough welcome for first-year head coach Danielle Santos Atkinson, who bounced around as a top assistant through the college ranks, including stints at Pittsburgh, Florida State, and Kentucky. Indeed, the Hofstra head job was a bit of a homecoming for Atkinson, who was on the bench in Hempstead for a four-year run ending in 2010.
A bunch of factors lined up at once to put Hofstra in a tough position in 2019-20. A new head coach; a lack of talented seniors; the improvement of the bottom tier of the CAA. But they also just weren’t very good. Out of their 19 conference losses, including the first-round CAA tournament defeat at the hands of Elon, only five were by 10 points or less. They were getting blown out A LOT.
That being said, the Pride look like a team slated to make some kind of jump this year. Two full-time starters return, including their leading scorer (11.6/g) and rebounder (8.6/g), Jaylen Hines. The senior forward shot 49.5% from the field, although she only took a single three-pointer all season.
The other starter coming back is sophomore guard Sorelle Ineza, who received Hofstra’s only postseason honor last year — an All-Rookie Team selection. She started all but two games, playing more minutes than any other player and running to point with the poise of a much more experienced player. She didn’t shoot the ball exceptionally well, but she was a solid distributor (leading the team in assists by a wide margin) and a good defender. The area in which she really needs to improve is turnovers; Ineza posted a turnover rate (the percentage of plays in which the player committed a turnover) of 30%, which is not what you want from your lead ballhandler. As she matures, I would expect to see that number drop.
After those two, Hofstra really doesn’t have any proven talent returning. But perhaps that can be offset by incoming players. The Pride will have three transfers eligible this season: guards Rosi Nicholson (Santa Fe Community College/Stetson) and Jada Peacock (Trinity Valley Community College/Wichita State), and forward Jaala Henry (Pittsburgh). The addition of those three, alongside two freshmen, should inject some playmaking ability into Hofstra’s roster.
Of course, it’s hard to envision how well these disparate pieces will fit together. The Pride certainly have more firepower this year, but how many wins will that translate into? Nobody knows, but it has to be more than last season.
Thanks to HerHoopStats.com for access to analytics for this article.