March Madness: Hofstra's NCAA Tournament loss still a program win for the future
Hofstra head coach Speedy Claxton during the first half against the Alabama Crimson Tide in the first round of the 2026 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament on Friday in Tampa, Fla. Credit: Getty Images/Mike Carlson
TAMPA, Fla. — There were two possible happy outcomes for Hofstra in Friday’s first-round game against Alabama.
The first was the potential for a glorious upset victory and a first-ever NCAA Tournament win for the program. Although the Pride led by 10 in the first half and cut it to 5 at several points in the final 10 minutes, including as late as 4:49 to play, that did not happen. No. 4 seed Alabama was just too big, too physical, too better. It closed the game on a 19-4 run that made the final score of 90-70 look less competitive than the contest actually was.
The second item on the wish list was having the ability to build off this experience with the players who brought the team here. Back in the old days, when current head coach Speedy Claxton was playing, that would have been a given. It was easy to look at the roster and expect most of the squad to be coming back. Programs could be built over time. Freshmen would become sophomores, juniors would become seniors, and it would all happen in the same uniform. That was the dynamic that helped Hofstra get to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments in 2000 and 2001 (not to mention 1976 and 1977).
That isn’t how it goes now.
So Claxton had to hedge his postgame predictions about a “bright future” and returning as the favorite in the conference next year with big glaring “ifs” regarding the returns of Preston Edmead, Cruz Davis, and others who still have eligibility remaining.
“The landscape is changing,” he said of college basketball — mid-major college basketball in particular — in the age of name, image, likeness (NIL) deals and the transfer portal.
Hofstra, though, seems to have at least won that second battle.
Turns out it was never really in doubt.
After the game, both Edmead and Cruz, two players who will undoubtedly have options to play at higher levels and make more money than they would at Hofstra, said they intend to return to the Hempstead campus to try to get back to this point — or beyond — in the 2026-27 season.
“I haven’t even thought about [leaving],” Edmead said. “I was always coming back. I was never thinking about anything else.”
“I see a great future,” Cruz said of Hofstra’s outlook and about playing alongside Edmead in particular. “It’s great playing with him. You saw what we did this season. We did something legendary. So it would be great to do it next season.”
That’s certainly not a guarantee and things can change. Claxton even said he will take some time off and then in a few weeks meet with the players and their advisers to discuss their futures.
“I’m confident,” he said, “but who knows?”
At the very least, though, those verbal assurances made a day when Hofstra’s season came to a jolting finale feel a little bit more like the beginning of something than the end of it.
Edmead, a freshman from Deer Park, led Hofstra on Friday with 24 points, a new program record in an NCAA Tournament game. He is the player who hit the eventual winning three-pointer in overtime to beat Towson in the CAA semifinal last week and over the last three games has averaged 24 points a game.
“I learned so much,” he said of his first season of college ball. “This group, these coaches, they made me so much better. If I went anywhere else in the country, I don’t think it would be this good. The work these coaches did and the confidence they put in me, there were many times I thought I wasn’t playing good, but they always stuck with me.”
So he intends to stick with them.
Cruz, who has one year of eligibility left, scored 14 for Hofstra on Friday. Senior Biggie Patterson had 11 points and six rebounds while graduate student German Plotnikov scored 12.
Alabama, playing without Aden Holloway, its second-leading scorer who was arrested on federal drug charges earlier in the week, was led by Labaron Philon Jr.’s 29 points, 21 of them in the second half. Aiden Sherrell had 15 points and 15 rebounds for the Crimson Tide, who will face No. 5 Texas Tech in a second-round game on Sunday.
Hofstra’s roster will certainly look different next season and there are areas in which to improve. The loss showed some weaknesses in the team when it plays up a level. Alabama scored 38 points in the paint, had 13 second-chance points (some of them technically third-chance points) and had nearly as many offensive rebounds (17) as Hofstra had defensive ones (21).
It would be a shame for this 20-point loss to besmirch such a special season. It took 25 years for Hofstra to get back onto an NCAA Tournament court and for a while it even looked like they belonged out there. That’s not something the last two teams to make it this far could say about their first-round exits.
“We know what we did was special,” Edmead said. “We can always look back on that. We made history.”
Now Hofstra can focus on making its future.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
