The Hofstra Pride had a great 2014 season as they went 11-5 and finished the year ranked 13th in the country. After starting the season with two straight losses, the Pride found their groove as a team as they went 10-2 to close out the season. That included two winning streaks of four and six games. The Pride even reached the CAA Final where they lost a heartbreaker to Drexel by a score of 11-10. It is hard to say given the final result but the Pride’s 2014 season was a great success.
As they enter 2015, expectations are higher as they bring back five starters including the CAA Preseason Player of the Year in attackman Sam Llinares. Can the Pride repeat their success in 2015?
Preseason Heartbreak:
The team will be playing with heavy hearts heading into 2015 as it lost sophomore defender Joe Ferriso in a car accident. It will be hard for the Pride to play without one of their own, especially so close to returning to school and starting the season but in a weird way it could unite them to be stronger as a whole. I want to be clear that nothing good ever comes from losing a teammate but it may offer the team some perspective on things that they had taken for granted before.
Everyone’s thoughts and prayers here at ILWT are with the Ferriso and Hofstra family as they continue to grieve the loss of their son and teammate.
Offense:
The Pride return three of their top five scorers. While attackman Torin Varn (38 points) and midfielder Drew Coholan (32 points) are gone but junior attackman Sam Llinares, the team’s leading scorer returns to team up with midfielders Mike Malave and Korey Hendrickson.
While the midfield has two threats from up top, the attack will have to look to take some heat off Llinares. Freshman Brier Davis saw a little playing time last season as he recorded seven points and will be relied upon to step into a much bigger role in 2015. Sophomore Nick Altmann and senior Steve Romano will battle it out for the third midfield spot on the first line. The “loser” should be a good option to lead the second unit or be rotated as a fourth midfielder to go along with the first midifield.
It will be interesting to see what the Hofstra offense can do as they try and improve from their 37th ranked offense that produced 9.6 goals a game in 2014. It will be tough with a lot of questions at attack and the third midfield.
Defense:
LSM Ryan Rielley leads this unit as he forced 24 caused turnovers and was a threat in transition with three goals and one assist last season. Meanwhile, Finn Sullivan will lead the close defensemen as he returns to the team along with his 14 caused turnovers which ranked him second on the team behind Rielley.
Unfortunately, the team will have to replace Corey Caputo and Steve Satterthwaite down low, however, neither of the two players were exactly takeaway players but both had a ton of experience down low as they started every game with Rielley and Sullivan.
Thankfully, the Pride return goalie Chris Selva. Selva is a CAA Preseason First Team Selection even after a very down season that saw him post a save percentage of 49.8 percent. That was down the year before from a season in which he put himself on the map as he posted a save percentage of 60 percent in his sophomore year. With the defense breaking in two new starters down low, Selva will have to return to his 2013 form in order to keep Hofstra afloat early in the year.
Faceoff:
Kris Clarke returns at the midfield and he had a strong freshman season as he won 55.6 percent of his faceoffs. On the season he won 189 faceoffs out of the 340 he took. Despite being a freshman, Clarke held his own against two of the top faceoffmen in the country in Drexel’s Nick Saputo and Delaware’s Tyler Barbarich. Clarke beat Saputo 14-to-11 in their last matchup of the season and he beat Barbarich 13-to-11 midway through the season. Expectations should be high for him in 2015 as he becomes more consistent and if he does, he could turn into one of the top faceoffmen in the nation.
Schedule:
The schedule is eerily similar to last year’s as Hofstra will open up against Marquette and Princeton as they try to avenge their two losses from 2014. Both games were close last season and they had a chance of upsetting Princeton if not for some slef-implosion towards the end of the game and some heroics by Tom Schreiber. Manhattan and Providence should be easy wins for the Pride in an otherwise very solid schedule. There are no “hard” games but many of the teams they face will be very similar in talent and skill to Hostra.
Georgetown and St. Johns will be good tuneups until they hit the CAA schedule in its entirety. The Pride do get a breather with a game against Marist late in the season but also take on a national power in Cornell before they face Towson and Fairfield. However, they did beat Cornell last season by a goal so beating them is definitely not out of the question.
Hofstra is considered the favorite heading into the season as they were picked to finish first in the CAA.
