http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/sports/ncaabasketball/new-york-college-basketball-media-day.html 2016-10-13 03:10:31 New York Colleges Unite for a Day, Hoping to Revive a Bygone Era Eight midmajor schools from the area held a combined event for the news media, seeking more attention in a saturated sports market. === HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Stony Brook’s Lucas Woodhouse enjoys studying 19th and 20th century United States history. Yunus Hopkinson of St. Francis is a fan of the soliloquies spun by the rapper Tory Lanez. If those sound like scenes plucked from a speed dating event, that assumption would not be far off. Inside David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex at For the first time, Columbia, Hofstra, Iona, Long Island University-Brooklyn, Manhattan, St. Francis, Stony Brook and Wagner joined for what they called a New York College Basketball Media Day. (A representative for the event said St. John’s and Fordham also were invited but had declined to take part.) Midmajor programs routinely struggle to attract attention, and in New York the problem can be especially acute. So instead of holding individual preseason media day events, which sometimes lure only student newspapers and a handful of reporters, members of Hofstra’s athletic department conjured the idea of grouping together the area’s teams. The goal was to entice more coverage with the offer of one-stop shopping. It seemed to work: A Hofstra representative estimated there were 60 news outlets in attendance on Wednesday. The potential benefits of the combined media day included not only increased exposure for largely unknown players like Woodhouse, Hopkinson and Turner, but also the chance to resuscitate a faded aura of New York City college basketball. For decades, college basketball doubleheaders at Madison Square Garden were one of the city’s most coveted tickets, but they “When you bring everybody together, it sells the product, it sells the program,” Columbia Coach Jim Engles said. “Honestly, I think it’s something we’ve been missing.” Engles grew up in Staten Island and began his career as an assistant at Wagner. Many of his colleagues proudly proclaimed their local ties on Wednesday, like scouts wearing badges of honor. The only interloper seemed to be Jeff Boals, Stony Brook’s new coach, who previously served as an assistant at Ohio State. While Boals told a few jokes that fell a bit flat and said Stony Brook reminded him of a Midwest campus, he appeared to be acclimating himself: He was already grumbling about the quagmire of traveling to La Guardia Airport. New York-area programs have long represented a starting point for some of college basketball’s biggest names. Fran Fraschilla, whose first head coaching job came at Manhattan and who now works as a broadcaster for ESPN, was the event’s host. He appeased those wistful for the New York glory days by name-dropping Steve Lappas, Butch van Breda Kolff and Jay Wright and by acknowledging that it can become tiresome to talk “ad nauseam” about Duke and Kentucky on television. He drew sympathetic laughs when he recounted arduous road trips to Canisius. Iona Coach Tim Cluess was happy to take in the nostalgia. Raised minutes from Hofstra, where he finished his college playing career, Cluess and his three brothers all played at St. John’s. “Everyone should take this and jump on this and ride this to whatever we can,” Cluess said. “I think we should all start playing each other and playing in a tournament against each other and just try to build the public coming back, really caring about New York City basketball and local colleges.” Some players kept their heads buried in their phones or simply seemed happy to get out of classes for a day and eat the catered lunch. But Iona guard Deyshonee Much, who is from Rochester, said he began to understand the brotherhood that many of the coaches alluded to during their opening remarks. “Being from upstate, I’m kind of getting attuned with the culture of New York City basketball,” Much said. “I see what a big deal it is.” While unity was the major theme of the day, each program also found took the opportunity to pitch its credentials for this season and beyond. L.I.U.-Brooklyn Coach Jack Perri compared his star guard Joel Hernandez to Thomas Walkup, the similarly built scorer from Stephen F. Austin, who carried his team to a first-round upset over West Virginia in the N.C.A.A. Tournament in March. Cluess boasted about Iona’s uptempo offense, but insisted the Gaels also carried “the old lunchpail mentality.” The slogan of Hofstra Coach Joe Mihalich was simple: “attitude and effort.” Hopkinson, one of the few players dressed in a suit, said the Terriers were a hard-nosed team, built on defense. And Wagner forward Mike Aaman said he thought the Seahawks had the most talent of any team he has played on. Because of that, Aaman was thankful for the elevated stage that Wednesday’s conglomeration afforded programs eager for a day in the spotlight. “New York City hasn’t been doing that great lately with the big-time schools, but you don’t realize how well the midmajor schools are really doing,” Aaman said. “We don’t really get the opportunity to play on all these big channels all the time. It’s kind of unknown, a lot of these schools. “I never really been to something like this. I thought it was a great turnout.”