When you exit the Nassau Boulevard LIRR train station in Garden City, NY, you wouldn’t immediately think you were within walking distance of a picturesque university campus dating to 1929.
Yeah, I knew ahead of time where I was going when I decided to attend Tuesday night’s Adelphi/New Haven hoops game. I mapped it out, checked the train schedule and decided I could pull it off logistically without a vehicle.
But what kinda blew me away when I arrived in Garden City was how secluded, dark and quiet it was in the proximate vicinity of the train station. Million dollar houses with nice big front yards are lined up for as far as the eye can see. They’re positioned just off the train. It’s 25 miles due east of Manhattan but feels like a hundred. When the train doors opened a little after 6 PM, men and women in business attire streamed off for short strolls into the quiet, commerce-free neighborhoods.
The walk from the train to Adelphi’s on-campus field house (Center for Recreation and Sports) is about ten minutes. There are no streetlights so it’s pitch dark as you make the trek. A sidewalk runs parallel to South Avenue and comprises the northern border of the campus.
About 8000 young people attend Adelphi. It’s costs about 40 grand a year to go there (room and board included). Female students outnumber males by a ratio of 7 to 3.
Adelphi is nationally famous for its lacrosse squads. Men with sticks were playing under the lights on what looked like a new field as I walked into the hoops game.
Admission was five bucks. Adelphi is the reigning men’s basketball champ in the Northeast-10 conference (a league with sixteen Division II schools from five northeast states). Added to the Northeast-10 in 2009, Adelphi’s only bus ride longer than 300 miles is the one it makes to St. Michael’s College in Colchester, VT.
Adelphi had long been a fixture in the East Coast Conference, a smaller entity with more modest ambitions and more closely positioned campuses. The move to the NE-10 most certainly costs Adelphi more money but exposes its student-athletes to parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and upstate New York that likely broadens the enjoyment of competition.
D-II hoops is high quality basketball. It’s a big notch below the Big East in terms of front line size and skill but the game I saw was more soundly executed than what I saw at the Garden a week earlier. Plays are run. Passes are made. Man covers man rather than general area. It’s a brand of competition that better resembles the way I remember seeing the sport growing up.
Attendance was announced at 398. New Haven raced out to a 12-nothing lead but two quick 30-second timeouts by Adelphi during the sequence helped right the ship.
Adelphi won 64-61. New Haven had the ball down one with 26 seconds left but couldn’t find a guy who wanted to shoot as the clock ticked down.
Two man broadcast crews from both schools were on hand to describe the game.
The Division II NCAA basketball tournament in March invites 64 teams. Adelphi got knocked out in the first round last year. They’ll be back for another crack this year barring a bad swoon the rest of the way.
After the game, I caught a 10:09 PM train to Jamaica and then rode the E train back home.
I’d go back to Adelphi for a baseball or basketball game for sure. It’s a serene and beautiful environment hosting a high level of competition.