March Madness: How Hofstra arrives at its NCAA Tournament game ... it takes an army

Jay Artinian is one of the longest-tenured employees in the Hofstra athletic department, having joined shortly after he graduated in 1999. That makes him one of the few who can remember the excitement from the last time the school played in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Of course back then he was so new on the staff he didn’t make the cut to join the travel party and attend the game in Greensboro where Hofstra lost in the first round to UCLA in 2001.

This time that won’t be a problem. Artinian currently is the assistant vice president for athletics and chief operating officer, so not only is he going to Tampa for the game against Alabama on Friday, it’s actually his job to make sure everyone else gets there, too.

Getting into this tournament took years of work and development for the program with players and coaches devoting much of their lives to the pursuit. Physically getting to the tournament — the logistics of moving close to 100 people from Hempstead to Florida and coordinating their movements once down there — has been a weeklong sprint for a mid-major athletic department that is getting a rare taste of the big time and loving every minute of it.

“It’s nothing short of a monstrous team effort,” Artinian told Newsday in his campus office on Tuesday, a little less than 24 hours before the scheduled wheels-up for the team’s chartered jet from Republic Airport in Farmingdale on Wednesday morning. Various administrators are responsible for various elements including hotels, busing, ticketing, even schmoozing the donors and boosters, while Artinian is overseeing all of it.

“I happen to think this is when our staff shines its brightest, in these types of moments,” he said of Bryan Graff, Haley Dillon, Jess Kalbfleisch, Sean Smith and all the others involved in the task. “Everyone just throws everything else out the window and does whatever it takes to get it done . . . We would all work 24-7 to make this happen. All of us have waited a long time for this.”

The waiting, at least, is almost over.

“I’m definitely ready to play,” head coach Speedy Claxton said, antsy in the midst of what will eventually be nine days without a game by the time the next one starts at 3:15 p.m. on Friday. “We’re ready to go, ready to play.”

If only it were that simple.

To put the scale in some perspective, the men’s basketball team usually has a traveling party of about 30-35 people that includes the players and staff. The manifest for this trip is triple that, 98 people with wiggle room for some last-second additions that are sure to pop up. The list includes just about every member of the school’s senior cabinet of vice presidents, the cheerleaders, the pep band, the board of trustees and, oh yeah, the basketball players.

The team usually flies commercial; that’s not the case here with the NCAA footing the bill. There are seating charts that need to be plotted out like a wedding reception and the weights of all the equipment to consider as well. And normally there is one bus that handles ground transportation for everyone. On this trip there will be three of them: one each for the team, the administrators, and the pep band and cheerleaders.

“We’re trying to make sure we accommodate to the best of our ability so the people that don’t normally travel with us get the first-class experience,” Artinian said.

That goes for everyone from University President Dr. Susan Poser (who cut her fundraising trip in California this week short so she could be at the game) to the kid who toots the tuba (who cut his or her spring break short for the same reason).

The scope of this venture surpasses even other Hofstra teams that have made NCAA Tournament runs like men’s soccer which made it to the Elite Eight in the fall. That team flew on commercial flights and didn’t even get two buses, nevermind three. Artinian called it “eye-opening.”

Luckily for Hofstra the NCAA not only pays for all of this, it helps provide a framework. As soon as Hofstra’s game was announced they were given 75 rooms at a Tampa hotel which, up to that point, had been reserved for whoever the 13 seed was going to be. And there are checkpoints and fail-safes along the way to make sure nothing is overlooked.

“This is a well-oiled machine from their standpoint,” Artinian said. “You really feel that this is the main event for the NCAA. It’s cool.”

And to think that Hofstra was about 20 minutes away from having to do all of this times two! The women’s basketball team led at halftime of its conference title game but eventually lost to Charleston.

Wednesday’s departure won’t be the end of this endeavor. Once they get to Florida they have to feed and move all those people around, coordinate practices and mandatory media availabilities for the team while the other groups do their things. Each itinerary will have a member of the athletic department assigned to it, too, so, as Artinian said, there is “no one left behind.”

At some point on Friday afternoon, though, Artinian said he hopes he and his staff can take a breath and soak in where they are.

“When we have boots on the ground in Tampa and everyone is where they should be, hopefully we’ll get a few minutes to enjoy what this team has provided the university and the department,” he said.

And then the game will start.