Pecora’s homecoming strikes all the right notes in family reunion of sorts

Tom Pecora shares pregame hug with Speedy Claxton as Pecora’s Quinnipiac team visited Hofstra. Pecora recruited Claxton while a Hofstra assistant, and coached on Long Island for first time since leaving Hofstra in 2010. (Photo by Matteo Bracco/Hofstra Athletics)

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — A total of 5,746 days had passed between the last game Tom Pecora coached at the Mack Sports Complex and his return to his former home court Sunday.

On March 17, 2010, only 17 of the 365 current Division I head coaches were in charge of the programs they still helm today. The New York Yankees were the reigning World Series champion, LeBron James was still less than four months away from making “The Decision,” Tom Brady was stuck on three Super Bowls, Brett Favre was still an active quarterback, and Pecora had coached his last game at Hofstra, an ignominious loss to IUPUI in the College Basketball Invitational.

Most diehard fans know the turn the story took from there. Pecora left Hofstra, where he had spent the previous 16 years — the last nine as Jay Wright’s successor — for Fordham, whose head coaching position became vacant when then-interim coach Jared Grasso was not retained. Grasso went on to help build a dynasty at Iona as Tim Cluess’ right-hand man, while Pecora was fired after five seasons on Rose Hill, his Rams teams accumulating a 44-106 record in that stretch.

The long and winding road over the last decade took Pecora in and out of television, back into the mid-major ranks as an assistant at Quinnipiac, then as a head coach again when Baker Dunleavy stepped down in 2023. Yet, except for his appearance as a paying customer nearly three years ago, Pecora had not returned to the place that established him.

Until Sunday, when his Quinnipiac team returned a home-and-home series with Hofstra, his Bobcats having hosted the first leg last season before visiting the Pride and head coach Speedy Claxton, who Pecora personally recruited almost three decades ago after watching him play pickup ball at Hoffman Park, the Elmhurst playground across the street from another venerable New York staple, Queens Center Mall.

“It was hard for me to come back here,” Pecora reflected. “When Speedy and I decided to play this series, neither of us could get games last year. That’s why we decided to play each other.”

Pecora has always been adamant about not wanting to play friends of his in the business, owing to his familial and old-school personality. Fittingly on this day, though, his reception was that of a traditional Italian Sunday dinner. Pecora, always one to watch pregame warmups courtside, stopped for what felt like every other minute for conversations with fans and media alike before tipoff, cracking jokes and reminiscing of days gone by.

Hofstra did the same moments before tipoff on Sunday, paying tribute to its former coach’s career and accomplishments in a tribute video that ended with an extended and heartfelt standing ovation. Pecora was visibly moved while watching courtside from the video boards, and just four days before Christmas, was treated like the long-lost relative who found his way back home.

Welcome back to the Mack Sports Complex and Hofstra, Coach Pecora!#PrideOfLI x #HofstraFamily pic.twitter.com/ijb9uaRKQ6

— Hofstra Men's Basketball (@HofstraMBB) December 21, 2025

“It was cool,” he said postgame. “You saw how many of my friends and family were here. They all come up to Quinnipiac games, but in smaller groups. So to have all of them here, and as you guys know, my wife’s one of ten (children), so when her whole family shows up, you’ve got a good crowd already.”

“But it was cool, it was nice to come back. I think the world, obviously, of Speedy and his staff. I’m close with Tommy (Parrotta) especially, and Mike (DePaoli, both of whom were on his staff at Fordham), so it was good in that regard.”

On the floor, the battle-hardened Pecora, one month away from turning 68, held himself together as his Bobcats fought Hofstra tooth and nail, ultimately coming up eight points short in a 74-66 Pride win. It was after the dust had settled, when the pregame pageantry and 40-minute heat of battle subsided, that the emotions came to a head.

“I’m a tough guy, I ain’t gonna cry,” he said in his press conference, visibly and audibly fighting back tears.

That guarantee backfired once he was asked what was going through his head as he soaked in the love from a community that returned the same embrace in which he held it for 16 years. Pecora would quickly steel himself and regain his composure, but at this moment, his trademark stoicism was broken down.

“I never should have left,” he tearfully lamented. “My midlife crisis. My wife said I should have got a sports car and a girlfriend instead of coming to Fordham. (Hofstra’s) a great place, and I’m so happy that one of my guys is here running it and keeping them great.”

After the Long Island Sound-sized tidal wave of emotions washed ashore, Pecora closed his return by wishing his former program would receive more media exposure, expressing his disdain for the geographic rivalries uprooted by the move to the Coastal Athletic Association and the conference’s agreement with FloSports.

“I just wish they weren’t in the CAA, ya know?” Pecora quipped. “I can’t get the games on TV unless I buy that package. Everyone else in the world is on ESPN+. I don’t think I’d want them in the MAAC, because they’re too good, but it’s just hard because they play these games. I still have a lot of friends in the area and a lot of them, just honestly, they’re like, ‘yeah, we’d love to go see Speedy play, we’ll go see him once or twice, but we don’t want to see him again since it’s these teams.’ And now it’s been over 20 years, obviously.”

“Once we got rid of football, I thought we were gonna jump right back into a northeast conference somewhere, but what do I know, ya know? I’m a coach.”

What we do know, and as Pecora found out on Sunday, is that you CAN, in fact, go home again.