Hofstra men’s basketball coach Joe Mihalich was on a recruiting visit at Whitney Young High School in Chicago on Friday night when the school’s basketball coach, Tyrone Slaughter, came in to the main office to greet him.
“Don’t you have to hurry home for that debate?” Slaughter asked Mihalich.
“It’s amazing just how big this debate is and it’s amazing what it’s doing for our school,” Mihalich replied.
Slaughter, of course, was referring to Monday’s first Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Hofstra’s Long Island campus.
Slaughter presumably knows about such things since Michelle Obama is a graduate of Whitney Young and her picture hangs on a school wall.
“To me, that’s pretty cool, man,” Mihalich related in a phone conversation on Saturday. “That’s how big this debate is. The basketball coach at Whitney Young in Chicago is all over this debate. That’s really cool.”
Yes, with the Presidential race seemingly getting tighter every day, all eyes will be on the debate come Monday night, with analysts projecting an audience of between 80 and 100 million TV viewers, according to CNN.
“They’re saying that this is going to be the most watched thing in the history of TV,” Mihalich said.
The debate will reportedly cost Hofstra $5-6 million but several real estate developers are helping to offset the cost.
The debate hype has helped promote Hofstra University across the nation, but it’s also come at the expense of some necessities for the basketball teams.
Trump has taken over the men’s locker room and Clinton the women’s, so the basketball teams have been forced to relocate across campus to the rec center.
“It’s been well worth it just to be able to have this debate on campus, so it’s worth it,” Mihalich said.
But Trump and Clinton are all set.
“We’ve got an incredible locker room so they’re both awesome,” Mihalich said.
“All I’m going to say is like every other game we play is I hope the winner comes out of our locker room,” he added. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m anti-Hillary though.”
The second and third presidential debates are set for Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis and Oct. 19 at UNLV.
So the basketball teams at those schools should get ready to give up their locker rooms, too.
