Dispatches from the long March, Part 2

Fairleigh Dickinson takes its place at the head table of NCAA aberrations.

In Ken Pomeroy’s exhaustive catalog of the 2022-23 college basketball season, Long Island University is the 363rd best team in Division I. There are 363 teams in Division I.

On Feb. 9, Fairleigh Dickinson beat Long Island, 80-79.

This is just one reminder that the current darlings of this NCAA tournament, the heroes of Hackensack, were subterranean not so long ago. They lost 15 games, to the likes of Queens College, Mercy, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville and Stonehill. They did not win the Northeast Conference to get into this tournament. Merrimack did. But since Merrimack is going through a waiting period to get full Division I privileges, FDU got the bid.

Last year the Knights were 4-22 and fired their coach. They found Tobin Anderson, who had taken St. Thomas Aquinas College, in Sparkhill, N.Y., to seven consecutive Division II tournaments. Anderson brought three players with him, talked a lot about family, said his wife would be making cookies for the team. To the west, 757 miles away, Zach Edey was plotting a season at Purdue that would make him the best player in college basketball.

Those two unlikely ships came together at Natiowide Arena in Columbus, and Fairleigh Dickinson became the second No. 16 seed in the history of the NCAA tournament to beat a top seed. It beat Purdue, 63-58. It got stronger as the game went on, built its own belief system just as Purdue was abandoning its own, and when FDU needed a little magic, it called upon Shawn Moore, who scored 19. He averages seven, but, hey, he was playing this game in his hometown of Columbus. If you’re going for the Hollywood finish, don’t hold back on the violins.

Purdue had won its first 13 games of the season. Included were victories over Marquette, Gonzaga and Duke. The Big 10, which has six teams in the remaining 32, was a little more turbulent, with twin losses to Indiana and another to Rutgers, and Purdue squeaked by Penn State, 67-65, in the Big Ten tournaemnt final.

That earned Purdue the top seed, but the formula it used was shaky: Give the ball to the 7-foot-4 Edey until that becomes unfeasible, then count on some marginal perimeter players to hit enough 3-pointers. Fairleigh Dickinson, the shortest team in Division I, made the lane as crowded as a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop on the Fourth of July, and Edey got only 11 field goal attempts. Ansley Almonor was the 6-foot-6 center and the primary defender, and he said he wasn’t sure if he’d even met anyone who was 7-4. Almonor worked so hard on defense that he forgot to score, but Edey’s little helpers shot 17-for-42.

As the Knights stayed close and as the crowd in Columbus sensed the gravity of the moment, Purdue was seized by the fear of another tournament swandive, another St. Peters of 2022 or North Texas of 2021 or Arkansas-Little Rock of 2016 or Virginia Commonwealth of 2011. A really good way to improve your job position as a coach is to run into Purdue’s house of cards somewhere on the tournament trail. Here, the Boilermakers were tentative in almost everything they did, including the loose ball arguments that invariably tilt the biggest games. It’s a cloud that follows Matt Painter, but was just as ominous during Gene Keady’s terrific run as Purdue’s coach. The Boilermakers haven’t been to a Final Four since 1980, when Lee Rose was in charge.

Anderson certainly knew he didn’t have to deal with Christian Laettner, Bill Walton, Quinn Buckner or any other NCAA behemoths. He publicly said that the more he watched Purdue on tape, the more convinced he became that FDU would beat them. Painter shrugged it off, saying Anderson was “entitled to his opinion,” but players love it when their coach puts his neck on the block. Instead of being just another fast-talking Jersey bigmouth, Anderson is a visionary this morning, at least unti Fairleigh Dickinson runs into Florida Atlantic in the next round Sunday.

The school itself is the larest private institution in New Jersey and has two different Garden State campuses. The one in Florham has an athletic department that competes in Division 3. The main one has never put a player into the NBA, although this is its seventh NCAA trip. Tuesday night was its third consecutive First Four appearance, and FDU beat Texas Southern.

Its most famous basketball figure is, or was, coach Al LoBalbo, who was there 11 years. He was an assistant at Army for Bobby Knight when Mike Krzyzewski was a player, and Hubie Brown and Dick Vitale has often sung his praises as a defensive innovator. When someone mentions the “ball-you-man” principle, LoBalbo was the source.

Fairleigh Dickinson himself was an industralist who founded and named the school, after he got rich in the surgical supply business.

The University of Maryland at Baltimore County was the first 16 to knock off a One, and did it to Virginia by 20 points, five years ago. Virginia owned the disaster and used its memory during its drive to the NCAA championship the next season. Now it has happened again, despite everything the NCAA does to hamper the working class and protect its rich. Without such moments, the tournament would be nothing more than a yacht race among moguls, glamorous but unfulfilling. Instead, the yearning for a night like Friday’s is the strongest common thread in American sports, especially when a Fairleigh Dickinson comes along and redefines the possible.

Elsewhere on Friday:

Best player: Ryan Kalkbrenner, Creighton’s 7-footer, poured in 31 points with seven rebounds, three blocks and nine free throw attempts. He also frustrated North Carolina State’s D.J. Burns in the 72-63 victory.

Best defensive play: Xavier was decisively outplayed by Kennesaw State for most of the day, but staged an escape and won, 72-67. Jack Nunge blocked a shot on the final Kennesaw State possession that mattered.

Worst team performance: Iowa State got trampled, 22-2, in the early going and wound up losing to Pitt, 59-41. Inexcuable, since Pitt had played Tuesday night in Dayton before coming to Greensboro, and the Cyclones had been off. Iowa State scored 0.672 points per possession, missed its first 11 shots and shot 23 percent.

Best team performance: Probably Connecticut in an 87-63 win over Iona. Adama Sanogo had his way in the paint with 28 points and 13 rebounds, and even hit a 3-pointer near the end, and freshman center Donovan Clingan scored 12 in 13 minutes with nine rebounds. Afterward, Iona coach Rick Pitino told UConn coach Danny Hurley, “You can win it all.”

Worst league: The Pac-12 came into the tournament with four teams and now has one (UCLA). Arizona State suffered a come-from-ahead loss to TCU, and USC was outclassed by Michigan State, as Boogie Ellis, Drew Peterson and Reese Dixon-Waters missed 22 of 33 shots.

Best offspring: Augustas Marciulionis, son of the great Lithuanian star Sarunas, broight 13 points off the bench in 22 minutes for St. Mary’s, which beat VCU, 63-51.

Best rebounder: The answer to that one is usually Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiewbe, and he had 25 in a 61-53 victory over Providence. That’s the most rebounds in a tournament game since Michigan’s Phil Hubbard had 26 against Detroint in 1977.

Best passer: Markquis Nowell of Kansas State had 14 assists and 17 points. “We don’t have anybody like that in our league,” said Danny Sprinkle, coach of Big Sky champion Montana State, after the 77-65 loss.

—

Far