Total mind-blower
The Fairleigh Dickinson Knights were not even supposed to be in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. But there they were on Friday night, a lowly No. 16 seed facing the Big Ten champs and No. 1 seed Purdue Boilermakers. After 40 minutes, the Knights produced the biggest and most improbable upset in tournament history.
FDU became just the second No. 16 seed to knock off a No. 1 seed in the men’s tournament. The first was the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, which beat Virginia five years ago. And though it could be argued that being the second took a little bit of the shine off of the upset, what FDU did was magnitudes more shocking.
Don’t get me wrong, UMBC’s victory was not only unprecedented in men’s college basketball, but not really within the realm of what anyone could imagine. The 20.5-point underdogs not only won, but demolished Virginia by 20. But UMBC was a decent team, one which many thought should have been at least one seed higher. They absolutely caught fire, making half their three pointers and 54.2% of their shots overall, while Virginia just couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, going 18.2% from three and 41.1% overall. Virginia was also missing future top-five NBA draft pick DeAndre Hunter, who was injured.
Still, Virginia should have been able to win.
FDU wasn’t good this season
Farleigh Dickinson, on the other hand, is a pretty bad team. They were 20-15 going into the Purdue game and while that’s a winning record, it’s not good for a college basketball team. FDU played in the worst conference in the country and of the 363 teams in the Kenpom ratings, was ranked #298. Quite literally one of the worst teams in college basketball.
FDU lost to TWELVE teams that were ranked #200 or worse in Kenpom. In the NET rankings, which the tournament selection committee uses as a tool to filter teams, FDU was ranked #301 out of 363. The NET categories games into four “quads,” which correspond to the quality or difficulty of the game. Farleigh Dickinson played just one game all year in the top two quads combined (they lost). Almost all of their games were in the bottom quad and they went just 16-12 in those. Basically, they barely had a winning record with arguably the weakest schedule in the country.
Fairleigh Dickinson was not a good team in the 2022-2023 season. And they didn’t even win their conference tournament! So how did they get into the Big Dance? Merrimack won both the regular season and Northeast Conference tournament, defeating FDU in the finals. Normally, that would punch Merrimack’s ticket to the dance and send FDU home, but Merrimack was ineligible for the national tournament because it made the jump from Division II to Division I in the 2019-2020 season. According to NCAA rules, teams must wait through a four-year transition period before being eligible for the NCAA Tournament. And thus, Fairleigh Dickinson, as the NEC runner-up, took Merrimack’s spot.
Giant slayer
FDU wasn’t even supposed to be there. The shortest team in the tournament, it was a 23.5-point underdog to Purdue, who just happened to be led by 7’ 4”, unanimous All-American pick Zach Edey. There was no way the Knights would even be able to cover. But there they were the other night, throwing caution to the wind, sending as many bodies at Edey as they could to not let him dominate. He still had a solid game, but his teammates couldn’t hit shots while the Knights played out of their minds to win 63-58 to pull off the biggest upset in NCAA Tournament history.
Fairleigh Dickinson nearly melted faces again on Sunday, leading No. 9 seed Florida Atlantic with about 9 minutes left and trailing by just 3 with 2:22 remaining, but they couldn’t quite get over the hump as FAU advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time in program history.