COLUMBUS, Ohio — Everything about Fairleigh Dickinson was endearing.
Right to the end.
This ride, of course, was going to end at some point. The kind of March Madness FDU, the last team invited to the NCAA Tournament, produced wasn’t going to end at the Final Four in two weeks.
Hell, it should have ended Friday night when they faced No. 1 seed Purdue, but instead the Knights made history by becoming only the second No. 16 seed to knock out a No. 1 seed.
Of course, there were tears after FDU was knocked out of March by No. 9 seed Florida Atlantic, 78-70, Sunday night in the second round at Nationwide Arena. But this was a classic case of “don’t be sad because it ended, be glad that it happened.”
“We want to keep dancing,” FDU senior guard Grant Singleton said before the game with a tantalizing trip to the Sweet 16 back home at Madison Square Garden at stake.
The Knights were still high off their stunning upset victory over Purdue, and they wanted more.
“It’s hard to top what we did [Friday] night,’’ Singleton said before the game.
FDU couldn’t top it … or even match it.
FAU was a difficult matchup for FDU, because it was a mirror image only deeper and slightly more talented and a team that played a much more difficult schedule. This is an FAU team, after all, that improved to 33-3 as it gets to its first-ever Sweet 16 and plays Tennessee at the Garden this week.
“We had a historical run,” FDU coach Tobin Anderson said. “We were one 6-0 run away from Sweet 16. We went toe-to-toe with a top-five team in the country [Purdue] and this team [FAU] is a Top 25 team in the country. We didn’t back down, didn’t go away.”
The Knights (21-16) left the building with nothing to hang their heads about. They trailed 9-0 to start the game, looking like they might get blown out, and rallied with a furious run to begin the second half, taking a 49-44 lead with 12:04 remaining in the game.
But FAU took control midway through the second half, taking a 63-56 lead with 6:33 remaining on a 3-pointer by Brian Greenlee, a basket that capped a 19-7 run. And FDU would never recover.
“We had a couple of runs and they answered, they kept answering,” Anderson said.
“When look back at things, we started July 5, getting to know the new players, new culture, new coaches for the players that stayed from last year, learning each other,” FDU senior guard Demetre Roberts, who led the team with 20 points, said. “We were picked last in every poll. The practices, the hard practices, the 6 a.m. films, all the running we had to do … I couldn’t be more proud of this team. We overcame a lot of things.’’
This was always going to be a different kind of challenge for FDU. The Knights were no longer laying in the weeds and weren’t going to sneak up on FAU after what they did to Purdue. They, too, had to be gassed both physically and emotionally after shocking Purdue.
Tiny FDU, with Anderson having been hired only 10 months ago from Division II St. Thomas Aquinas and the hodge-podge roster he put together made up of three players who were on his STAC roster a year ago and just five returning players from the 2021 team, was endearing to the end in this marvelous March run.
The coach was endearing. The players were endearing. So, too, was the school’s sports information director, Jordan Sarnoff, who’s a junior at FDU and performed his job with more vigor and efficiency than many seasoned veterans in the field.
Because FDU doesn’t have a music program and therefore no band, the band from Dayton University, where the Knights won their “First Four” play-in game on Wednesday, sat in for them for Friday’s game against Purdue and Sunday night’s game against FAU.
The band members, all wearing white T-shirts that read: “FDU Knights, Going Dancing ’23,” cheered for the team as if it were their own. It was quite a sight to see. And it matched perfectly, because this improbable FDU’s run through March was a quite sight to see.
Right to the end, with Anderson’s eyes red after the game and then filling with tears as he spoke about this March Madness experience.
“Every part of this I’ll remember forever and [the players] will, too,” Anderson said. “Everything. Just being here and being in this environment, seeing the crowd, everybody chanting ‘FDU.’ … This team won four games last year and we were a 6-0 run away from the Sweet 16,” he went on. “. If that’s not one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in my life or anybody else has seen … that’s crazy.”
They wanted to keep dancing.
Instead, they flew home on a charter late Sunday night, with no more games to play.
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