When UMBC took down Virginia in the first round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament, it was the first time we saw a 16-seed take down Goliath. However, Virginia was without DeAndre Hunter, who was first-team All ACC and a finalist for National Player of the Year.
When the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights toppled Purdue on Friday night, Zach Edey was his usual dominant self for the Boilermakers. The Knights 63-58 victory was a testament to the parody in college basketball, and showed college football that the tournament is better when expanded.
When the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights toppled Purdue on Friday night, Zach Edey was his usual dominant self for the Boilermakers. The Knights 63-58 victory was a testament to the parody in college basketball, and showed college football that the tournament is better when expanded.
While their margin of victory was slim compared to UMBC’s 20-point rout of Virginia, FDU hung with the team who sat atop the AP and Coaches polls for the majority of the season from the opening tip. Edey finished with a game-high 22 points, in what will be his final game in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Remember the road these two teams had to get to meet in Columbus on Friday night. Purdue beat Duke, Gonzaga and Marquette in a span of 12 days back in November, while Fairleigh Dickinson lost both their conference regular season and tournament titles to Merrimack College (NJ), who is in the midst of transitioning from a Division II to Division I program.
The idea that student athletes can enter the transfer protocol and be eligible the following semester, but entire schools have to wait four entire school years to be eligible for postseason play is about as upside-down as any rule the NCAA has in its rule book.
This was the second time that Purdue and FDU met with the Boilermakers being a top seed in the NCAA Tournament. The first was in 1988, where the top four seeds typically did not struggle the way they do now with smaller conference opponents. Purdue was a 23.5-point favorite, making this the largest upset in the history of the NCAA Men’s Tournament.
Edey had three blocks, which was as many as the Knights as a team. Purdue’s Achilles heel was going 5-of-26 from deep (19.2%), combined with 11 FDU steals.
When Princeton upset Arizona just 24 hours earlier, there were only 22 perfect brackets remaining in the country amongst any major publication offering a perfect bracket challenge game. The FDU upset marked one of the fastest tournaments where no perfect brackets remain by the end of the first round.
The win was not only the first in program history in the NCAA Tournament, which did not include the First Four, but the first win in the round of 64 for the entire Northeast (formerly the MEAC-Metro) Conference. FDU had to take down Texas Southern in Dayton during the First Four to earn the right to compete for their incredible achievement.
While Princeton will meet Creighton on Friday in a Sweet 16 matchup, the FDU Knights return home after falling to Florida Atlantic 78-70 on Sunday. The Owls led 32-25 at the half, but trailed 54-51 with 9:19 remaining. FDU was only a 16-point underdog this time around.
We love underdog stories in the playoffs, which is why upsets are so celebrated in both the men’s and women’s tournaments. Three SEC teams are in the Sweet 16, but most news outlets are discussing either Princeton’s run, or the UCLA/Gonzaga rematch headlining Friday’s schedule. For anyone who says early round upsets sour the remainder of the tournament, as it provides inferior matchups, the best teams still matriculate to the second and third weekends in the end.
We can all agree that Purdue might have been the weakest of the four top seeds going into the tournament, having only one double-digit win in the Big 10 Tournament, and that was against lowly Ohio State. No one expected or predicted what actually took place.
We all saw defending-champion Kansas get dumped just one day after Purdue. Seeding means nothing when you have a win-or-go-home scenario on a neutral site.
-JC24