Credit: (YouTube/March Madness)After coaching Fairleigh Dickinson to an opening-round win over Texas Southern on Wednesday, Tobin Anderson shared a confident message to his team. In the post-game locker room, Anderson told his players “the more I watch Purdue, the more I think we can beat them.”
Reactions to Anderson’s bold message were mixed. Some people applauded Anderson’s seemingly audacious belief in his players. Others thought Anderson sounded delusional, and that his 16th-seeded squad had no realistic chance to contend with top-seeded Purdue.
Anderson’s words were prophetic.
Despite boasting the nation’s shortest roster, player average is 6’1” according to the college statistics website Kenpom, the FDU Knights defense swarmed the Perdue Boilermakers and flustered the Big Ten champions into one of their worst offensive performances of the season. Purdue made just 35.8% of its shots, including 19.2% (5-26) from behind the three-point line. The Boilermakers recorded 16 turnovers against 15 assists, and while FDU weren’t world-beaters on offense, they did enough to record arguably the greatest upset in NCAA Tournament history.
FDU head coach Tobin Anderson on his message for the team
So what’s next for an encore? The Knights admit it won’t be easy to one-up this performance.
“It’s going to be hard. We beat the number one team in the country,” said junior forward Sean Moore during a news conference Saturday. “We just have to put that game behind us, get back to business. There’s still business to be done.”
Moore called the win “life-changing” and said his phone was still buzzing with well-wishes 18 hours after the final buzzer sounded.
Sean Moore on how it feels to put Fairleigh Dickinson University on the map.
Friday’s win was just the second time in the history of the NCAA tournament that a 16-seed defeated a 1-seed, and the first since UMBC upended Virginia in 2018. While the Retrievers crushed the Cavaliers 74-54, they failed to follow up with another tournament win, falling to Kansas State two days later.
The Knights will try to extend their Cinderella run Sunday when they face 9th-seeded Florida Atlantic.
“It’s hard to top what we did last night, but we’re just trying to keep a level head,” says Grant Singleton, a graduate student guard who, like Anderson, moved from Division-II St. Thomas Aquinas College prior to this season. “Stay humble about the situation, and we can have more things to do. We want to keep dancing.”
“What we did last night was special,” says Anderson. “Let’s go do something else that’s special, too.”
Tobin Anderson on what it would mean to play a Sweet 16 game
FDU has a fairly limited tournament history with just seven appearances and a 3-6 record before Sunday’s game. That’s a more extensive record than their next opponent, Florida Atlantic. The Owls have made just two tournament appearances since joining Division-I in 1993, and they won their first tournament game Friday when they beat Memphis 66-65.
Their game is set for Sunday at 7:45 pm.
New Jersey’s other school in the men’s tournament, Princeton University, had it’s own shocking win to open the tournament with a victory over Arizona, the second seed in the South Regional.
On Saturday, Princeton, the 15th seed in the region, upset Missouri by a score of 76-63 to advance to the Sweet 16 round and will play Friday.
Tobin Anderson says FDU is a great school and is very proud of what they’ve done for the school
