Jashaun Agosto misses his first eight shots from the field, but he knocked down two big free throws as LIU Brooklyn came back from nine points down at halftime to defeat Fairleigh Dickinson 78-77 in an entertaining affair at the Steinberg Center on Saturday afternoon. Continue reading “LIU Brooklyn Sneaks Past Fairleigh Dickinson”
That was fun. The Northeast Conference quarterfinals were everything the league had hoped they would be: competitive, riveting, and in some cases, shocking. The Battle of Brooklyn didn’t live up to the hype, but the remaining slate of games had plenty of tense moments deep in their second halves. Even Central Connecticut was a Joe Hugley three-pointer away from cutting the Wagner advantage to four points with over a minute remaining. Continue reading “Thoughts on the Unpredictable NEC Tournament Quarterfinal”
Outlook: An experienced team still loaded with several players from their NCAA run two years ago is looking to rebound from a subpar 2016-17 season. FDU will look to continue to play fast while finding a way to solve some of their defensive inefficiencies which set them back a season ago. Continue reading “34 Teams in 34 Days: Fairleigh Dickinson”
“The hungry cat hunts best,” is the motto of the Fairleigh Dickinson program. That hunger still fuels FDU—even coming off a season in which the Knights stunned the Northeast Conference by advancing to the NCAA tournament after being picked ninth last preseason.
Continue reading “Hungry Fairleigh Dickinson Must Improve Defense To Repeat As Champs”
STATEN ISLAND – On Feb. 28, 2015 in a game that was little noted nor long remembered, even by the most diehardiest of diehard NEC fans, Fairleigh Dickinson defeated Central Connecticut 73-62 in front of a few dozen people at the Rothman Center.
Perhaps the only noteworthy thing was the Knights ended a 15-game losing streak, but both teams were long-since rooted at the bottom of the NEC and eliminated from NEC Tournament contention. For the average second-year coach who had done really well in his first season, it would be the conclusion of a doubt-filled campaign, wondering what had gone wrong.
Continue reading “FDU Surprises Everyone But Themselves On Way To NEC Crown”
STATEN ISLAND – In the end, maybe Fairleigh Dickinson was just too young to realize they weren’t supposed to win the NEC.
Picked ninth in the preseason conference coaches’ poll, and playing exclusively with freshmen and sophomores (the fourth youngest team in the country according to KenPom), the Knights are headed to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2005, completing an amazing run by upsetting top-seeded Wagner 87-79 in front of a sellout crowd at the Spiro Center.
Continue reading “FDU 87, Wagner 79: From Worst To First, Knights Win NEC”
HACKENSACK, N.J. – As some crazy guy who travels to college basketball games with a stuffed basketball long after it was funny once put it, Greg Herenda arrived on the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson for his first Division I head coaching job to find his team had “exactly six players and zero assistant coaches”.
Less than three years later, he has FDU 40 minutes from an NCAA Tournament berth after an 80-75 NEC semifinal win over Mount St. Mary’s Saturday before a Rothman Center crowd of 1,562 that sounded much louder than that.
FAIRFIELD, Conn. – Greg Herenda swears the only numbers he notices on the scoreboard is the time. But even he had to be amazed to look up and see his Fairleigh Dickinson team – picked ninth by the coaches in the preseason NEC poll – leading 47-19 with two minutes left in the first half Thursday night at the Pitt Center.
“I don’t really look at the scoreboard, I look at the clock and the clock never ticks quick enough, even when you have a big lead,” Herenda said. “We have in on the board, ‘Every second of every possession for 40 minutes if not more’. We practice hard every day. Most programs keep score of everything and do competitive drills with scores in practice, but we don’t. We just play hard, and if we play hard and well, we’ll do well.”
Continue reading “FDU 80, Sacred Heart 68: Break Up The Streaking Knights”
Coming off an unexpected and rather brutal 15-game losing streak that sunk their 2014-15 campaign, Fairleigh Dickinson was an afterthought in the NEC this offseason. Sure, a vast majority still believed Greg Herenda was steering the ship in the right direction, but perhaps this massive rebuilding project in Hackensack would take longer than expected? Continue reading “Will The Third Season Be The Charm For Greg Herenda, FDU?”
I’ve chimed in on a couple of major NEC transfers this offseason (Marcquise Reed here and Andrew Smeathers here), but during my brief hiatus from the blog I failed to address a few other significant defections. Allow me to catch up as I assess how the recent turnover may affect two programs that finished in the bottom of the NEC standings, Fairleigh Dickinson (FDU) and Central Connecticut (CCSU). Continue reading “The NEC’s Poor Getting Poorer – FDU/CCSU Deep in a Rebuild”
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