'We know who we are': After historic March Madness upset, FDU basketball defied odds again

HACKENSACK – How do you measure the impact of the biggest upset in NCAA Tournament history?

At Fairleigh Dickinson University, after the men’s basketball team knocked off top-seeded Purdue in March, online apparel sales rose 327 percent over a six-month period. The college’s webpage, www.fdu.edu, received 1.3 million views the night of the game. The analytics firm First & First Consulting reported a whopping 4 billion social media impressions for FDU over the tourney’s first weekend.

But the most tangible consequence can be found in the Rothman Center, where the Knights have a renovated locker room, a new court sporting a fresh logo, and the program’s first “team room” for meetings and film watching. The team room's location used to be a communal shower – a relic from a time gone by (nowadays players shower in their dorms).

Last season, that cinderblock shower room did serve a purpose. It was where the Knights watched film, the only place on campus they could gather in privacy. The film projector sat atop a box that rested on a Gatorade bucket, surrounded by stools. You can't make this stuff up.

“That,” FDU head coach Jack Castleberry reminds his guys, “is how we beat Purdue.”

It’s a statement both factual and symbolic. The Big Ten champions, who watch their film in a cushy theater with leather recliners, couldn’t handle getting popped in the mouth by the hardscrabble underdog. As FDU receives well-deserved upgrades, Castleberry wants the Knights to maintain their edge.

“We are getting nicer things and that’s what you want as a coaching staff, but we can’t forget that we were the team that was watching film in the showers last year,” Castleberry said. “It’s the gritty part of us that made us good. Maintaining the root of who we are, and recruiting the same type of kid, is what we have to do to continue the path we’re on.”

There is at least one significant reason to believe they will. Flying in the face of modern convention, every member of the rotation who could return did. All eight. The two losses are significant – starting guards Demetre Roberts and Grant Singleton ran out of eligibility – but no one of consequence transferred. That stood in stark contrast to the mass exodus at 2022 March Madness Cinderella Saint Peter’s.

“There’s a bunch of guys who could have gone to other places, but that speaks to the culture we have here,” senior guard Joe Munden Jr. said. “Everybody knew our best chance was with each other. We felt like we can do better things than we’ve done already.”

If you’re looking for reasons to believe FDU can dance again in 2024, start there.

'We didn't win a championship'

Ansley Almonor must have been a poacher magnet in the offseason. As a sophomore, the 6-foot-7 forward out of St. Joseph High School in Montvale averaged 13.6 points, shot 38 percent from 3-point range and 86 percent from the free-throw line. In the NCAA Tournament, he scored 23 points, grabbed 8 rebounds and shot 5-of-8 from deep in a First Four win over Texas Southern. Against Purdue, he spearheaded the swarming gameplan that limited 7-foot-4 National Player of the Year Zach Edey to just 11 shots and 21 points.

When FDU head coach Tobin Anderson took the Iona job two days after the season ended, the transfer feelers erupted.

“There were people telling me where to go, telling me what to do,” Almonor said. “I had some conversations about it with people close to me.”

One of them was Castleberry, whom FDU immediately promoted to replace Anderson – a wise move and the opposite of how Saint Peter’s slow-played its vacancy the prior March.

“Ansley was literally in here (the head coach’s office) weighing pros and cons,” Castleberry said. “And that’s fine. That’s part of college basketball these days. For him it came down to, where do I think I can be most successful next season?”

As Castleberry conducted one-on-one discussions about that with each player, a common denominator arose. FDU did not win the Northeast Conference last season.

“Getting the ring is why a lot of people came back,” Almonor said. “We knew the job wasn’t finished last year. March Madness was nice, beating Purdue, but we didn’t win a championship. I want to be a champion – I want to win this league.”

There may well come a time, Castleberry acknowledges, when name-image-likeness profit opportunities elsewhere become offers they can’t refuse. But these guys were not looking for reasons to leave; they were looking for reasons to stay. There’s a difference.

“It comes down to who they are,” Castleberry said. “They’re not chasing the shiniest thing. With the NIL being what it is for some of these guys nowadays, it’s going to come down to a certain dollar amount where you (as a coach) say, ‘Hey, thanks for being here, appreciate your time, and best of luck to you.’ I don’t think it was that level.’”

'Can't forget where we came from'

So against the odds, Castleberry kept the roster together. Munden (10.8 ppg, 4.8 rpg) is having a strong preseason, and fellow returning starter Sean Moore, who dropped 19 points on Purdue, is a dangerous senior wing. Added into the mix is postgrad guard DaVante Jamison, who came over from St. Thomas Aquinas (following in the footsteps of Roberts and Singleton) and sports the nickname “Bullet” because he’s so explosive.

“He can get downhill in an instant,” Almonor said.

Style-wise, not much changed. The Knights will run and press using a deep rotation. The biggest difference from last year? Players’ confidence in the system is sky-high now.

“We're going to continue to do what got us here,” Castleberry said. “Even if I wanted to change it, if it didn’t work out, I would look like the biggest idiot in college basketball.”

Any changes are external. “FDU” is now the official name of Fairleigh Dickinson’s sports teams, as registered with the NCAA. The interim tag was removed on university president Michael Avaltroni, an alum and avid supporter of athletics – the Marlboro resident drove to Ohio for the Purdue game, squeezing it in between jury duty and his daughter’s dance recital. News that Merrimack and Sacred Heart are departing the NEC for the MAAC next year, while touching off a scramble to shore up the NEC's membership, leaves the Knights positioned to be the dominant program.

And, of course, there’s still the glow of March’s unforgettable slingshot.

“I had almost a thousand text messages, people from all over the world,” Munden Jr. said. “Some people, I didn’t even know.”

His journey sums it up. As a freshman, with FDU's campus closed by the pandemic, he commuted to practices and home games from his home in Harlem. His father Joe Munden Sr. drove him across the George Washington Bridge daily. On his third head coach at FDU, having survived a 4-22 campaign as a sophomore, he doesn’t need much to be a Knight – a uniform and an opportunity. Watching film in a real team room instead of a communal shower? That’s a bonus.

“Now that we have better things, we can’t forget where we came from,” Munden Jr. said. “It is good to enjoy what we have now, but it’s not going to change our hunger. At the end of the day, we know who we are.”

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: FDU basketball defied odds again after March Madness upset