How a family trip helped rising star Terrence Brown land at FDU’s doorstep
Brown worked out for FDU while visiting family he’d never met before in New Jersey. “The rest is history.”
HACKENSACK – Terrence Brown is off to a dynamic start to his sophomore season, but if the college basketball world didn’t see him coming, the staff at FDU certainly did.
“He’s one of the most explosive players in our league, in my opinion,” coach Jack Castleberry told me before the season. “He’s continued to improve his three-point shooting … He’s a great on-ball defender, I think you can make an argument he’s the best defender in the NEC, and he’s got more pop to his game now, just more confidence to his game. So we’re expecting extremely big things from him.”
Somehow that still undersold the level Brown would play at to begin the season. He’s led the Knights in scoring in every game, including 19 points and eight rebounds at Creighton and 23 and eight at Nebraska earlier this month. Then came FDU’s home date with Manhattan last Sunday, where his late three-pointer helped the Knights rally before he produced the go-ahead layup in an 85-82 victory.
At 23.1 points per game, Brown ranks roughly 12th in the nation and first among NEC players. More notably, he’s shooting a torrid 52.2 percent from the field and 45.2 percent from three while averaging 6.6 boards, 2.4 assists and 1.6 steals, all major jumps from last year, when he made the All-NEC Rookie Team.
And to think, the Minnesota native could be balling out somewhere other than FDU right now if not for a New Jersey family connection.
I asked Brown back in October how a guy from Minneapolis wound up at FDU, and even for a recruiting tale, there’s an element of fortuitousness in the way that the Knights landed this diamond in the rough.
Brown’s recruitment picked up late in the process, with Idaho and VMI being his first two offers in the spring of his senior year and Albany setting up an unofficial visit. He had also heard from new FDU assistant coach Tom Kiely, who joined Castleberry’s first staff at FDU after stops at Chattanooga and VMI (Kiely is also a Seton Hall grad and the Pirates’ former head manager).
As it turned out, Brown was already on his way to New Jersey.
“I went on my visit to VMI and I was actually on the plane back from that visit to my hometown. And the next week I was coming out here to see my family that I’ve never met before,” Brown said. “So my family that I’ve never met before on my dad’s side, they lived like 30 minutes from here or like 45 minutes from here.”
Specifically, Brown’s paternal grandparents and great aunts and uncles made their home in New Brunswick. Not only had Brown never met them in person, he hadn’t been to New Jersey – or anywhere on the East Coast – before his recruitment period.
“So when Coach Kiely had hit me up, he (said) that they were interested, I just had mentioned like, ‘It’s actually crazy that you guys hit me up around this time because I’m coming out there next week,’” Brown said. “So that just all worked out. Jack actually didn’t even know who I was until I walked into the gym to work out.”
Just a few weeks after FDU’s upset of Purdue in the 2023 NCAA Tournament, Brown found himself there on his unofficial visit. He got a meal with Knights walk-on Brayden Reynolds, but the workout was key. Brown went up against Sean Moore, one of the biggest contributors to FDU’s tournament team.
“(Castleberry) said he was impressed with how I attacked Sean Moore, and I was a leader throughout the workout and stuff like that,” Brown said.
Indeed, Castleberry was blown away with Moore’s ability. There was just one logistical problem: Brown only had a limited time left on his visit to Jersey. FDU had to act fast.
“We did an unofficial visit workout and then they weren’t gonna be back here,” Castleberry recalled, “so the next day, literally that night we were like, ‘Hey, let’s do an official visit tomorrow.’ And so we brought him back again the next day, this time with his mom and his aunt, and just spent the day with him and had an absolute blast.
“And the rest is history. And thank God that he happened to be in New Jersey.”
FDU wasn’t Brown’s only option, of course, but there were a few reasons he was most drawn to the Knights.
“A lot of schools told me of course what I wanted to hear. But I feel like I was really just caught on how Jack told me I had to come in and work for everything I wanted,” Brown said. “Nothing would be handed or given to me. And just seeing them go where they went the year before, and seeing their guards, how they played. And they’re so fast-paced and I’m a fast-paced guard who likes to get downhill, hit them with speed, speed up guards. That’s really what caught my eye.”
The final factor was that Brown’s extended family could see him play in person after years of a long-distance relationship. They were treated to an all-Rookie campaign that saw him seize a major role in the offense; he became an everyday starter Jan. 10, and from that game on, he put up 10.0 points, 3.9 rebounds and 2.9 assists per contest.
Unfortunately, Brown revealed that his grandpa passed away a few weeks before the 2024-25 season.
“It was just a big part of my life meeting him and getting to know him throughout this journey of me being here in the past year, because that's my dad’s dad,” Brown said. “So not having a big relationship with my father, it was just really important to me to get to know my grandpa throughout this journey.”
Brown is certainly making his grandfather proud with his eye-popping start to his sophomore season. After being named NEC Player of the Week on Nov. 18 for his efforts against Nebraska and Manhattan, Brown came out firing Friday against Vermont State Randolph. He made his first six shots from the floor, had 18 points by halftime and finished with a 24-9-5 line, further establishing that he is now FDU’s No. 1 option on offense.
“Honestly, a lot of recruiting stories happen like that,” Castleberry said back in October. “Like you do all this (planning), ‘You go out this way and I’m gonna do this this way and we’re gonna organize this,’ and then some guy just shows up at your doorstep and you’re like, ‘This kid’s pretty good, let’s take him,’ you know, and he ends up being a really impactful player.
“… When he’s locked in, he’s as good as they get. I mean, he really has a chance to be special.”
………
Thanks for reading, and thanks once more to FDU for having me out before the season. The Knights are up to 3-4 after Friday’s win, with Saint Peter’s, Fairfield and Fordham lined up as their next opponents. The ceiling for this FDU group could be pretty high.
Elsewhere in the state… it hasn’t been pretty to start Feast Week. Let’s hit on three teams’ recent performances in Cleaning the Glass:
I took some big swings in my Feast Week primer on Thursday, like betting that Monmouth would get its first win or two at Stephen F. Austin’s MTE. As of Saturday morning, the Hawks are 0-2 for the trip and 0-7 for the season. They came close to beating the hosts but gave up 16 points in the final 7:13 of a 72-67 loss Friday. Abdi Bashir Jr. went off for six 3-pointers and 30 points, his best showing besides the Rutgers game. Today, Monmouth faces Presbyterian, which beat both of the other tournament participants already.
Speaking of guys who went for 30 in a loss, Xaivian Lee tried to put Princeton on his back Friday with a 30-6-5 game reminiscent of his breakout against Northeastern last year. But, speaking bluntly, Lee can’t guard the post too. Nobody on this Princeton team seemingly can, and after an 83-80 loss to Texas State that saw the Tigers outrebounded by six and outscored 42-28 in the paint, we’re staring at something basically unthinkable before: They are battling for seventh place at the Myrtle Beach Invitational on Sunday against Portland. Mitch Henderson gave Philip Byriel his first career start Friday, the third different guy he’s tried at the starting five after Jacob Huggins and Malik Abdullahi. This is going to be an interesting situation to monitor, but due to scheduling reasons I won’t be seeing Princeton in person again until the Rutgers game.
At least Seton Hall proved me wrong and beat VCU. David Tubek was the surprise hero, with his first three three-pointers of the season coming at the perfect time, but Chaunce Jenkins continued to establish himself as the go-to scorer of this group. That’s why it was then hard to watch him go 1-for-7 for three points with five turnovers and five fouls the next day in a noncompetitive 76-60 loss to Vanderbilt. Hall faces FAU on Sunday evening for third place.