For FDU basketball, the more things change, the more they stay the same
“You have to be able to realize, ‘Hey, we’re trying to make our own story here,’” FDU coach Jack Castleberry said.
HACKENSACK – It was my first and potentially only chance this season to make the journey from Mercer County up to Fairleigh Dickinson University for a basketball game. I wasn’t going to let a little floodwater get in my way.
Local flooding in the aftermath of a nor’easter earlier this week sent me through some detours around Teaneck and Hackensack before I could reach the arena on Saturday. But for fans who chose to stay dry at home, or for students not yet back for the spring semester, they had an opportunity not previously available to them: They could watch the game against Stonehill on the YES Network.
FDU parlayed the exposure from its historic 16-over-1 upset of Purdue last March into a broadcast deal, in which YES carried six men’s games and two women’s games this season. Previously, sports were available to livestream via NECFrontRow.com, but reaching people’s televisions and having a sideline reporter as part of your presentation conveys a different cachet.
FDU will also appear on CBS Sports Network (Jan. 19 at Stonehill) and ESPNU (Jan. 25 vs. Central Connecticut) later this month, but broadcasts aren’t the only way the March Madness upset spurred change at this small school. The school raised $500,000 from donors, enough to renovate the facilities so that players weren’t breaking down film in a community shower.
First-year FDU head coach Jack Castleberry can go into high school recruits’ homes and be assured the family will know something about his school.
“It’s been incredible. It’s what you want,” Castleberry told me Saturday. “You want your name to be a marquee name and we’re a name right now where, you go nationally, people know who you are, and it’s all because of what we did last year.
“But at the same time, you have to be able to realize, ‘Hey, we’re trying to make our own story here.’ One thing we didn’t do last year, we didn’t win the conference championship. So we still have that battle to fight every day and that’s what our guys are focused on.”
The Knights took a step in the right direction Saturday when they beat Stonehill 81-74 in overtime, snapping a six-game losing streak and earning their first Northeast Conference win of the season.
“Like when you’re struggling to make jump shots, you just want to see the ball go through the hoop one or two times, and you can get into a little bit of a rhythm,” Castleberry said. “Hopefully that (win) was our seeing the ball go through the hoop.”
The banner, the people in front of the cameras and the upgraded facilities aren’t the only repercussions of that 63-58 win over Purdue. Castleberry was promoted to from assistant coach to head coach after the architect of last year’s team, Tobin Anderson, was hired away by Iona.
Castleberry says he’s frequently asked how different or similar he is to Anderson.
“I don’t know the answer to that yet,” he said. “I get that question a lot, and I understand why, but I haven’t really tried to change a whole lot of things. I’ve tried to keep the identity of this program the same. It’s my first year doing this, so you’ve got to kinda figure out what’s comfortable for you and what’s not.”
To that point: FDU is still pushing the pace. The Knights, who thrived as one of the most up-tempo teams in Division I last year, rank 26th nationally in KenPom.com’s adjusted tempo rating. And they are not shy to use a full-court press, which obviously helped them in 2022-23.
FDU returned 58.6% of its scoring this year, and even individual players have analogs from last season’s team. Ansley Almonor was named the NEC’s Most Improved Player in 2022-23 for the massive leap he took from freshman to sophomore year. Now Almonor is the Knights’ leading scorer, but this year’s Almonor is clearly sophomore forward Jo’el Emanuel. That would have been true even if Emanuel didn’t drop a career-high 29 points against Stonehill. He’s gone from bench contributor to starter and has developed as a scorer, rebounder and more.
Castleberry dubbed Emanuel’s growth “absolutely extraordinary” and agreed with the comparison to Almonor.
“I think at the end of the day they’re both hard workers, above anything else,” he said. “They’re both hard workers, and that’s what’s going to be the key to everything.”
The Knights no longer have sparkplugs Demetre Roberts and Grant Singleton in the backcourt, but freshman Terrence Brown is auditioning for that type of role. His fourth career start Saturday saw him post career highs of 29 minutes and 15 points. Brown leads the team in steals at 1.5 per game, and one of his best plays Saturday came on defense: He leapt to bat a frantic Stonehill pass near halfcourt, collected the ball and turned it into an alley-oop for Emanuel.
“(Brown) shows flashes, still makes some of the freshman mistakes, but across the board he’s been a massive help,” Castleberry said. “He’s a guy that’s got good size for his position at this level, a guy who can guard the ball 94 feet and really be disruptive and a guy who offensively, he’s got to continue to work on taking care of the basketball, but when he does that he makes us better.”
FDU rang up a 40-15 lead in the first 17:11 of the game before the game pivoted. Stonehill used some free throws to chip into the lead before halftime, then found its 3-point shot to start the second half. The Knights suddenly clung to a 40-38 lead before Emanuel tossed in this layup to snap a scoring drought of nearly eight minutes spanning the halves.
“Thought we got away from playing team basketball, which we had done for the vast majority of the season,” Castleberry said. “Our offense started affecting our defense and we started missing shots left and right, and all of a sudden you get a little passive. There’s some reality of, we’ve seen this before, right? When you start missing shots against a zone, you’re like ‘Oh, crap, here we go again,’ and it took us a while to fight back against that.”
Once the Knights started getting downhill, though, Castleberry knew they were back to playing how they need to play.
When students return from break, there’s little doubt in my mind the FDU community will start pouring back into Stratis Arena inside the Rothman Center. The Knights may remind everyone of the heroic March underdogs, but with the goal of an NEC championship still eluding them, there’s a new chapter they want to write.
“We’re gonna have grit and we’re gonna play harder than the next guy,” Castleberry said. “At the end of the day that’s what we’re trying to be, is the hardest-playing, toughest team, and trying to execute some game plans in that process. If you can do both of those things you’re gonna be a pretty good basketball team.”
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Hi there, hello. Thanks as always for reading, and thanks to FDU for having me up again. I’ve got another 600 words for you if you have the time. Let’s clean the glass:
Seton Hall: Alone atop the Big East, once again laughing in the face of low preseason expectations placed upon this team. I followed the Butler game from my media seat at FDU, and there isn’t much for me to add that you haven’t read elsewhere by now – one team turnover in the first half, great individual defense by Jaden Bediako, Dylan Addae-Wusu continuing to make big plays.
What got me thinking was Jerry Carino’s statement that Kadary Richmond should be the frontrunner for Big East Player of the Year. It’s a topic I definitely would like to delve into in finer detail sometime in February, but in support of his point, Richmond leads all Big East players in offensive rating (109.0, per KenPom) and ranks fourth in percentage of shots taken (27.8%), second in steal percentage (3.91%) and fifth in assist rate (30.0%). That’s a profile of a player who does it all. More to the point, he’s the best player on the team currently sitting No. 1 in the league, and he will go one-on-one to make clutch shots like the game-winning layup Saturday.
Monmouth ran into trouble in the CAA for the first time this season and dropped both halves a two-game road swing at UNC Wilmington and Charleston, which is the toughest road trip the Hawks will have all year. Charleston made the tournament last year and is on a heater right now, and once the Cougars built a 30-16 lead Saturday they were able to keep the Hawks at arm’s length till the final minutes. There will be games like this for Monmouth, where 34 points from Xander Rice and a double-double from Nikita Konstantynovskyi aren’t enough because of the overall shooting and rebounding disadvantage. Monmouth, which has won high-scoring and low-scoring games alike, can hone in on defense ahead of the next big test Thursday at Drexel – the only 5-0 team in league play.
The Princeton women are 2-0 in the Ivy after holding Harvard to four first-quarter points in another thorough victory. Madison St. Rose’s 16 points led six Tigers in double figures; she also had a career-high five steals. One of the other 2-0 teams is, of course, Columbia, and I’m really looking forward to next Saturday’s showdown in Princeton.
On Friday, Rider won a game in regulation for the first time since Dec. 8 (against Stonehill!) and back-to-back games for the first time this season. The Broncs needed every one of Mervin James’ 21 points in the first half just to be level with Manhattan 31-31 at halftime. From there, James, T.J. Weeks Jr. and company helped Rider pull away 71-58. “When it’s just Merv, it’s a tight game, but when everybody is involved then we started blowing the game out … that’s what we got to do from the start instead of just waiting on Merv to start it up for us,” Weeks told the Trentonian. Rider improved to 2-3 in the MAAC, where the standings are tight as ever, and visits Marist on Sunday. Saint Peter’s was off Friday and visits Manhattan on Sunday still carrying the only unbeaten record in the league.
At the end of Thursday’s newsletter I mentioned I’d be going to FDU and then Nebraska-Rutgers, but I completely forgot to include the Martin Luther King Day matinee between Princeton and Dartmouth. So we’re right in the thick of busy season here at Guarden State. I’ll be covering seven more games just from tomorrow through Jan. 31. Stay tuned for what’s in store.