Still ‘learning how to win,’ FDU has reason to believe it isn’t far off
"While you're certainly disappointed in the loss, our guys recognize that we're not very far off from being pretty daggone good."
PHILADELPHIA – There’s disagreement in the coaching ranks about the old saw, “You are what your record says you are.”
That might work for Bill Parcells, but it may be less applicable to a young basketball team from the Northeast Conference that’s played a top-60 strength of schedule to this point.
FDU nearly secured its best win of the season to date on Wednesday night, but the Knights let a 10-point lead get away in the final six minutes as La Salle charged back to win, 77-72.
The Knights dropped to 4-9 on the season, with the wins coming against Manhattan and three non-Division I opponents. On the flip side, they’ve also tangled with Miami, Creighton, Nebraska, Villanova and a pair of Atlantic 10 teams in Fordham and La Salle. Two more high-major opponents are on the horizon, with trips to Minnesota and Boston College before NEC play begins.
“Our record is not who we are,” coach Jack Castleberry told me postgame. “We’re a much better basketball team than what our record currently shows. We haven’t had a chance to play some of the similar opponents and grow in how to win that some of these other guys have, right? We’ve had a few of them, but not nearly the number that other guys have. There’s literally been no room for mistakes in that department.
“But I think that if people have watched us play, they continue to see that we’re getting better and that we have a good basketball team. And while you’re certainly disappointed in the loss, our guys recognize that we’re not very far off from being pretty daggone good.”
FDU typically schedules a couple of high-major opponents, but not since Greg Herenda’s last season in 2021-22 was it this packed with daunting nonconference games. The Knights started that year 0-10 but did not turn it around during conference play, leading to Herenda’s ouster and the decision to replace him with Tobin Anderson that altered the history of the program.
This season is different. FDU was picked third in the NEC coaches’ preseason poll, and with good reason. So Castleberry gave his team some challenges throughout November and December to sharpen them.
“If you’re playing Power Fives half the time, which we have this year and there’s no problem with that, it actually helps fine-tune us because they expose everything,” he said.
As Wednesday showed, the next marker for FDU is going to be learning how to protect a lead – and how to win on the road, where the Knights are now 0-8.
The two teams traded 9-0 runs early in the first half before Terrence Brown helped FDU trim a seven-point gap to a 36-34 deficit at halftime. Brown looked in control offensively: He made a great off-ball cut to the hoop to catch a pass from Jo’el Emanuel and score, and on the final possession, he spun through the lane and delivered a pass to Brayden Reynolds for a buzzer-beating lay-in.
The Knights then surged out of the gate to open the second half, with three players contributing a 3-pointer during an 11-0 run. FDU’s first double-digit lead came at 51-41, at which point La Salle scored eight straight, the first of multiple Explorer runs the Knights had to withstand.
It was 68-58 FDU inside the six-minute mark when things unraveled. After a La Salle 3-pointer, the Explorers scored off three straight FDU turnovers, including a dubious offensive foul call on Emanuel for hanging on the rim on a missed dunk.
Deuce Jones was on a heater and scored nine straight La Salle points to push the Explorers ahead for good.
“I think the thing that we’ve continued to fight against is learning how to win,” Castleberry said “… We missed some really key box-outs late in the game. And in the second half, we started playing with a little less poise and we had to fight through a tough classic road situation, if you will.”
Rebounding stood out as a problem for much of the night, but especially at game’s end. After Brown tied the game at 72 and La Salle missed a jumper, Jones bolted in for the offensive board and putback with 1:06 to go. And when Jones missed his second of two free throws on the next possession, no FDU player got a hand on the rebound, letting La Salle seal the deal.
I asked Castleberry how much of a concern team rebounding was right now.
“Major concern. That’s our biggest Achilles’ heel,” he said. “We’re taking care of the ball relatively well. We’re shooting at a high clip. I think we’re pretty good guarding people’s initial stuff. But once that ball goes on the backboard or on the rim, we’ve really struggled to be consistent in finishing plays there.
“Some of that you obviously can chalk up to, hey, you’re playing bigger guys in a different league that are supposed to push you around a little bit. But the reality is that after a while that gets to be an old excuse, and you just got to find a way to get it done.”
The overarching concern for the Knights is that this has become a familiar pattern. They led Saint Peter’s by 11 in the first half at home before the Peacocks charged back and won at the final horn. They had an 11-point second-half lead on a good Fairfield team before falling to the Stags. And even in the win over Manhattan, FDU surrendered a 17-point first-half lead before Emanuel and Brown rallied them to victory.
“I obviously have some reflection (to do) because we’ve blown double-figure leads in the second half of all these games,” Castleberry said. “And so how do we learn to hold on to that and push through one night?”
It’s possible the Knights turn the corner soon. They may even get off to a hot shooting start and surprise a team like Boston College, the worst Power Five team this season. NEC play begins with games against Wagner and Le Moyne on Jan. 5 and 10 – and critically, they’re both on the road.
The FDU locker room is not in a panic, 4-9 record be damned.
“I don’t think they’re really afraid of anybody, which is a great thing,” Castleberry said. “Once you go through your first one or two high-major games and you’re playing Creighton and Nebraska and Miami, we’re just playing ball here. They’re also an intelligent group, so we’re not in a situation where they’re just looking at the L’s and going, ‘Oh, we’re not very good.’ They see us getting better, so I think we’re in good shape for once we actually do see some more similar opponents.”
………
Happy Thursday, and thanks as always for reading. Staying with the FDU theme, let’s clean the glass by focusing on the key individual performances from Wednesday night and how they project out to the rest of the season.
Three New Jersey players rank top-12 nationally in scoring per game: Dylan Harper (third, 23.5), Abdi Bashir Jr. (12th, 21.1) and Brown, who’s smack in between the others at 22.2, good for No. 7 in D1. It’s no secret now that he’s going for 20 every game – he has nine 20-point performances, two 19s and an 18. It extrapolates out to 27.1 points per 40 minutes, and he’s shooting it at a much higher clip (48.8% FG, 35.8% 3FG, 80% FT) than as a freshman.
The offense rolls through the sophomore for better and worse, as evidenced in his line against La Salle: 21 points, seven rebounds, five assists, six turnovers. I asked Castleberry what the next step was for Brown to run this offense even more effectively.
“I think he’s getting there. They’re trying to deny him from getting the ball in the full court. You watch his numbers going up. He had four assists at the half today. He finished with five. We didn’t shoot it as well as we had been shooting it, but he’s certainly making much better reads. His thing is just like, ‘How do I play with poise all the time?’ … He’s really learning how to win and where to pick his spots and what’s the gap that’s open versus not. But I think when you have somebody that’s that aggressive and that capable of scoring, that’s a battle that he’s going to fight.”
Next up is a homecoming trip on Saturday, when FDU faces the Golden Gophers in Brown’s hometown of Minneapolis.Another sophomore had a breakout game, as Jameel Morris tied his career highs in points (13) and steals (three) while making all three of his 3-point attempts. Morris, a Willingboro native, is listed at 6-foot-1 and I watched him switch onto a La Salle player listed at 6-foot-7 and ably defend him. Morris’ production has been erratic, but he could be making a case for a larger share of minutes during NEC play. “When Jameel is consistent, he is a huge help for us and he makes us a much better basketball team,” Castleberry said. “If he can be consistent to who he was tonight, we are going to win a lot of games.”
I also asked Castleberry about the opportunity to coach against Philadelphia legend Fran Dunphy, “Mr. Big 5” himself. “It’s pretty cool, man. I’m not from Philly, but I lived in Philly for a couple of years and coached at Cardinal O’Hara as a volunteer,” he said. “Recruiting this area forever, I've never had a chance to really spend much time with him, so even just to talk to him briefly before the game, that’s something you won't forget. I’ll put that up there – I’ve got Coach K and then him right there as far as people I’ve gotten to meet.”