Season preview: FDU, Monmouth lead N.J. mid-majors looking to take next step
Season preview: FDU, Monmouth lead N.J. mid-majors looking to take next step
We’ve talked plenty of Princeton, but let’s dive into the other five New Jersey mid-majors and where they stand ahead of the 2024-25 season.
FDU’s Jack Castleberry likens being on a coaching staff to being part of a family. Assistants are the uncles – each one comes with their own personality, and players will be closer with some than with others.
When Castleberry went from an uncle to the head of household in 2023, that prompted some major shifts that an outsider wouldn’t necessarily see.
“The father a lot of times ends up being the one who’s the disciplinarian, right, because the father the one who’s ultimately responsible for you as an individual having success in life after that,” Castleberry told me. “And so when you go from being the uncle to being the dad in that situation it goes to like, ‘Wait, why is he being such a hardass now?’”
Last year, Castleberry took over a program that had just become the second 16 seed to defeat a No. 1 in the NCAA Tournament, but that was hardly the only history FDU had with the dance. The Knights went to the tourney three times between 2016 and 2023 and they’ve had a .500 or better record in the Northeast Conference eight of the last nine years, including 9-7 in Castleberry’s first season in charge.
The Knights, selected third in the NEC preseason coaches’ poll, lead a group of New Jersey mid-majors who hope to use 2024-25 as a next step toward postseason glory.
“I genuinely believe that we have a program that can consistently compete to win the NEC and go to the NCAA Tournament every year,” Castleberry said. “And we’ve shown that. We’ve been to I think three of the last seven or eight NCAA Tournaments, so the program is built to be a winner, you know, if I don't screw it up.”
I visited or spoke with as many New Jersey D1 programs as I could this preseason, and that tour has produced several stories you may have missed in the past four weeks, including this look at how FDU junior Brayden Reynolds shares a unique bond with his coach as former walk-ons who got “scholarshipped” by the schools that believed in them.
FDU has done a stellar job of getting talented freshmen ready for sophomore leaps. Ansley Almonor went from modest contributor in 2021-22 to 13.6-ppg scorer under Tobin Anderson in 2022-23 and the conference’s Most Improved Player. After shooting 39.4% from three last year, Almonor transferred from FDU to Kentucky – a direct path no one probably thought possible before.
Next in line is Jo’el Emanuel, a freshman on the 2022-23 Cinderella team who became crucial to the Knights’ success in 2023-24 (10.6 points, 5.2 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 1.0 steal). Castleberry said Emanuel had leadership qualities “innately” that are just now beginning to emerge in his junior year.
Emanuel praised Castleberry’s encouragement and said he knows what the Knights are capable of.
“I think a lot of it has to do with Jack instilling confidence in each of us,” Emanuel said. “I’ve had coaches before where it’s like, you miss a couple shots and they’re like, ‘Are these good shots?’ But with Jack, if he knows it’s a shot that you practice, and you miss two in a row, he’s like, ‘It wasn’t a bad shot. Keep shooting your shots, trust the process, you’re gonna make shots.’”
In my previous story I mentioned grad transfers Ahmed Barba-Bey and Bismark Nsiah, experienced winners from Division II Jefferson, but one more transfer to watch is Dylan Jones, who shot 80-for-192 from three – 41.7% – at the junior college level last year.
Monmouth was picked eighth in the 14-team Coastal Athletic Association after finishing exactly eighth last year, but this is another program that believes it’s on the rise to bigger and better things in its third year in the conference. King Rice talked up the Hawks’ defense at every position on the floor during the CAA media day call.
Here’s another theme that’s bubbled up time and time and time again in my coverage this season: Who’s going to play center? At Monmouth, Nikita Konstantynovskyi transferred to Notre Dame after an excellent season down the shore and Amaan Sandhu moved on to Manhattan. Rice touted a three-headed monster at center comprised of transfers Jordan Meka (Georgia Tech), whose strength is his defense; Chris Morgan (North Texas), a big body from a basketball family; and Dok Muordar (Cleveland State), a lefty 7-footer.
The only issue: None of those three has ever averaged more than one point a game at their previous D1 stops.
Among several injuries that Monmouth players picked up over the offseason, the most notable was Jaret Valencia undergoing hernia surgery sometime in October. Rice said on Oct. 18 that Valencia was already running and starting to shoot again. The Colombia native is a highly exciting prospect in my eyes after a breakout first season for Monmouth.
The leadership on the floor will fall to Manasquan native Jack Collins, who can remember Monmouth’s best days when the program racked up wins and competed for MAAC titles.
“It’s super exciting. I’m kind of happy to step into that (leadership) role,” Collins said. “All these guys are great, they work super, super hard. They’re energetic, they want to win, they want to learn, which is the biggest thing. I think you get a group of guys that want to work together for one common goal, it’s the biggest thing. I’m just trying to lead them in that direction.
“I just think that I’m trying to use what I know for some of the new guys, some of the young guys that we got, and try to lead then in that right direction, and hopefully at the end of the year we can end up at the top of the conference.”
Monmouth has Rutgers on the schedule for the first time since the Hawks upset Rutgers 73-67 in December 2015. They’ll also play Seton Hall and Princeton as they usually do.
When we last saw Saint Peter’s and Rider, they were two of the best teams in the MAAC, delivering some good old New Jersey backyard brawls in March – fighting for every loose ball in a late regular-season tilt in Lawrenceville and getting back together seven days later in Atlantic City.
The fifth-seeded Peacocks defeated Rider in the quarterfinals and went on to win the MAAC championship, which Bashir Mason said last month gave him some validation after his Wagner teams fell short of an NCAA bid three times in 2016, 2018 and 2022.
“Playing in three championship games and coming up a little bit short, you’re knocking on the door those years and you feel like everything you’re doing is right,” Mason said at MAAC media day. “And last year officially getting over the hump (is) again, validation for me, the program, how we go about things that there’s a formula for success and we have it. We’ve gotta stay consistent … daily working towards that.”
Projecting this conference is a fool’s errand – but I tried anyway. I had the privilege of being asked to write the MAAC preview section for the Lindy’s preseason magazine. Outside the consensus top two of Quinnipiac and Marist, it’s anyone’s guess; the coaches voted Saint Peter’s fifth and Rider seventh, while I had the Peacocks up at third and the Broncs eighth.
Mason lost Corey Washington and Michael Houge to the portal and Latrell Reid to graduation, so 3-point sharpshooter Marcus Randolph will be the go-to guy, Mouhamed Sow will continue to be a threat and defensive stopper inside and Armoni Zeigler could be poised for a big year.
At Rider, the story of the offseason was former top-100 high school recruit and Trenton native Zion Cruz coming home to play for the Broncs and Kevin Baggett, whose basketball camps he grew up attending.
However, Baggett warned Cruz would need time to knock off rust as he returned from some ankle injuries, and when Rider played D2 Holy Family in an exhibition last week, Cruz was not one of the 12 players who saw game action.
The name to know on Rider is Jay Alvarez, who averaged 15.6 points, 4.5 rebounds and 1.8 assists at Houston Christian. In talking with Baggett last summer for my Lindy’s assignment, he described Alvarez as a straight-line finisher. You look at Alvarez’s 14.6 percent clip from three and figure you have an idea of what he’ll bring to the offense.
So for Alvarez to go 4-for-6 from the arc in the Holy Family game? Never mind the setting or level of opponent, that’s eye-opening. Alvarez could turn out to be the Broncs’ most dynamic guard. As a bonus, I asked Cruz last month to name a teammate we were sleeping on now but would surprise us come the season. Cruz didn’t hesitate.
“Jay Alvarez,” he said. “That kid’s gonna be special. And he’s an older guy, so he knows that this is his last go-around. He’s on point every day.”
Rider is moving on from the Mervin James-Allen Powell era, with two returning starters in T.J. Weeks Jr. and Tariq Ingraham.
“All of the guys who are back, that returned, are back with the right mindset, understanding that the way we left off from last season at the end of the tournament is not the way that we wanted to do that,” Baggett said. “We have talent in that locker room. How fast does it come together? How fast do people buy into their roles? Because that’s always a challenge as well, getting people to believe and being great in the roles that we’re trying to give them.”
I took in an NJIT practice back in early October and talked with the Highlanders as they try to improve on their last-place finish in the America East in 2023-24.
Leading the way is Tariq Francis, the first NJIT men’s player to win America East Rookie of the Year. I wrote about Francis here:
But the Highlanders will need other contributions at both ends if they plan to climb the ranks of this league. They scored the fewest points per game in conference play (64.8) and they ranked 343rd nationally in KenPom’s defensive rating.
Grant Billmeier has a decision to make at center, the position he played at Seton Hall and overseas. 6-foot-11 Somerville native Malachi Arrington, a freshman, was getting a look, as well as two players listed 6-foot-6 in Jordan Rogers and Tim Moore Jr.
Rogers, also a freshman, is the son of former NBA first-round pick Roy Rogers, now an assistant coach for the Portland Trail Blazers. Moore transferred from D2 Benedict College and I watched him throw down a monstrous dunk during the practice I attended. Size isn’t everything in a conference like the AEC, and Moore starting at the five may prove to be the best option.
“He’s a tremendous leaper,” Billmeier told me. “We’ve just got to continue to work on his IQ and his feel for the game. Hopefully that’s something that we can continue to improve and something he can leave here better at.”
Billmeier felt NJIT was progressing nicely as his second season on the job drew near.
“I think it’s gonna take some time,” he said. “Obviously our nonconference schedule is brutal, but I’m hoping if we can continue to develop the way I think we can, by the time conference play comes along I’m hoping we can be a factor in the conference.”