FDU shocked Purdue and became second 16 seed to beat a 1

The nation’s smallest basketball team has defeated the champions of the Big Ten. Fairleigh Dickinson, a member of the Northeast Conference who only made the NCAA tournament because their conference champion wasn’t eligible to dance big, stunned the Purdue Boilermakers Friday night in Columbus, 63-58.

While the Boilers went into the game with suspected National Player of the Year in Zach Edey, the Knights went into the game with a great defensive game plan that turned Purdue, limited Edey’s ability to beat her and challenged everyone else to make it big. Edey – who won the final 9:25 of the game without attempting a shot from the field – had 21 points and 15 rebounds on 7-for-11 shooting, but as a team, the Boilermakers went off the field 19-for-53 and just hit five threes.

All game long they were speeded up by FDU, which made them keep paying.

And when the last horn blew, FDU wrote their shared names in the history books and made their head coach Tobin Anderson look awfully smart when he said after their first-four win that he thought they could pull off the surprise.

The Knights went into the year 20-15, falling to Merrimack in the NEC championship game, but with the Warriors not qualifying for the NCAA tournament that year, Fairleigh Dickinson received the conference’s automatic bid. FDU joins UMBC as the only school to have won a game in the NCAA tournament as a 16 seed. Back in 2018, UMBC throttled Virginia, the No. 1 overall seed, 74-54. They would end up losing to Kansas State in the Round of 32. As for Purdue, this is the third year in a row that they have achieved a double-digit seed at the tournament. The 4-Seed Boilermakers lost to 13-Seed North Texas in 2021 and in 2022 they lost in the Sweet 16 as a 3-Seed to a 15-Seed, Saint Peter’s.

With the win, the Knights advance to Sunday’s round of 32, where they play either Memphis or Florida Atlantic and have a spot in the Sweet 16 at stake.