How Fairleigh Dickinson Shocked Purdue

There’s a reason why the annual NCAA men’s basketball tournament bears the name March Madness. Every single year, 68 college basketball teams participate in a single elimination tournament to decide who the national champion is. The vast number of teams involved along with the nature of a single-elimination tournament leads to a number of surprising upsets each year.

This year is no different as No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson just took down No. 1 Purdue 63-58 in arguably the greatest upset in the history of the tournament. This is the second time in tournament history that a 16 seed has defeated a one seed in the first round. The last time this happened was in 2018, when No. 16 UMBC demolished No. 1 Virginia 74-54 in one of the most shocking upsets in sports history.

But how did a tiny school with less than 12,000 students take down a basketball powerhouse like Purdue? Let’s go through the numbers and find out.

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Before we get into any specifics regarding the game itself, we need to understand just how big of an upset this was.

Fairleigh Dickinson is a tiny private school from New Jersey that plays in the Northeast conference with teams like Saint Francis and Wagner. The fact that the Knights were in the tournament in the first place is pretty remarkable, because they didn’t win their conference championship.

Merrimack College won the regular season Northeast conference title and then proceeded to beat Fairleigh Dickinson in the championship of their conference tournament. However, Merrimack recently transitioned to the division one level of college basketball, so they were not eligible for the tournament this season. Since Fairleigh Dickinson was the runner up in the conference tournament, they got to go to the big dance instead.

Fairleigh Dickinson was, by far, the worst team in the 68-team tournament field this year. They were the committee’s last ranked team in the tournament and for good reason.

The Knights came into the tournament with a 20-15 record and ranked 319th in the entire country in adjusted margin of victory, a stat that uses strength of schedule and average margin of victory to measure team strength. They ranked dead last among tournament teams in this metric, with Texas Southern coming in at 302nd.

Fairleigh Dickinson was actually pretty good offensively, ranking 53rd in offensive rating. However, they were horrendous on defense, ranking 286th in defensive rating. Their severe lack of defense should’ve made their matchup with Purdue very tricky.

Coming into the tournament, the Boilermakers were one of the top teams in the nation, ranking 10th in adjusted margin of victory. They were probably worse than your typical one seed, but they were still a great team. They were also way better than Fairleigh Dickinson on both ends of the floor, ranking 14th in offensive rating and 70th in defensive rating. The difference in team strength was simply humongous.

None of this seemed to matter, though. Fairleigh Dickinson certainly didn’t care because after the Knights defeated Texas Southern in their play-in game to make it to the round of 64, their head coach, Tobin Anderson, told the team that one of his assistants said “the more I watch Purdue, the more I think we can beat them.”

You don’t hear that very often from a 16 seed, especially ones who make it into the tournament due to a technicality, but that assistant coach was absolutely correct. They could beat Purdue and they would. The way they won, though, was mind boggling.

Heading into this matchup, Fairleigh Dickinson knew they had to get creative. They were at a huge disadvantage in terms of size (the average height of their starting five is 6’3 and their tallest player is 6’7) and they were going up against an All-American center in Zach Edey who just so happened to be 7’4 and 305 lbs.

The way they defended Edey was extremely aggressive. Whenever he touched the ball, they trapped him. If he had the ball in his hands, FDU was sending two or three guys at him. The reason for this level of aggressiveness is that FDU wanted to force the ball out of Edey’s hands and make Purdue’s guards beat them.

They actually weren’t able to stop Edey, who had 21 points, 15 rebounds, and 3 blocks, but they were able to limit his impact while forcing Purdue’s guards to play a big role in the Boilermaker’s offense. The results were not so good for Purdue.

Here is how Purdue’s guards performed vs. FDU:

Braden Smith: 34 MIN | 7 PTS + 6 AST + 7 TO | 2-10 FG | 1-6 3PT

Fletcher Loyer: 28 MIN | 13 PTS + 1 AST | 4-10 FG | 3-8 3PT

Brandon Newman: 15 MIN | 2 PTS + 2 AST | 1-4 FG | 0-1 3PT

Ethan Morton: 17 MIN | 0 PTS + 1 AST | 0-2 FG | 0-2 3PT

David Jenkins Jr.: 26 MIN | 0 PTS + 0 AST | 0-3 FG | 0-2 3PT

Purdue’s guards combined for just 22 points on 7-29 shooting from the field and 4-19 shooting from outside the arc. Gross.

Fairleigh Dickinson also did a great job of forcing turnovers. Coming into the tournament, Purdue had a turnover rate of 14.4%, but in this game, the Boilermakers had a turnover rate of 20.5%. The turnover battle was very much in favor of the Knights, as they had nine turnovers to Purdue’s 16.

While neither team shot the ball particularly well, FDU did have a slight advantage shooting from behind the arc. The Knights shot just 7-23 from downtown for a three point percentage of 30.4%, but that was much better than Purdue, who shot 5-26 from downtown for a three point percentage of 19.2%. FDU making two more threes than Purdue may not seem that important, but that difference matters a lot in a game that only had 66 possessions.

Another thing that helped FDU in this game was the performance of junior forward Sean Moore. Moore had averaged just six points per game going into the tournament, but he torched Purdue, putting up 19 points, 5 rebounds, and 3 combined steals and blocks while shooting 7-17 from the field.

He had played well leading up to this game, scoring double digits in three of his last four appearances, but he had a career performance in round one which played a huge role in Fairleigh Dickinson knocking off Purdue.

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I’m going to be completely honest, Purdue had no business losing to Fairleigh Dickinson. They were the much stronger team and they matched up extremely well with the Knights. My model gave Purdue around a 95% chance to move on to the second round, which is insane because it gave the other No. 1 seeds around an 85% chance to move on and Purdue was probably the weakest team given a top seed this year.

This game was also very much in Purdue’s favor because FDU struggled mightily. The Knights had an eFG% of .444, which should’ve been the nail in the coffin for them. Purdue was simply terrible and they got outplayed by the worst team to make the tournament maybe ever.

Fairleigh Dickinson deserves all the praise in the world. They had a phenomenal defensive gameplan and it worked to perfection. They also hit some big shots down the stretch and had a few players step up in a big way. They may not have had the best performance ever, but they did what they needed to do to be competitive and it worked out for them.

I’m not sure how far Fairleigh Dickinson will go in this tournament, but the fact that they’re still standing is incredible. Who would’ve thought that the tiny little school from New Jersey who didn’t even win their conference championship would knock off one of the premier programs in college basketball? Not me.

This is what March Madness is all about.