No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson’s 63–58 win over top-seeded Purdue immediately moves to the top of the biggest upsets in the history of the NCAA tournament. Based on Sports Reference data, it’s the largest upset based on point spread in Big Dance history. The Knights were 23.5-point underdogs. The previous high: 21 points, when Norfolk State beat Missouri as a No. 15 seed in 2012.
Fairleigh Dickinson wouldn’t even be in the NCAA tournament if not for a much-debated rule that doesn’t allow teams in their first four years of transitioning into Division I to play in the Big Dance. Merrimack, in its final year of transition, won the NEC’s regular-season title, then beat Fairleigh Dickinson in the conference title game. Because the Knights reached the championship game, they took the league’s NCAA tournament bid. For what it’s worth, FDU came in third in the league’s regular season, behind Merrimack and second-place Stonehill, which is in its first year of its Division I transition. They did all this coming from a league that had never won a game in the Round of 64 before today.
While FDU has been Division I for more than 50 years, it has been in the midst of a transition of its own. After going just 4–22 against Division I competition in 2022, it moved on from coach Greg Herenda and hired longtime Division II and Division III coach Tobin Anderson, fresh off an extended run of dominance at St. Thomas Aquinas (NY). Anderson had spent just two years coaching in Division I in his career, instead getting experience running his own program in front of tiny crowds at the likes of Hamilton College and Clarkson University. At St. Thomas Aquinas, Anderson’s team beat St. John’s by 32 points in a November 2015 exhibition, then was never invited to play another D1 team again. Anderson interviewed for D1 jobs—He was in the mix for the Iona vacancy when the Gaels hired Rick Pitino in 2020—but couldn’t find a taker on his unorthodox résumé.
