NJIT Basketball: Impact of Highlanders leaving Atlantic Sun to join America East

What impact will be felt as NJIT Basketball moves from the Atlantic Sun to join America East?

While an official announcement has yet to be confirmed, it has recently been revealed that NJIT Basketball will be departing the Atlantic Sun to join the America East Conference, effective immediately. This sudden realignment news will have a great impact not only on the Highlanders program but on both conferences, and we’ll be sure to look closely at all of these effects.

For NJIT, this move makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons. Geographically, they never made a lot of sense since joining the Atlantic Sun in 2015. Up in New Jersey, they were certainly distant from the Florida and Georgia teams that make up most of the conference. Even new member Liberty, their closest conference foe, is a considerable distance away. As the world continues to deal with the coronavirus threat, it’s not a surprise that a school like NJIT would want to eliminate some of these long conference trips for their sports teams.

For the Atlantic Sun, clearly, this is a move that has caught the conference off guard. The conference’s commissioner spent most of the day fighting rumors on Twitter and its clear that his league is stunned by the decision. In recent years, the A-Sun has seen solid programs depart like East Tennessee State and Northern Kentucky, with NJIT now the seventh team to leave in the last decade. While Bellarmine is set to join the league for the 2020-21 season, losing another team will keep the conference at nine schools. It’s hard to expand and build on a conference when your teams keep leaving.

Why this makes sense for NJIT to join America East Basketball

As previously mentioned, this is a great geographic move for the Highlanders, and it’ll have a positive impact on the America East as well. Many of the teams in the conference are from the New England states and would be much closer travels than to Florida and Georgia. This will be the first alignment change for the conference since 2013 when UMass-Lowell entered just as Boston University departed. The two conferences are pretty comparable when it comes to their basketball success and this league should put NJIT in great shape for the future.

The Highlanders are still relatively new to Division 1 basketball and are still looking for their first real postseason success. NJIT had great success at the D3 level in the 1990’s but was in pretty bad shape during the 2000’s as they transitioned to D1. They’ve never played in the NCAA Tournament, having made a trio of CIT runs over the last decade. NJIT won 22 games in 2019 but managed a paltry 9-21 record this past season. It’s uncertain how they’ll adjust to a brand new conference, but there’s no reason to believe they aren’t set up for success.

At the end of the day, this move makes perfect sense because of the geography and shouldn’t shake up either conference too badly. One impact will be how these conferences handle scheduling, with America East suddenly having 10 teams, perhaps setting up an 18-game conference season. It’ll be intriguing to see how NJIT fits into their new conference, a league where teams like Albany, Vermont, and upstart UMBC have had the focus in recent seasons.