Fairleigh Dickinson Basketball: Deeper look at historic upset over Purdue

The 2023 NCAA Tournament has not seen a lot of upsets with most of the top seeds advancing. The upsets that it did provide have been historic. The Princeton Tigers started it all off with a win over Arizona making them the third 15 seed to win their opening round game against Arizona and then the Tigers blew out Missouri to make it 3 years in a row that a 15 seed has made the second weekend. Congratulations Princeton, for as great as your story was you were upstaged by a small school in the state of New Jersey.

Fairleigh Dickinson University is in Teaneck, New Jersey and the Knights are responsible for the biggest upset in NCAA tournament history. The Knights were a 16 seed heading into their first round matchup with the Purdue Boilermakers and came out victorious. Fairleigh Dickinson Basketball was the second 16 seed to ever beat a 1 and they shocked the world when they won the game against Purdue. This was the biggest upset in tournament history for a lot of reasons, other than the two obvious ones of a 16 seed over a 1, and the Knights were the shortest team in NCAA basketball going up against one of the tallest.

I am here to talk about some things that most of us don’t know or care about. The differences in the two programs and why this upset was truly David taking down Goliath. There are so many things that handcuff the Fairleigh Dickinson program that any other power school would not have to worry about.

The pay structure for the coaches at Purdue is far different than it is at Fairleigh Dickinson, as well as budgets, arena’s, player pool, and so many more things. This was a huge upset in terms of talent but so much more went into this and why this win was huge for Fairleigh Dickinson.