Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I was really pulling for No. 12 seed Delaware to pull off the upset in the CAA championship game, but St. Francis is an equally amazing story.
In today’s SI:AM:
🏀 SEC! SEC! SEC!
🐅 Bad news for Tiger
🥊 New boxing venture
The ultimate Cinderella
The most noteworthy result in college basketball on Tuesday night was a game played in front of 3,200 fans in which neither team cracked 50 points.
In the Northeast Conference championship game, the St. Francis Red Flash upset the Central Connecticut State Blue Devils, 46–43, to reach the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1991.
It was one of the biggest upsets of this conference tournament season. St. Francis finished the regular season at 13–17, with three of those wins coming against non–Division I teams. Two came against Penn State satellite campuses that compete as part of the United States Collegiate Athletic Association and one came against Franciscan University of Steubenville, a D-III school in Ohio. CCSU, meanwhile, was the NEC regular-season champion, having finished 14–2 in conference play and with an overall regular-season record of 23–6. The Blue Devils had been favored by 10.5 points in Tuesday night’s game, which was being played on their home court in New Britain, Conn.
St. Francis won its final three games of the regular season in overtime to finish at 8–8 in conference play, good for a tie for fourth in the NEC. Because the Mercyhurst Lakers, who finished 9–7 in league play, are transitioning from D-II and are ineligible for the NEC tournament, St. Francis earned the No. 3 seed in the conference tournament. The Red Flash then squeaked into the NEC title game with dramatic victories in the first two rounds of the tournament. In the opening round at home against the Wagner Seahawks, St. Francis’s Riley Parker made three free throws with two seconds left to win it. Then in the next round on the road against the LIU Sharks, Juan Cranford Jr. made three free throws with one second left to win the game and set up the trip to New Britain. Tuesday’s title game was no different than the previous two, as Daemar Kelly’s mid-range jumper with 9.8 seconds left proved to be the game-winner for the Red Flash. That makes it three straight games in which St. Francis took the lead in the final 10 seconds.
It isn’t unheard of for a team with a losing record to make the NCAA tournament. It’s now happened 39 times on the men’s side (including six times in the past 10 years) and 19 times on the women’s side (including each of the past four seasons). But St. Francis is still easily the most unlikely team to punch its March Madness ticket this season. The Red Flash are ranked 310th in KenPom, having moved up from 317th with their win on Tuesday. That’s out of 364 teams. Barring a truly miraculous NCAA tournament run, this will be their fifth consecutive losing season. The school has just 1,962 students (undergraduate and graduate) and is located 80 miles east of Pittsburgh in Loretto, Pa., a small town in the western part of the state that had 1,196 residents at the last census. When I covered the Fordham football team in college and our school had a game at St. Francis, the coach told me the school “isn’t even in the middle of nowhere. It’s about an hour outside the middle of nowhere.”
The school is so small and so remote that even the team’s coach was hesitant to go there. Rob Krimmel grew up in State College, Pa., and dreamed of going to Penn State but wasn’t recruited by the Nittany Lions. He was recruited, however, by St. Francis. And he didn’t like what he saw.
“My first impression of the place: I didn’t like it,” Krimmel told Matt Norlander of CBS Sports after Tuesday’s win. “I thought college was Beaver Stadium, 100,000 people, big campus. I grew up going to football games, basketball games, and my first trip up there, I told my dad, ‘I’m not going to a school like that.’ ”
But Krimmel didn’t just commit to play four years at St. Francis. It’s turned out to be a lifelong commitment. He graduated from the school in 2000 after a standout career on the court and immediately took a role as an assistant coach, which he held until ’12 when he was promoted to head coach. He has now spent nearly two-thirds of his life at St. Francis.
The next game Krimmel coaches will be the school’s biggest in 34 years. That’s how long it has been since the Red Flash’s only NCAA tournament appearance, which ended with a first-round exit against an Arizona Wildcats team that featured six future NBA players. Given the Red Flash’s weak résumé, it’s likely that their NCAA tournament will begin in the First Four. That increases their chances of earning the school’s first NCAA tournament win, but just getting there is already an incredible achievement.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- As the NCAA tournament draws closer, the SEC could dominate the men’s bracket. Bryan Fischer looks at how the historically football-focused conference became a basketball power.
- Will Laws has a fun story about how the Dodgers keep their competitive juices flowing off the field.
- Chris Mannix spoke with Dana White and Turki Alalshikh about their new venture that aims to bring stability to the fractured boxing landscape.
- Gary Van Sickle was at the Players Championship on Tuesday, where PGA commissioner Jay Monahan gave more of the same non-answers in a session with reporters about the ongoing dispute with LIV Golf.
- Tiger Woods underwent surgery for a ruptured Achilles tendon and did not give a timeline for his return to play. Bob Harig has more on the news and Woods’s injury history.
- Joey Bosa is signing with the Bills after being released by the Chargers.
- A Cal basketball player observing Ramadan was able to break his fast in the middle of a game because it went to double overtime.
- Former NBA player Junior Bridgeman, who had one of the most successful post-playing business careers of any athlete, has died.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. Alex Ovechkin’s selfless decision to pass to a teammate in an empty-net situation. He could have tried to score another goal in his pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s record but he helped Aliaksei Protas complete his first career hat trick instead.
4. Craig Porter Jr.’s heave from behind half court at the third quarter buzzer.
3. Khalif Battle’s lob to put the finishing touches on Gonzaga’s win over Saint Mary’s in the WCC championship game.
2. Senators center Matthew Highmore’s hustle after a turnover to make a ridiculous deflection and deny a goal.
1. Tyrese Haliburton’s game-winning four-point play. His leaning three-pointer tied it and the ensuing free throw gave the Pacers the lead.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | St. Francis Is This Year’s Most Unlikely March Madness Team.