No program in America has lived a wilder six-year arc than Fairleigh Dickinson. In March 2023, the Knights won the First Four, then walked into Columbus and beat No. 1 seed Purdue 63-58 — just the second 16-over-1 upset in NCAA Tournament history. Tobin Anderson’s full-court press and glacier-paced offense became an instant legend. Then Anderson left for Iona, longtime assistant Jack Castleberry got his first head coaching job, and the program fell into a free fall: three straight sub-.500 seasons, and a 2025-26 campaign that opened 6-13 with the 329th-ranked offense in the country. The Purdue tape still plays on every highlight show. The job now is making the program’s story bigger than one night.
The history here deserves more than the upset. FDU — the Burgundy and Blue of Teaneck and Hackensack, New Jersey, playing at the Stratis Arena in the Rothman Center — has won three NEC championships. Greg Herenda’s teams took the 2016 and 2019 crowns, with the 2019 group earning the program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament game victory over Prairie View A&M in the First Four. The 2023 title was the coronation. This is a program that knows how to win in March — which is why the last three years have stung.
Castleberry’s rebuild has been a roster-turnover story, and the 2026-27 group is his most experienced yet: a senior-heavy lineup led by guards Joey Niesman (Oswego, Illinois) and Eric Parnell (Melbourne, Florida, by way of Eastern Florida State), both of whom averaged in double figures last season. Around them: senior forwards Taeshaud Jackson (Denver, via SoCal Academy), Cole Alexander (Charleston) and Arthur Cox (Fayetteville, Arkansas), and a genuine rim protector in 7-0 senior center Cyril Martynov, the Canadian who came through the Lawrenceville School.
The youth is the upside. Sophomores Raysean Johnson, Andrew Canda, Chidube Ekwommadu (Mississauga) and Josiah Francis (Scarborough) give the backcourt a Canadian pipeline, and the freshman class — Kody Frey (Raleigh), Ras Elijah Godbolt (Albany), Tyler McQuaid (Maywood, N.J.), 6-10 Dane Sebastian Haubro and 6-8 Serb David Jevtic — is the most international group Castleberry has signed. Junior wing Noah Melson adds depth. The pieces are there; the shooting has to come.
The NEC is the right league for a turnaround. This is a conference where February resets everything — Wagner, Central Connecticut State, Le Moyne and the rest take turns, and the team that gets hot in the conference tournament goes dancing. FDU doesn’t need to dominate the regular season. It needs to defend better than 300th in the country and find a second and third scorer behind its senior guards.
What the Knights do well travels: the program’s DNA has always been guard play, pressure, and fearlessness. Anderson’s press was the extreme version, but the idea — make the favorite uncomfortable, dictate tempo, believe — predates him and should outlast him. Castleberry’s best teams will look like that again: small, fast, relentless, and completely unbothered by who’s across the floor.
What success looks like: a winning NEC record, a home game in the conference tournament, and a March run that reminds everyone what the Burgundy and Blue can do when the lights get bright. The 2023 team proved that a 16 seed can beat a 1 seed. The 2026-27 Knights just need to prove they can beat the teams in front of them — starting with the simple stuff: making shots, guarding the ball, and playing like a program that expects March to matter.
Knightro will be there. The band will be there. And somewhere in the Stratis Arena, the Purdue memory hangs in the air — not as a weight, but as proof of concept. Fairleigh Dickinson has done the impossible once. Now it has to do the ordinary: win games, stack weeks, and build a team worth believing in again.
The building matters more than outsiders realize. The Stratis Arena inside the Rothman Center seats under 2,000, and when it’s full it’s one of the loudest small gyms in the Northeast — the band, Knightro the mascot, students practically on the court. The 2019 team that beat Prairie View A&M fed off that energy all the way to the NEC title. For a program built on belief, a packed little arena is a real weapon.
The NEC tournament format keeps the dream alive for everyone: the higher seeds host, the league’s champion goes dancing, and chaos is the norm. FDU’s path doesn’t require a perfect winter — it requires being the team nobody wants to see in March. The Knights have been that team before. The seniors on this roster were recruited with the Purdue story as the pitch. Now they get to write the next chapter of it.