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      Fairleigh Dickinson Hopes to Be the Next March Madness Fairy Tale

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      It was quiet at the Fairleigh Dickinson University campus in New Jersey the day after its basketball team pulled off a stunning upset in the men’s N.C.A.A. tournament. But it’s often quiet there.TEANECK, N.J. — The jokes of “F.D.— who?” go back more than 30 years, to the last time Fairleigh Dickinson University played Purdue in the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament.Purdue fans held up signs with the slogan when the two teams faced off in 1988.Purdue won.F.D.U. faded back into obscurity.So, for alumni of the New Jersey commuter school who remember the old jab, F.D.U.’s shocking victory against No. 1 Purdue on Friday was especially sweet.On Friday evening, Marc A. Wolfe, who worked for the student newspaper in those days, reposted photos he took from the sidelines of the 1988 game, just before he watched his alma mater topple the Boilermakers, 63-58, in the first round of this year’s tournament.“I’m excited that F.D.U. has done what was not only unexpected, but now people will know more about what’s possible,” Mr. Wolfe said.F.D.U.’s basketball team has the shortest average height in Division I, while Purdue’s roster includes Zach Edey, who is 7 feet 4 inches. F.D.U.’s interim president, Michael J. Avaltroni, said that the David-and-Goliath win lined up with the legacy of the small university.“We have always really been about giving students a chance,” Mr. Alvatroni said, “oftentimes when they didn’t even know whether college was a good fit for them. And kind of transforming them along the way and giving them the opportunity to, in some cases, perform these very miraculous feats.”Anete Adul, who plays for F.D.U.’s golf team, watched the basketball game from the airport on the way back from playing in Florida this week. Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesThe university, which also has campuses in England and Canada, bills itself as a global institution. A few hundred international students are also enrolled at the two New Jersey campuses.But a vast majority of students there are in-state students and attend part time. The university’s Metropolitan Campus sits on the border of Teaneck and Hackensack, middle-class towns across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Seventy percent of the students at Metropolitan Campus commute, Mr. Avaltroni said. The other campus is in Madison, a small suburb further west.Metropolitan Campus’s utilitarian brick buildings include the Rothman Center, a building with a tent-like roof that is home to the school’s men’s basketball team, the Knights. But the morning after the big game, the revelry was muted, with students away on spring break and the campus nearly deserted.A thin banner spanned Teaneck’s main street, Cedar Lane. “Congratulations F.D.U. Men’s Basketball Team. Welcome to the N.C.A.A. March Madness Tournament,” it read.Mia Andrews, an F.D.U. student and a basketball player, celebrated her university’s win on Friday, even though the women’s team season had ended.Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesStudent athletes who stuck around for practices over spring break watched the game together on campus on Friday. Liam Deep, who runs track for F.D.U., watched alongside softball players.Mr. Deep is from Toronto, but “I wasn’t from Toronto last night,” he said.Mr. Avaltroni, the interim president, said both the men’s and women’s basketball teams have done well this year. “There’s been an enthusiasm on campus that I have not seen,” he said, adding, “I’ve been at the university for 20 years.”The women’s team finished its season as regular-season champions, but lost in the first round of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament on Friday night to Columbia University. Mia Andrews, a guard on the women’s team, said her team “had mixed emotions because obviously, we had just finished our season.”But after the players found out that the men’s team had won, they broke into chants in the locker room. “It was a fun moment,” she said.Anete Adul was making her way back to Teaneck from Florida with the university’s golf team during the game. “We were in Orlando in the airport, and everyone was watching it, and it was so cool,” she said.Locals hope it could be another good basketball year for New Jersey. Last year, the state became the focal point of March Madness when another obscure institution, St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, made it all the way to the eighth round as a No. 15 seed.Watch parties for F.D.U.’s next game are planned for the Rothman Center as well as Hackensack Brewing Company, a craft brewery near Metropolitan Campus. This week, Princeton University also scored an upset when the Tigers, a No. 15 seed, beat No. 2 Arizona, 59-55. When Mr. Wolfe was a student, after F.D.U. won the N.E.C. championship and made it to the N.C.A.A. tournament, “we got on a bus, us and a bunch of other students and fans, and drove 15 hours to Indiana,” he said. (The game was held on the University of Notre Dame campus.)Mr. Wolfe lived on campus. He said it led to opportunities like working at the student newspaper and cemented his bond to the school.“I figured if you commute to a school, it’s not the same as if you live there,” he said. This year, the F.D.U. fans who had traveled to see the team’s first-round game — which was played at a stadium in Columbus, Ohio — were drowned out by the crowd that had turned out for Purdue. But Purdue’s team was gracious after the loss.Matt Painter, Purdue’s coach, put it simply: “They were fabulous.” More

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      U.C.L.A. Adds a Title to the ‘Conference of Champions.’ Will It Be Its Last?

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      The Bruins beat North Carolina in the women’s soccer final as officials are set to weigh in next week on whether to allow the university’s planned move to the Big Ten from the Pac-12.With its run of men’s basketball dominance under John Wooden, a five-peat in women’s water polo and three-peats in sports like softball and men’s volleyball, U.C.L.A. has long given credence to the Pac-12’s claim as the conference of champions. With the Bruins set to leave for the Big Ten Conference, pending an intervention from the University of California Board of Regents, they made sure they would add at least one more title before they go.U.C.L.A.’s women’s soccer team staged a rousing comeback to beat North Carolina, 3-2, in two overtimes to take the Division I national championship on Monday in Cary, N.C. The program won its second championship, after having won in 2013, and the 120th in the university’s athletic history.Bruins goalkeeper Lauren Brzykcy held the ball as the final seconds ticked down, then punted it down the field and ran toward her teammates, who came rushing from the sideline. Margueritte Aozasa received a bath from a water cooler after capping her first season as a head coach with a championship.But as late as the final minute of regulation, it looked as if North Carolina, playing a 30-minute drive from its campus, would be the team celebrating with its fans.The Tar Heels had taken a 2-0 lead by the 75th minute on two second-half headers by Avery Patterson. The Bruins scored in the 80th minute to cut their deficit in half, but they still needed a goal to force overtime as the clock wound to zero. (The clock counts down in N.C.A.A. Division I soccer rather than up, as in the World Cup and other professional ranks.)A corner kick in the final 30 seconds would most likely be U.C.L.A.’s last chance. Brzykcy joined her attacking teammates in the penalty area. With 20 seconds on the clock, Ally Lemos struck a ball with her right foot that headed toward the back post, where Reilyn Turner headed it past the keeper.The first 10-minute overtime period passed without a goal. A second scoreless period would have sent the game to penalty kicks — just like last year’s final, when Florida State topped Brigham Young, and just like in the second round of this year’s tournament, when No. 1-seeded U.C.L.A. nearly fell to Central Florida.U.C.L.A. narrowly managed to avoid leaving it up to the shootout this time, though. With less than four minutes remaining in the second overtime, Maricarmen Reyes raced to the rebound after a save by North Carolina’s Emmie Allen and slid it underneath Allen’s dive into the goal.It was the first time in Women’s College Cup history that a team overcame a two-goal deficit to win a title, according to ESPN Stats and Info. And Aozasa became the first N.C.A.A. women’s soccer coach to win a title in the first season as a head coach.The Bruins’ win came after the school’s football team finished the regular season in the top 20 of the College Football Playoff rankings and with both basketball teams in the top 20 of the Associated Press poll. It’s the type of success U.C.L.A. hopes to continue heading into its planned move to the Big Ten in 2024. Because U.C.L.A. is a public school, unlike Southern California, which also announced it would leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten, the California regents could block the move.Regents have expressed concerns over how traveling to states like Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania for competitions could affect athletes’ academics, and they have worried that U.C.L.A.’s departure would adversely affect Cal-Berkeley, which is also in the Pac-12. The regents said last month that they would have a special session on Dec. 14 to resolve the matter. More

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      Diamond Johnson Uses Prep Snub as Fuel for College Success

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      Diamond Johnson is making a name for herself at North Carolina State after being snubbed for a major high school honor.RALEIGH, N.C. — Diamond Johnson glanced over hopefully, expectantly. Andrea Peterson, her high school coach, had yet to receive the anticipated call appointing Johnson to the 2020 McDonald’s All American Game. Peterson had considered delaying practice so the team could gather in celebration. Instead, she began and asked an assistant to record the televised nominations.The game is a crowning cap to a heralded prep career, a notable distinction for a lifetime. To Peterson, the girls’ basketball coach at Saints John Neumann and Maria Goretti Catholic High School in Philadelphia, Johnson deserved the honor as much as anyone.She considered Johnson the pulsing heartbeat of the city, a hummingbird of a point guard who woke for early mornings and stayed for long nights to claim buckets and break ankles on her path to being ranked sixth overall in her class.Johnson finished a shooting drill at practice that day. The assistant who had been recording the All American nominations returned. Johnson’s name, he told Peterson, never came up. Peterson figured there had to be a mistake. The assistant insisted. Peterson called for a water break. Johnson checked her phone, finding a series of consolation texts from friends.Crestfallen and quiet, she released her emotions in a tsunami of points throughout practice, just like the time she dropped 54 points in a city championship game.That night, she bawled her eyes out while her sister and brother-in-law comforted her, wondering what, if anything, she could have done differently. She had committed to play at nearby Rutgers University and maybe, she thought, she had to have a grander stage in mind.“That just added fuel to her fire,” Peterson said. “Everything in her life adds fuel to her fire.”Johnson scored 17 points in a recent loss against Georgia.Kate Medley for The New York TimesWomen’s college basketball is largely an oligarchy. The same few programs — Connecticut, South Carolina, Baylor, Stanford, Notre Dame — typically vie for the championship each spring. “Those are the type of teams you ask, ‘Why are they great?’” Johnson said. “And then you work toward being that.”Johnson spent a season leading Rutgers in scoring before transferring to North Carolina State, a school that had heavily recruited her out of high school. “So much time that I could go to Geno’s or Pat’s, either one, and they knew me by my first name,” North Carolina State Coach Wes Moore said, referring to rival restaurants in Philadelphia known for their cheese steaks. “She’s special.”N.C. State is on the precipice of crashing through the annual favorites. The program earned a top seed in the N.C.A.A. women’s tournament last season before forward Kayla Jones injured her knee in the opening game of the tournament. Now, they have depth with Johnson, who “doesn’t just give us a spark,” Moore said. “She gives us a bonfire out there.”Johnson comes off the bench, trailing only the all-American center Elissa Cunane among the team’s scoring leaders (13.1 points per game for Cunane; 12.8 for Johnson). A point of whimsical debate is whether Johnson, listed at 5-foot-5, or the senior guard Raina Perez, at 5-foot-4, is taller. Johnson is as comfortable scoring in the lane — “I’ve been short all my life and I’ve been playing against tall people all my life,” she said — as she is draining a step-back 3-pointer.The Wolfpack were ranked No. 2 in the nation before a recent overtime loss to Georgia. “I just felt I’m that type of player that I need to be showcased in the bigger stage, and I knew them recruiting me out of high school, that they played big games against top teams,” Johnson said. “It was just me putting myself on this platform and taking it and running with it.”North Carolina State Coach Wes Moore talked with Johnson during a game against St. Mary’s.Gerry Broome/Associated PressReggie Williams, who coached Johnson when she relocated to Hampton, Va., from Philadelphia at the age of 11, imagined her on this platform.Johnson moved with her brother when their mother, Dana Brooks, sought a safer environment for them than their North Philadelphia neighborhood, off Diamond Street, the one Johnson was named after.“It’s basically like you surviving,” Johnson said. “We just have a mind-set of being on the go. Being aware of what’s going on and just making basketball an outlet to not engage in certain things.”Johnson was always fast and enjoyed gymnastics. In Virginia, she found herself among people whose country dialect she did not understand and who could not understand her.She joined Williams’s Black Widow A.A.U. team. That first practice, Johnson promptly dribbled toward the rim and threw the ball over the entire hoop. But Williams soon found that Johnson immediately retained any lesson he imparted, like the intricacies of footwork and the advantages of angles.Williams told Johnson that she had a special ability that needed nourishment. Johnson, eventually, believed him.“Everybody thinks that her talent is basketball,” Williams said. “No, her talent is the ability to pick up things.”Johnson learned the game from Williams and from Milton Rodwell, her brother-in-law, as she shuffled between spending the school year in Virginia and summers in Philadelphia, competing against boys and learning not to rely on just her talent. In high school, Johnson persuaded Brooks to let her move back to Philadelphia, where her father, James Johnson, lived.Johnson played for one year at Rutgers before transferring to N.C. State.Chuck Burton/Associated PressJohnson had helped introduce his daughter to basketball. A brain hematoma and several strokes left him unable to walk or speak, and Johnson wanted to be closer to him. Her father died in 2018 of complications from his illnesses.“I ain’t going to say it’s a sensitive subject, but it is something that I think drives her and pushes her, is her relationship with her father,” Williams said.She has also been driven by being underestimated. Johnson has moved past the slight of not being chosen for the McDonald’s All American Game in high school, even if the city has not. Dawn Staley, the Hall of Famer and longtime women’s coach, is from Philadelphia and had rallied in Johnson’s defense, even though Johnson chose to play for Rutgers and the storied C. Vivian Stringer over Staley’s University of South Carolina. The co-chairman of the McDonald’s game released a statement explaining Johnson’s exclusion and defending the selection process.A couple of months later, Peterson asked Johnson to stay close after a practice and to keep her phone nearby. This was odd and put Johnson on alert: Peterson never allowed phones in her practice. When Johnson’s phone buzzed, Allen Iverson, the city’s revered basketball son and the perfecter of the crossover Johnson emulated, greeted Johnson and her teammates.“What y’all doing?” Iverson asked. “What y’all got going on?”“We just finished practice,” Johnson responded.“Practice?” Iverson deadpanned, in a nod to his famous news conference.Johnson with her team before the game against Georgia.Kate Medley for The New York TimesHe had called inviting Johnson to play in his Roundball Classic at the 24K Showcase and to become the first woman to participate against the boys. “That just changed the dynamic of women’s basketball,” Peterson said.The pandemic canceled both the Roundball Classic and the McDonald’s Game. “I was going to show out, because it can’t go no other way,” Johnson said.Johnson is still on the verge of making a larger name for herself. The N.C.A.A. tournament is when legends are made forever, and she has a game ready to go viral at any tournament moment.Peterson said she advises her nieces to watch how Johnson plays the game, and they ask when she will have a shoe in stores that they can buy.Just wait, Peterson says. She expects Johnson to be on that level one day.Williams believes it’s only a matter of time.“The pool of gas is there,” Williams said, “and the spark is just waiting, and when it hits, it’s over with.” More

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      Arella Guirantes' Killer Sidestep Is Clearing a Path to the WNBA

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      Arella Guirantes, the star Rutgers guard, hopes to be drafted by her hometown team, the Liberty, this week. But no matter where she ends up, she said she’ll be ready.Arella Guirantes has seemed destined for the W.N.B.A. ever since she stood 4 feet 7 inches tall as a fifth-grader on the varsity team in summer league at Bellport High School on Long Island. Her basketball skills have always been steps ahead of her peers’, and her ambition to be the best against any level of competition has pushed her to the next level.Guirantes, 23, remembers a game from her senior year at Bellport, not for scoring 58 points, but for what she didn’t do. She was alerted with around 2 minutes left that she had scored 50 points, but she wanted 60. She’d missed her team’s first blowout loss against that day’s opponent, Kings Park High School, for showing up 20 minutes late to school.“I just like mentally took a note,” Guirantes said. “When I play them again, I’m going to kill them.”Guirantes brought that competitive fire to Rutgers, where she led the Big Ten in scoring as a redshirt junior during the 2019-20 season with 20.6 points per game and topped that number in the 2020-21 season with 21.3 points per game. Now she appears on the brink of her W.N.B.A. destiny, with the draft on Thursday and Guirantes projected to be one of the top picks.“I mean, every day in practice, she was always that one player that you knew that was just going to compete,” said Kelley Gibson, a former recruiter and assistant coach at Rutgers. “You know, players show up and just sometimes work hard in practice, but Arella competed.”Guirantes is foremost a scorer, and an efficient one at that. In her redshirt senior season, she shot 41.6 percent from the field and 37.8 percent from 3-point range on 4.3 attempts per game. She also had per-game career highs in assists (5.2) and steals (2.2) steals. She was named first team All-Big Ten for the second consecutive year and awarded All-Big Ten Defensive Team honors.No. 11-seeded Brigham Young upset Guirantes and No. 6-seeded Rutgers in the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament with a 69-66 victory.Chuck Burton/Associated PressOne of Guirantes’s signature plays is the jaw-dropping sidestep she uses to create space away from her defender off the dribble. She absorbs contact with her strong frame to fade away and shoot off either foot, moving in either direction using constant changes in speed.“You know what, now that you mention that, she did hit me with a couple of those,” said Dennis Smith Jr., a point guard with the N.B.A.’s Detroit Pistons, who has trained with Guirantes.Guirantes’s individual moves are stellar, and her series of jabs, in-and-outs and spins led her to finish in the 86th percentile of all scorers in isolation situations, according to Synergy Sports. But W.N.B.A. front offices are just as excited by her success in pick-and-roll situations. She ranked in the 90th percentile of all players as the ballhandler during the 2020-21 season, according to Synergy Sports.Scoring isn’t the only reason Guirantes’s name has shot up draft boards. Defensively, she’s a hawk, plucking passes and stripping ballhandlers. She’s also a bully down low, afraid of no one. “Oh, yeah, one thing I can tell you for sure,” Smith said. “She ain’t ducking no smoke. That’s a promise. She ain’t ducking no smoke.”Despite standing six inches shorter than the 6-foot-5 Charli Collier of Texas, who some think could be drafted first over all, Guirantes recorded more blocks per game. She credits many of her defensive instincts to her time playing middle blocker in volleyball. “I think I have a good just I.Q. for the game to understand where people on offense are going, when they’re going to put the ball up,” she said. “I have good timing.”The W.N.B.A.’s 2021 draft class isn’t heralded as a strong one, but an experienced scorer like the 5-foot-11 Guirantes could be an immediate-impact player for a contender. She’ll be up against the likes of Aari McDonald from Arizona, Dana Evans from Louisville and Rennia Davis from Tennessee to be the first guard taken off the board. Unlike those three, her team, a No. 6 seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament, was upset in the first round, by No. 11-seeded Brigham Young, 69-66. Fortunately for her, scouts have had five years to assess her talent.“I don’t know if she’s separated herself,” said James Wade, head coach and general manager of the Chicago Sky. “I think when you talk about big guards, you can mention Davis in the same breath. I think it’s more of what you’re looking for and how they kind of fit into your team and the players that you have.”He continued: “I do think that she is a high-quality guard because of all the things that she can do — her strength, the fact that she can create her own shot. I think she has certain qualities that separate her from the bunch, but at the same time it depends on what you’re looking for, versatility defensively or versatility offensively, which I think she has a lot of offensively.”Detroit Pistons guard Dennis Smith Jr., who has trained with Guirantes, said she’s not afraid to challenge anyone. “She ain’t ducking no smoke.”Kenneth Ferriera/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated PressWade said he believed Guirantes would be selected within the first six picks, three of which belong to the Dallas Wings. Mock drafts place Guirantes as high as No. 3 to the Atlanta Dream. Guirantes said she will be happy no matter where she lands, but the Long Island native is making it no secret that she’d love to play for the Liberty, who hold the No. 6 pick.“That would be a dream come true,” said Guirantes, who grew up going to Liberty and Knicks games at Madison Square Garden with her family and friends from the Boys and Girls Club. The Liberty now play at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.“The Garden has a special feel, but the transition to the Barclays I can’t say is a bad transition,” Guirantes said. “I’d really love to play at the Barclays Center.”The W.N.B.A. draft will be held virtually for a second straight year because of the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday, and Guirantes will be lying low until then, working on her game and training. She plans to watch the draft with her family and sweat out the moments until her name is called. In the meantime, she’ll try to avoid looking at mock drafts and people critiquing her game on social media. Maybe playing with Donkey Kong in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate video game on her Nintendo Switch against Smith will pass the time.Wherever Guirantes lands on Thursday night, she’s going to be ready.“My short-term goal is to really come in and make a quick transition,” Guirantes said. “I know it’s a lot easier said than done. But I want to make a huge impact and be in the running for rookie of the year. I think if you’re not going for rookie of the year, then you’re not really trying to help your team as much as you think you are.”She knows about starting strong: In only the second game of her college career, with Texas Tech before she transferred to Rutgers, she sank a buzzer-beating shot to force overtime against Texas A&M.“I really want to make a strong first impression in the W.N.B.A. because the way you start your career is important,” Guirantes said, adding: “That translates to overseas, too. They’re watching. A strong first year in the W.N.B.A is important.” More

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      When the Coronavirus Shut Down Sports

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      This article is by Alan Blinder and Joe Drape. Additional reporting by Gillian R. Brassil, Karen Crouse, Kevin Draper, Andrew Keh, Jeré Longman, Juliet Macur, Carol Schram, Ben Shpigel, Marc Stein and David Waldstein. Illustrations by Madison Ketcham. Produced by Michael Beswetherick and Jonathan Ellis.

      This article is by

      Alan Blinder

      Joe Drape

      Gillian R. Brassil

      Karen Crouse

      Kevin Draper

      Andrew Keh

      Jeré Longman

      Juliet Macur

      Carol Schram

      Ben Shpigel

      Marc Stein

      David Waldstein

      Madison Ketcham

      Michael Beswetherick

      Jonathan Ellis More