Hey Hoops House readers! Thanks for coming to check out our piece on NJIT. This game was the second part of our first doubleheader. We rushed to Newark for the 4 p.m. tip off between NJIT and Stetson after catching St. John’s beat Marquette at Carnesecca in Queens. We’re publishing this part first, but stand-by for our upcoming post about the first half of our day in New York City.

New Jersey Institute of Technology Highlanders

Gym: NJIT Wellness and Events Center

Location: Newark, NJ

Conference: Atlantic Sun

Opponent: Stetson University (Atlantic Sun conference play)

If basketball comes to your mind when you think of NJIT, the most likely reason is that you remember hearing in passing about what was likely the worst team in college basketball history. Their futility garnered them national attention in the late 2000’s, and the newly ascended division one program had made a name for itself sooner than anyone expected. The Newark based New Jersey Institute of Technology has, predictably, hit some road bumps trying to stabilize itself as a competitive division one sports program, but thanks to a commitment from the university, NJIT has rapidly assembled respectable athletics.

NJIT is a public research institution in the University Heights section of Newark, New Jersey. It sits directly adjacent to Rutgers-Newark, about a mile from Prudential Center where Seton Hall hosts its home basketball contests in downtown Newark. The school is home to over 11,000 students between the undergrad and graduate levels, most of whom commute to campus from nearby North and Central Jersey. It has a good reputation locally, but I’m told by friends that are alumni that, within the tech industry, a field NJIT sends a lot of its graduates to, it’s known to provide less practical, more potentially academia focused training to its undergrads. The school focuses on STEM disciplines, but it offers 50 majors from business to liberal arts fields. They claim that their Enterprise Development Center is one of the leading tech business incubators in the country, with 90 companies with a combined average revenue of $100 million. NJIT has a quiet social life, something division one sports, especially the men’s basketball program, is supposed to help improve.

The basketball program has a short, but not uninteresting history. Before they rose to the division one ranks in 2005, first as an independent, then as a member of the now-defunct Great West Conference, the team appeared in five division three tournaments. The appearances clustered in the early-mid 90’s, they managed an elite eight run in that tournament in 1995 before being eliminated by fellow Jersey public Rowan University. Any more detailed history on the program prior to its rise to division one is apparently hard to come by. NJIT’s claim to basketball fame is holding the record for consecutive losses, at 51, and for having completed the worst single season in division one college basketball history, finishing a season 0-29. The streak ended with a ten point win over Bryant in January 2009, and would be the only victory for the team between the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons.

After a four-year transition to full division one status, NJIT joined the Great West Conference in 2009. The conference limped along with between five and seven teams for the four seasons during NJIT’s membership, playing no more than twelve-game seasons. In the league’s final season of 2012-13, last place Chicago State, who finished with a record of 3-5 in conference play, won the league’s tournament. When the Great West dissolved, NJIT was the only member left without a conference, and played two seasons as the only independent in college basketball.

Their second season as an independent, the 2014-15 season, was the most accomplished in the school’s history. That year they achieved their highest ever win total, at 21, their highest SRS, beat #17 Michigan at Ann Arbor, and won three games in the CIT, all against teams with at least nineteen wins. They followed that with another 20-win campaign the next season, their first as a member of the Atlantic Sun. Although they’ve taken a step back in recent seasons, they’ve seen an overall rise from what was probably the worst team in college basketball history to a respectably average mid-major program. The program’s improvement has been supplemented with a brand new arena, the Wellness and Events Center (the WEC).

Meeting the Coaches

Usually what we do after the games is stuck in a different section, but what we stumbled into in downtown Newark that night ended up being one of the highlights of our season. After the game, we left the WEC in search of a bar to have a post-game beer, and after finding the bar in the student center was closed, we walked through Newark in the rain to find a bar called McGovern’s. The bar, which has been in business for over 80 years, is a few blocks from the WEC across Rutgers’ campus (cutting through a Rutgers building was the most direct way to get there) right on the border between University Heights and downtown, and was the closest place to get a drink.

We sat in the bar, which seems to be a firefighter friendly establishment and had the Seton Hall basketball schedule on the wall, for about an hour drinking beers and eating some food. At that point, a few older guys walked in in shirts and ties under big NJIT jackets, were greeted familiarly by bar staff and a few patrons (a handful of whom seemed to be Highlander athletes), and sat at the bar. Kev (my Hoops House associate) mentioned that they were definitely a couple of the basketball coaches, and we pulled out our phones to confirm their identities. Finding that these were two of the assistant coaches, I suggested approaching them, but Kev thought it better not to after a tough loss.

We weren’t there for the Pirates, but we appreciate a college hoops bar just the same

Ignoring his advice, a few minutes later I greeted one of them and said something along the lines of tough loss, but what a run at the end (more on that later). He thanked me for the comment and for coming out to the game. When I got back to my seat, the bartender (an absolute maniac named Mo, just for the record) came up to us and asked us if we knew the coaches. I said we didn’t and that I had just gone by and said hello, and he told us that our next round was on them.

We exchanged a pleasant thank you/you’re welcome from across the bar, and continued our drinking. More folks from NJIT athletics came streaming in, from athletes to staff, and all congregated on the side of the bar with the coaches and socialized with one another. The hangers were all covered in silver NJIT winter jackets and backpacks with the Highlander logo and numbers.

An hour or two later, before leaving, we approached the coaches to properly thank them for the round and share some encouraging thoughts about their team. They thanked us again, and we broke into conversation after telling them we weren’t NJIT students or alumni, but had come to their game as a part of a double header on our way back from Carnesecca in Queens. They wanted to talk some Temple basketball, and like most people in the game had nothing but positive things to say about Fran Dunphy, and told us a bit about their program and the improvements they hoped to make in the coming seasons. Coaches and people within the game will often exchange brief pleasantries with fans in order to appear polite, but they were sincere in their appreciation for us coming out and watching their team, and were genuinely excited to talk about their program with people who had come from out of town and weren’t familiar with it.

Before parting, I asked one of the coaches about the Atlantic Sun and NJIT’s future in it. If you’re unfamiliar with the conference, it’s a southeastern based league with most of the teams tucked between South Carolina and Florida. NJIT is the major outlier. They ended up in the conference, as mentioned earlier, after the Great West dissolved and they were left to play as an independent for two seasons. Between their improved performance on the court, their new arena, and the significant time and financial commitment they make to play in the Atlantic Sun, I had suspected the school would at some point look for a more suitable home. It happens that the America East Conference, a league filled almost exclusively with public institutions between the Baltimore suburbs and Bangor, Maine, currently has nine teams competing in basketball. NJIT sits right in the heart of the current geographic footprint (although it’s historically a New England focused league), fits with the culture of the conference, and I’ve heard fans of a few different America East teams say NJIT is the natural 10th member they should be adding. The competition on the court is also better in America East, and NJIT’s 2017-18 Kenpom rating of 254 would have been middle of the pack in America East last season. It seems like a perfect fit.

When I, in not so many words, brought this up to one of the coaches, his demeanor immediately shifted from boozey and carefree to a serious excitement. Looking like he had a lot to unload on me, he composed himself and said “you know what? Send me an email”. I found his info online and dispatched an email about a week later. It was never returned.

As we were walking out, head coach Brian Kennedy came in and was immediately shouted at and waived to by a few dozen people in the bar. It seemed like a fun atmosphere, even an hour after one of the toughest losses of the season, and it was great to experience the NJIT community in such an intimate setting. I was handed a business card from someone with the title of “Athletic Business and Ticketing Manager”, and was told to contact them next time we’re in town for a game.

The Outlook

NJIT has, understandably, had one of the lowest attendance averages in division one basketball since they’ve competed at that level. So few students living on campus combined with their on court struggles hasn’t been a great formula for filling the stands. The school hasn’t quite cultivated a culture of strong school spirit on campus, and you mostly only see athletes in Highlanders gear. It doesn’t seem that they have a very active alumni base, either. However, with the improved state of the program and a brand new on-campus arena, attendance certainly has the potential to improve.

NJIT was coming into the game at 12-14, 5-5 in Atlantic Sun play. They didn’t manage a major victory in their non-conference season, their highlight being taking eventual MAC champions Buffalo to overtime, a team that upset Arizona in the NCAA tournament. Stetson was 11-17, and had only managed two conference wins. They did have a bit more success than the Highlanders during the non-conference schedule, and had beaten NJIT early in conference play. They were coming in on an 8-game losing streak.

I expected this game, as I would for any NJIT home affair that wasn’t against a major opponent, to be mostly empty, and I had no idea what to expect in terms of a student section.

The Town

Newark, New Jersey is one of the most under-appreciated cities in the northeastern United States. Deindustrialization did drain the city of a lot of its resources and most of its tax base through the middle of the twentieth century, and poverty and crime rates are high, but that doesn’t make it a place to avoid altogether. Downtown Newark, while recovering slowly, has seen a lot of recent development, and has a bunch of beautiful, turn-of-the-century architecture. It’s home to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and the Prudential Center which houses the NHL’s New Jersey Devils. There are a handful of bars and restaurants near the stadium and along Market and Broad Streets, including the famous Hobby’s Delicatessen, a 50+ year-old traditional Jewish deli that prepares its corn beef on premises. The adjacent Ironbound section has a significant Portuguese population, and is renowned for its Iberian cuisine. Walk into any eatery on Ferry Street, and you’ll likely have an excellent meal. I personally recommend Ferry Street Barbecue.

There is no shortage of sports spectating options outside of NJIT hoops, either. Although the New Jersey Nets packed up and left Newark after a temporary stay at Prudential Center, the arena continues to host the Devils and Seton Hall basketball. Across the Passaic River in Harrison is Red Bull Arena, where Red Bull New York competes in Major League Soccer. It’s so close to Newark that their fans assemble in the Ironbound before walking over the James St. Bridge to the arena for games. Professional baseball left Newark most recently in 2013, but both NJIT and division three Rutgers-Newark use Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium for varsity baseball. Two division one basketball programs and two major professional sports franchises would be the envy of plenty of great sporting cities in this country.

Newark also has excellent connectivity and access. Newark Penn Station, a gem of Depression-era architecture, sits as a dividing line between the Ironbound and downtown, and services over 25,000 passengers daily. New York City is a quick and cheap trip on the PATH train, and Amtrak will get you from Penn Station directly to any major city in the northeast. The Newark-Liberty International Airport is also one of the busiest in the United States.

Central King Building on NJIT’s campus

NJIT’s campus is in the University Heights neighborhood of the city to the north of downtown. It shares the neighborhood with Rutgers-Newark, Essex County College, and the New Jersey Medical School. It’s a moderately dense neighborhood populated by older brownstones and more modern townhouses, a scattering of businesses that cater to the roughly 30,000 total students in the neighborhood. There are a couple of bars, mostly family run take out eateries, including a fantastic Cuban place called La Cocina. Most of those 30,000 students commute, and the student resident population is relatively low for a neighborhood packed with four higher education institutions. You can take the subway from University Heights to downtown Newark and to Penn Station, and eventually to New York City, or walk the roughly one mile to Prudential Center or the NJPAC.

NJIT’s campus definitely feels like the evolving commuter campus that it is. There’s little social buzz around campus (although there is a small Greek life present), but there’s construction happening in every corner. The WEC was just the center piece of a $300 million project to develop the campus while growing the student and resident populations. There are only a couple of older, traditionally “collegiate” style buildings on campus, a few from the 60’s and 70’s that feel outdated inside and out, and a handful of very modern, sleek looking buildings undoubtedly designed specifically to reflect NJIT’s technology focused culture. There is a LOT of gleaming silver on campus. The campus is pretty compact, and a few buildings reach up a handful of stories, maximizing the little elbow room the school has in the urban environment. It’s a great little campus, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it evolves as these projects finish up and more students move to and around the school.

Facilities/Logistics

The WEC, and possibly the now demolished Fleischer to the right

Getting to NJIT is pretty simple, located in the heart of Newark which is accessible by public transit and by the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. The modest subway has a stop near NJIT’s campus, and while parking isn’t incredibly easy or free, it’s certainly not prohibitive. While the two-hour parking forced us to rush out after the game to move the car, some NJIT lots opened up to the public after a certain time (maybe 5 p.m.), and we just stashed our car in one of those lots after the game.

Inside the WEC

In November, just in time for basketball season, NJIT opened the state of the art Wellness and Events Center. Built directly next to the Fleisher Center, the former home of Highlanders basketball which was built in 1967 (and demolished a few months ago in May), the WEC seats 3,500 for basketball, and was designed to be the primary hub of the campus. The building hosts a number of athletic and recreation facilities for varsity athletes and other students, athletic department offices, classroom and event space. According to the president of the school, the WEC is intended to be a “multipurpose building that provides large-scale space for professional conferencing, training and career fairs, as well as social settings for NJIT students, faculty and staff”.

The first time I walked through NJIT’s campus, about six weeks before the 2017-18 basketball season tipped, the WEC was still very much under construction. A friend of mine, who was in school there at the time, walked me through a portion that had been completed up to that point, and what I thought was the arena portion of the building was still pretty bare. Construction crews were in that day, and it seemed so far from being completed that I assumed the team was moving in the following season until we got there on the day of the game. When we did show up for the game against Stetson, parts of the building seemed to still be in progress, and there were some building materials laid out around the facility.

The WEC looks, feels, and smells as new as it is. The walls are bare, trophy cases empty, and the activity level was almost nothing, even with a game going on. It was quiet, almost eerily so, still apparently waiting for everything to be moved in and to be christened as a part of campus.

Kev catching some hoops from the concourse

We parked directly adjacent to the imposing, gray WEC, that almost looks like a UFO, and hurried into a back entrance to get out of the frigid February rain. Finding the game itself once we were in the building was not easy. There were no signs indicating which entrance to use, nothing inside the huge facility to show us where the arena was. We only managed to get inside slipping in through an open door that required an ID swipe when a few students were walking out. We wandered the back of the facility, a blindingly white section of the building with some lecture halls and the pool, trying to locate the gym. We finally found a flight of stairs and walked up to a lofted entranceway to the arena, where there turned out to be no ticket sales. The student checking the tickets there instructed us to buy tickets at an opposite corner of the building, and reluctantly let us through the arena so we could save a trip back down the stairs, outside in the rain, and around the whole building to come back in again. She was very concerned we were going to sneak some free basketball.

We went through the concourse which overlooks the court and got in line for tickets. We ended up paying something like $25 for two tickets, which isn’t horrible. Despite the ultra-modern vibe of the WEC, the whole set up was pretty improvised. A few folding tables greeted you inside the arena from the ticket line, people stationed there taking tickets, distributing single sheet printer-paper programs, lobbying for 50/50 raffle participants. The concession stand was on the other end of the concourse, a bit more formal, hot dog and popcorn set ups, but still had chips and drinks laid out on the same plastic tables. Apparel, however, is sold in a small, professional looking store on the concourse.

The layout of the arena is quite comfortable. The main concourse runs along the sideline behind camera side, and you can stand there, only about 15 rows from play, and see the game. There are chairs set up there just behind the rows of seats behind a counter-top table, and you can sit and watch play from an excellent angle. A good chunk of the 3,500 seats are behind the opposite sideline, sections of full seats followed by bleachers that run up towards the ceiling. The court at the WEC has the outline of the state of New Jersey along center court, overlaid by the script “NJIT” logo. Rutgers just updated their court at the RAC with the same state outline concept this summer, but we know who the trailblazers were in Jersey.

The Atmosphere

NJIT’s generally low attendance is understandable. We outlined above their early struggles when coming into division one, a commuter campus mostly empty on the weekends, school spirit levels much lower than, say, nearby Rutgers or Seton Hall. I’m sure they didn’t put 3,500 seats in the WEC for 80% of them to remain completely unoccupied, so I trust the school has a vision for driving this in the right direction. The arena is new, division one sports are new, and I don’t think low attendance is anything particularly negative at this point in their program’s development.

The listed attendance was 788. There was a youth group in attendance, a lot of family members of players from both teams, and a handful of NJIT alums. There were about twenty Stetson fans behind their bench, and a group of about 10 NJIT students behind one of the baselines.

Here’s a taste of the crowd. My phone can’t handle audio very well, sorry for the distorted sound

The game started very poorly for NJIT, and an excited Stetson bench, looking for their first win in eight games, produced most of the noise as they opened up a huge first half lead on the Highlanders. However, come the second half, the student section had grown to about 20 or 30 students, and more and more came as the game wore on. Other student athletes began to go in and out of the tunnels to and from the court and the locker rooms, and began filling the student section, I imagine as their own practices and workouts were ending.

The student section at its peak

The energy in the building picked up drastically. The NJIT student section swelled to 50 or 60 kids, and the Highlanders came roaring back from a double-digit deficit. What was a mostly lifeless building exploded with back and forth roars from the NJIT fans and students and the Stetson bench and traveling fans in the second half. The student section filled the building with chants of “NJIT” and “defense” for much of the last ten minutes of the game. We were impressed.

The Game

When Shyquan Gibbs hit a three-pointer less than a minute into the game to put NJIT up 3-2, no one could’ve guessed it was going to be the last lead for the heavily favored Highlanders. Stetson opened up a double-digit advantage early, and would grow their lead to as much as 18 in the first half. The Highlanders did go on a small run to put themselves in a position to make something of the contest in the second half, cutting the lead to ten by halftime.

NJIT would get within single digits early in the second half, but Stetson kept the Highlanders at arms length, until exploding to open up a 19 point lead with ten minutes left. NJIT had no intention of rolling over to the Hatters in their brand-spanking-new gym, however, and went on a huge run to cut the Stetson lead to 1 with three minutes left. Despite a rocking building growing louder with every NJIT stop and bucket, that’s as close as they would get. Stetson held on for an 84-80 win. Their efficiency shooting the ball from two and three point range pushed them passed NJIT, shooting almost 60% from the floor and over 50% from behind the arc. NJIT’s 8 offensive boards helped them climb back into the game.

NJIT last season was led by sophomore forward Anthony Tarke, who led the team in scoring averaging over 15 points a game. After being under recruited out of high school, Tarke garnered high major interest after announcing he would seek to transfer after the 17-18 season. He chose UTEP over Maryland, St. Bonaventure, among a reported 30 other schools interested in his services. Despite the loss the Highlanders will hope to improve on their recent 4th place finish, returning every other major contributor from a season ago. They’ll presumably be led this year by rising senior big man Abdul Lewis, an absolute monster on the glass with incredible vision from the high post.

NJIT would go on to finish 7-7 in ASun play, good enough for a 4th place finish and a chance to host North Florida for their opening round tournament game. They’d lose that one in front of an even more raucous WEC in similar fashion, taking a 20 point deficit into half time and losing by a familiar 4 points. They’d finish the season at 14-16 overall. Stetson would win one more game on the season, were bounced by eventual Atlantic Sun champion Lipscomb in the first round, and finished at 12-20.

Conclusion

What is there to conclude about a school still getting its feet wet in division one athletics, a school evolving every day from a commuter campus to one with an exciting future, a team still settling into some of the best facilities in mid major basketball? Nothing. The past is still being written about this Highlanders program, and what’s happened already doesn’t much matter. What people are going to remember about NJIT basketball won’t be their 50+ game losing streak or not securing the comeback against Stetson. Their history is currently unfolding. Stay tuned.

Errors, Corrections, and Updates: I originally said every America East Conference school was public. The University of Hartford is private.