Revisiting Saint Peter’s March Madness Magic
No stars, no hype, just chemistry and teamwork. Revisit Saint Peter’s Cinderella journey in March Madness.
Only 18 double-digit seeds have ever reached the Elite Eight. Among those 18 teams, just nine are members of modern day non-power conference schools. Among those nine, just one is a member of what many would deem a “low-major” conference…the Saint Peter’s Peacocks.
The once in a generation run and only team below a 12 seed to reach the Elite Eight is something that basketball fans of the non-power conferences will remember for the rest of their lives. I can still remember sitting in 55 South, a local Nashville restaurant, watching the Peacocks take on my wife’s alma mater Murray State in the Round of 32. After the committee put Murray State up against San Francisco in the first round and proceeding to advance, I thought their path to the Sweet 16 was imminent. That obviously, was not the case. St. Peter’s took down the Racers 70-60, then proceeded to knock off the three seeded Purdue 67-64 to advance to the Elite Eight as a 15 seed.
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The Peacocks weren’t just an anomaly in the NCAA Tournament, but in their data as well. St. Peter’s ranked 231st overall in offensive efficiency, but featured an incredible 25th overall defense efficiency. They were seventh in the country in effective field goal percentage defense, 13th in 3pt defense, 12th in 2pt defense, and 12th in defensive block percentage.
Their record in the regular season wasn’t kind. They started off just 3-6 while getting blown out by St. Johns, dropping a close one to VCU and taking a 14 point loss to Providence. It got worse as they fell to Siena, St. Francis, and Stony Brook within four games. None of which ranked higher than 239th in KenPom. Throughout the season, the highest rated team they beat was Monmouth at 158th. Heading into the NCAA Tournament, the Peacocks were ranked 121st in KenPom.
Once they hit conference play, they really started rolling. St. Peter’s finished 14-6 in the MAAC, putting them in second place at the end of the year behind Iona. Notably, the MAAC was pretty strong in 2022. It finished 16th overall among the conferences, with Iona sitting at 25-8, St. Peter’s at 22-12, and Monmouth at 21-13. For comparison, the MAAC finished as the 25th best conference this past season.
Looking back at the season as a whole for the Peacocks, 95th was the highest they’ve ever finished in KenPom back in 2017. In the year of their run, they finished 102nd, which is the second highest in program history. What truly makes the run special is not their core data, but how all that really matters in the NCAA Tournament is your team getting hot at the right moment.
Doug Edert who stole the show with his phenomenal mustache that combats only Cameron Krutwig of Loyola Chicago, wasn’t a star player for the Peacocks. On the season, he finished with 20+ points just once. He finished with 13+ just five times. Despite this, Edert proceeded to drop 20 points on Kentucky including three key triples in their overtime win over the Wildcats.
Ironically, when you think back on that first upset against Kentucky, most people just remember Edert. However, Daryl Banks III finished with a team high 27 points on 9-19 shooting. While Edert hit the dagger free throws with 7.4 seconds left in overtime after grabbing a key board, plus he hit an important three at the end of the second to help elevate the Peacocks as they tied it up late into the game.
Against Murray State, KC Ndegfo was the star as he finished with 17 points, ten rebounds, and a ridiculous six blocks. His season high that season? 22 points, in which he scored 20+ just twice. I will say, Ndegfo was one of the most underrated blockers you could find. Against Quinnipiac, he racked up 11 blocks! 11!
Against Purdue, Daryl Banks III followed it up with 14 points on 6-14 shooting, while Edert was held to just ten points. Ndefo was held to just four points, while Clarence Rupert stepped up with 11 points despite scoring just six and seven points in the first two games of the tournament.
What the Peacocks had wasn’t just a strong defense. They didn’t have a hidden NBA player on their team. They didn’t have one player go unconscious throughout their three wins in the tournament. What they had was chemistry and next man up mentality.
The Peacocks featured a 73.2% minutes continuity which was 33rd in the nation that year. We’ll probably never see that again for a non-power conference school, but this team knew how to play with each other. Each player knew what their role was on the team. In the regular season, just two players averaged 10+ points in Daryl Banks and KC Ndefo. Nine players averaged 13 or more minutes per game, while Banks averaged the highest at just 26.7 per game.
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Could we see another run similar to St. Peter’s anytime soon? The odds aren’t in our favor.
With the “new era” of college basketball in NIL and the transfer portal, it’ll be difficult for a small school like St. Peter’s to make a run to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament. It’ll be difficult enough to make an upset in the first round when you are going up against schools that have rosters built with multiple millions of dollars in salaries.
One thing that we are going to continue to see is teams that take a while to figure out how to play with one another. St. Peter’s had a deep rotation with nine players and a high continuity in minutes from their prior season. With the portal in its current state, most teams are rebuilding their rosters year in and year out. It’s going to take three to five games at the beginning of each season to figure out how a coach is going to piece together a rotation and how well the team is going gel together.
What St. Peter’s did in 2022 wasn’t just special, it was a statement to the NCAA that March Madness is one of the best sporting events for a reason. We don’t need to separate the power conferences from the non-power conferences. We need to enable change to the transfer portal to open up opportunities for the occasional Bracket Buster to carve their name into history.