Merrill Park Superstar

Merrill Park Superstar was on hand in Newark, NJ to bear witness the NJIT Highlanders trying to pick up their first win of the college basketball season.

Now in its second season as a Division I basketball program, NJIT has struggled to a historical degree, having lost 30 consecutive contests dating back to the 2006-07 season prior to Saturday’s game.

There’s an old cliché that says that desperate times call for desperate measures. For a sports fan, there are few times more desperate than the purgatory between the Super Bowl and March Madness known as the month of February. So when I discovered that the nation’s only winless Division I men’s basketball team would be hosting its final home game of the season on Saturday, I knew I had to be there.

In fact, being the responsible journalist (and borderline stats geek) that I am, I began to prepare for my trip several days in advance by researching New Jersey Tech’s historic season, and to a lesser extent its 2006-07 — its first as a Division I program.

I would learn that the team burst upon the Division I scene last season with back-to-back upset wins over Manhattan and Rider. From there, the Highlanders would stumble, losing their next 13 games and finishing the year with five wins — two against Longwood University. Still, the team’s early success lent support to the belief that the program could hold its own at the Division I level in the years to come.

Fast-forward to the 2007-08 season. As in 2006-07, NJIT’s season opened with a game against Manhattan. Unlike the 2006-07 meeting, however, NJIT found itself on the receiving end of a 70-28 thrashing. Obviously, any time a team is hammered to this degree, it’s a cause for concern. But in the first game of the year, it’s a little easier to excuse.

The Highlanders next traveled to Seattle for the 2007 Dick’s Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off, and were promptly dismantled by the Washington Huskies, who defeated the team by a 88-47 count. New Jersey Tech would conclude the tournament by falling 76-53 to High Point, which — sadly — was the high point of the 07-08 campaign at that stage.

While things didn’t necessarily get worse from that point, they surely did not improve. It took the Highlanders six games before they managed to lose a game by fewer than ten points — they lost 67-58 to Lehigh — and they have only reached that “height” one other time in the season, losing 9 at Stony Brook on December 10.

According to Hollinger’s pythagorean theorem of basketball — an apropos measure given the school we’re dealing with here — NJIT’s greatest chance of a win prior to Saturday’s game was its February 4 loss to Longwood in Newark. According to the theorem, which is better left to be described here, the Highlanders had slightly less than a 9.5 percent chance of winning that game. Put another way, in order for the New Jersey Institute of Technology men’s basketball team to have been assured a victory prior to Saturday’s game, it may have had to replay the game in which it put forth its greatest effort 11 times.

While it should be disclosed that Hollinger’s pythagorean theorem is traditionally used to weigh the full-season performances of teams against each other, it does manage to paint a fairly accurate picture for individual games — certainly good enough for my quick-and-dirty pre-game analysis of NJIT’s season-long performance.

I also discovered during my research that the Highlanders had squared off with Saturday’s opponent, the Chicago State Cougars, earlier in the season. On January 19, the boys from Newark made the trip to Chi-Town and were knocked off, 79-62, by the Cougs. At first glance, I thought to myself that the 17-point difference could conceivably be made up in the rematch should NJIT be able to hold Chicago State’s big scorer at bay, or should that individual have an off-night.

Then I looked at the box score from that game and learned that Chicago State’s big scorer, David Holston, had actually been held at bay in that encounter. Holston, a 5′8 sharpshooting guard who averages 23 points (more than 14 of which come from 3-pointers), 3 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals per game, had been held to a season-low 7 points on 3-for-16 shooting in the January 19 meeting, the only game of the season in which he failed to score at least 11 points. On the other side, NJIT got a big effort from junior forward Nesho Milosevic, who tallied 20 points to go with 10 rebounds and 4 blocked shots.

Upon my discovery that Chicago State had won the previous meeting despite its best shooter’s off-night, I was filled with a sense of dread. Sure, as someone who fancies himself a journalist, I’m supposed to remain impartial. But was there really any harm in hoping the game would manage to remain competitive? I guess it’d mean NJIT was outperforming its expectations — this is a team that has only held one second-half lead all season long, a 13-second apex with 17+ minutes left on the game clock in a January 5 game at Penn — but it didn’t necessarily mean I was rooting for the Highlanders to prevail.

Still, by the time Saturday rolled around, I was about as pumped up as an impartial figure could be to witness a college basketball game played by a team that had failed to win a single game by the middle of February. Unfortunately, I was so consumed with my geeky research in the days leading up to the game that I hadn’t checked the New Jersey Transit Web site to find out how often trains to Newark were running.

As it turned out, they were running twice an hour — one right after the other. Naturally, I managed to just miss the first duo, and got to hang out at the train station for about a half hour. This setback meant I would be late, but I didn’t care — I had come too far and worked too hard to miss out on the opportunity to this godforsaken team in action. Eventually, my train would arrive and a stop at Newark and a short subway ride later, I was on the campus of the New Jersey Institute of Technology to take in some Division I hoops.

When I arrived, the game was already well under way. Since I’m a cheap-ass, I thought about trying to make a run for it into the gym. Then I saw the ticket prices and decided I could afford the five bucks they were charging for admission for non-NJIT students. (This program can obviously use the money anyway.) So I busted out my Monmouth University student I.D. card — which I’ve fast discovered to be to mid-major college basketball game admission what the AARP card is to a cup of coffee at a fast food restaurant — and a fiver and was granted general admission to the promised land.

I knew I was at the right place almost immediately upon entering the gym, when the first thing I heard was someone mutter “Pitiful! Just pitiful!” to the individual sitting next to him. Sure enough, I looked up to the scoreboard to find that the home team was already trailing by double digits.

I looked around the gym and was surprised to see that it was mostly full. The facility is fairly sizable, but the setup was such that there was only one large section of bleachers adjacent to the court. There was no courtside seating, and, in fact, the closest seats appeared to be several yards from the floor, which was still roped off — perhaps just to be excessive about things. There was also another area of seating at the far end of the court — comprised of two small sets of aluminum bleachers — that was either roped off or just such an unappealing option that nobody bothered to venture over. Either way, this section lent itself to a depressing visual, as the empty seats acted as the foreground to a maroon and white banner in the background which boldly declared “You’re In Highlander Country.”

My Highlander Country settlement was about as far away from that banner as one could get. I ended up in the second-to-last row of the bleachers, on the end of the gym nearest to the exit — just in case the onslaught became too brutal. My perch turned out to be great for several reasons. First, it gave me a birds eye view, which is really the best view you can get in a gym with limited seating such as this. Secondly, it stationed me right next to a series of banners listing all the members of the NJIT “1,000 Point Club.” This didn’t seem like a big deal until I discovered that in 1988, a fellow by the name of Charles Brown, Jr. joined the club by scoring 1,004 points. I didn’t need to know anything more about this man who was apparently sired by either the protagonist of “Peanuts” or an awesome steakhouse to know that he was, in fact, a great man.

But the most important part of my positioning was the fact that, speaking of great men, I was sitting one row in front of another one. In a gym that had to have been filled with die-hards (come on, they were 0-26), this man stood out from the pack.

He was an older gentleman, at least in comparison to your standard fare college student who would attend the game. Whether he was a former player, a father of a current player, or perhaps just a die-hard of die-hards, it is an inarguable fact that he was an awesome human being.

This may seem like hyperbole, but let me explain. I arrived during a break in action and took my seat before the action resumed. I immediately noted how small several of the players on the court were, including the aforementioned Holston, whose 5′8 listing was almost surely on the generous side. I reasoned that these small players at least had to have a modicum of talent to be playing Division I basketball, even if it was for a winless program.

But when play resumed, I began to doubt myself. Before the first half concluded, I had witnessed a series of the most frustrating blunders I’ve ever seen at any level of college basketball. There were missed layups, terrible passes, inexplicable back court violations and sloppy rebounding. I’ll say it again: I was trying my damnedest to be impartial, but the Highlanders were at times so unspeakably bad that I began to, in spite of myself, shout encouragement towards the players any time they accomplished something positive, as if they were a pee-wee team or something.

Regretfully, every time I would utter something encouraging, NJIT would invariably do something to negate the positive. This was, as noted, incredibly frustrating to me — an unconcerned outside party. So how did the gentleman behind me, clearly a Jersey Tech supporter, respond?

“That’s some bullshit,” he’d say. And he didn’t say it once. He said it, or a close relative of the phrase, approximately every single time a call or a break went against the Highlanders. And let me assure you, there were plenty of these occasions — at times the game bore a closer resemblance to a college football shootout than a basketball game with all of the contested full-court Hail Mary passes and ensuing fumbles.

In an effort to illustrate the level of ineptitude displayed at times by the winless Highlanders, allow me to recall something I witnessed during the lay-up line prior to the start of the second half of the game. I don’t like to single out players, particularly in college basketball since a.) I generally don’t know the names of individual players at the NCAA level because b.) there’s generally a greater team concept in college hoops than in the NBA (and this is a very good thing). Still, I made it a point to jot down the number of the player who committed this atrocity.

Justin Garris, #21, had a nice game for himself. He played 28 minutes, scored 13 points and had four assists and two steals. He seems like he’s a decent enough player. Still, he’s not an all-world player — he clearly has limits. And never was this more apparent than when Garris, unguarded — it’s a lay-up line — drove to the basket, launched himself high into the air, lifted the basketball and slammed it right into the front of the rim before bouncing backward while the rock fell to the floor. Indeed, in front of the entire gym, he had just been rejected on an open look by gravity.

There was little time for the Highlanders to recover from this indignity, however, as another layup was missed shortly thereafter, and took a weird hop away from the rebounder, leading to the ball bouncing and hitting the next player in the lay-up line squarely in the head. Indeed, for this team, even the layup line was proven a formidable foe.

When the game resumed, Chicago State held a 34-25 lead. The Highlanders had kept the game in reach in the first half, rallying in its closing minutes to trim what was once a 13-point advantage to single digits. They did so by once again shutting Holston down, limiting him to just three points.

Holston found his stroke early in the second half, however, and the Cougars quickly jumped out to their largest lead of the game — 15 points. At that point, given NJIT’s recent history, the result of the game appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

But the Highlanders would not quit. They continued to battle, and with around ten minutes left in regulation, they really began to make their move. Soon the lead was cut to single digits. And then to smaller single digits. Before long, the lead was hovering around 6 or 7 points as the teams traded field goals.

And then with 2:34 left to play, Justin Garris — the same dude who couldn’t throw down an open dunk at halftime — drained a clutch 3-pointer to make it a one possession game. The Fleisher Center crowd, hungry for a win, exploded. They could sense the storybook ending that was coming. On Senior Day, in front of friends and family, this team that was on the cusp of suffering through the indignity of a winless season would finally put one in the win column. The stage was set. Chicago State had let them hang around, and now they would pay the price.

Following a timeout, the Cougars struck back when Christian Wall, who wore NJIT out all day — he had 23 points in 22 minutes — connected on a jumper to extend the lead to 5. No big deal, the Highlanders would simply have to answer at the other end and then hold Chicago State scoreless on its next possession.

Instead, Jersey Tech turned the ball over. Chicago State got two more points at the line from John Cantrell, who had 23. NJIT responded at the other end with a missed three and, following an offensive rebound, a missed layup — one of roughly 60 on the day. Chicago State got two more from the line. And then another two. And then another two. And within the span of a minute, the game was out of reach, punctuated by a Wall dunk with 10 seconds remaining to put the Cougars up 86-76, the game’s final score.

That, to borrow a phrase, was some bullshit.

The loss dropped NJIT to 0-27, and put them just two losses away from the immortality of a winless college basketball season. The Highlanders would later drop a 96-78 decision to Longwood, dropping them to 0-28 and tying them with the 2004-05 Savannah State Tigers and the 1991-92 Prairie View A&M Panthers for the worst season in Division I men’s basketball history.

We’ll be sure to keep you posted on how New Jersey Tech fares in its final game of the season, when the Highlanders do whatever the hell has to be done to arrive in Orem, Utah for a meeting with the Utah Valley State Wolverines, who bested NJIT, 81-69, in a February 2 meeting.