NEWARK – The NJIT Highlanders weren’t ready to let the jubilation die down.
Before leaving the court Saturday after the program’s historic 60-58 win over Maine, coach Grant Billmeier motioned for the players to join their peers in the student section for a photo.
The Joel and Diane Bloom Wellness and Events Center, NJIT’s 3,500-seat hidden gem that opened in 2017, was waiting for a moment like this. On Saturday, it came, thanks to Ari Fulton and Sebastian Robinson and Billmeier and so many others.
The building at long last hosted its first conference tournament home game. Those that came witnessed the program’s first America East tourney win.
Fulton scored NJIT’s last six points and knocked down the game-winning baseline jumper with less than a second on the clock. He finished with 10 points and eight rebounds, Robinson led all scorers with 21 points on 9-of-14 shooting and David Bolden added 12 points, six boards, four assists and three steals.
Robinson, a junior, has played for NJIT as long as Billmeier has coached here. Together, they endured two straight last-place finishes and exclusions from the eight-team conference bracket. The Montclair native even entered the transfer portal last spring to test the waters before deciding to return to the Highlanders.
There was no one who could sum this up better.
“It’s definitely been a struggle and an uphill battle,” Robinson said. “Coach has been challenging me every day since I’ve been here. We’ve been through it, bump heads. But we just stayed together. He has a lot of belief in me. So staying here, it was a great choice for me.”
The game was tied six times in the final seven minutes, with sixth-seeded Maine consistently finding answers to third-seeded NJIT’s buckets. Bolden and Jordan Rogers used a passing sequence to hit an open Fulton for a baseline dunk that made it 56-54 with 1:17 to go, but Maine’s Keelan Steele immediately replied with a layup. Fulton’s next make, a longer jumper, was matched by a driving layup from Ace Flagg, Cooper Flagg’s brother, leaving 11 seconds on the clock.
Fulton, apparently in a daze, could barely relay what happened next. His teammate helped him out.
“I come around the screen full court, I dribble it up. Basically (the play) was for me to get downhill, go get a bucket,” Robinson said. “But the defense collapsed, they were in like a zone, so I just kicked it out and we just played basketball from there. We just trusted each other.”
Billmeier had one specific play call in mind.
“It’s a play we worked on all year but we haven’t ran,” Billmeier said. “In 2018 when I was an assistant at Seton Hall, we played Butler in the quarterfinals and they ran that play and they sent us home. So it’s ironic that that same play that I stole from them, we ran. I told Sebastian get the ball and go make a play, whether that was him taking the final shot or him passing the ball. And to his credit, they put a lot of people on him. I think they knew the ball was going to be in his hands and they weren’t going to let him get the final shot.”
The Black Bears couldn’t contain everybody. Robinson passed to Rogers, who dribbled once and hit Fulton to let him get downhill toward the baseline. His jumper looked like clockwork, the ball hit twine and a celebration ensued.
“We were able to find Ari in the middle of that zone where he’s really good,” Billmeier said. “They played great defense, but he was able to rise up and get to the sweet spot in the middle of the paint.”
NJIT worked hard for a 32-29 edge after a first half that was slowed down by 20 personal fouls and four official reviews at the monitor. The Highlanders didn’t have their shots fall early, but when sophomore Quentin Duncan subbed in he immediately got them a pair of 3-pointers.
Come the second half, when Maine had built its largest lead at 43-39, there was Duncan again for his third and final three.
“That’s the one thing about our team. We’ve had a lot of guys in different games really step up, whether it was Quentin or someone else off the bench,” Billmeier said. “Those guys come in every day, they go at it with our starters and Quentin came in and he gave us a big lift in the first half. He was able to make two threes. So in the second half, I think we were down four, and he made another huge three. It says a lot about him, just a guy that works hard every single day and he took advantage of his moment.”
Before Fulton’s final flurry, of course, the star of the show was Robinson, who added three steals and turned each of them into NJIT buckets.
“Losing really bothers Sebastian as much as any player I’ve ever been around, even the great guys that went on to play in the NBA,” Billmeier said. “He wants to win as well as anyone. And one thing I’ll say, since he’s been here, every single practice, every single workout, every single game, you know what you’re getting out of him. So for him to have made it through the tough times, came back as a junior, and for him to get this win in front of his family and his hometown, I’m extremely happy for all the guys that went in particular, for a local kid that battled it out through adversity.”
Robinson was far from the only one to return. Fulton, Rogers, Duncan, John Kelly and Malachi Arrington were all part of last season’s squad. KenPom’s “continuity” score ranks NJIT 25th in Division I in returning production from the year before.
That’s what Maine coach Chris Markwood pointed to when I asked him about the parity of a conference where NJIT can go from last to third in a year’s time.
“I think that’s a huge part of the success that they’ve had in a landscape where there’s not a lot of continuity right now,” Markwood said. “And you’re seeing the value of that. So again, tremendous credit to Grant for that and his staff for building the culture where guys want to stay and be a part of it. I think they’ve done a really good job, and they got they got talented players, you know, they got really talented players. Good size, good guards, very balanced across the board, and you’re seeing that that kind of play out for them this year. They went 10-6, they’re in the second round. Again, they’ve had a really good year.”
You hear the phrase “act like you’ve been there before” when a team or an athlete is celebrating just a bit too hard. That’s not a fair description for the Highlanders’ explosion Saturday night, but even if it was, could you blame them? They hadn’t been there before. It’s the only program in New Jersey that’s yet to make the NCAA Tournament, but now that goal is two wins away.
If anything, the players were fully composed postgame as they were asked what the win meant to them and the program.
“It basically means that the job’s not finished, you know?” Fulton said. “This is the first step and we’ve got two more.”
They thanked the fans for their support, with Billmeier adding that he and his family will be attending plenty of lacrosse and baseball games this spring to repay those programs for coming to as many basketball games as they have.
This may have been the last home game of NJIT’s season. On deck is a trip to Vermont for the semifinals, and should the Highlanders win, they’d need No. 4 seed UMass Lowell to knock off red-hot No. 1 seed UMBC in order to host the America East championship game next Saturday.
NJIT and Vermont had two noteworthy battles this season, each winning on the other’s floor. Vermont traveled plenty of fans to Newark for their game two weeks ago. Now they can get ready for Round 3.
“I think the biggest thing is obviously we’re very familiar with their players. Obviously having played against them, the guys know their personnel well,” Billmeier said. “It’s going to be about adjustments obviously. We’re going to try to mix up certain things we haven’t shown the first two games, as will they. But the first two times – and pretty much since I’ve been here, starting with them coming here my first year, we’ve had a lot of battles with them. So we don’t expect anything else.”
………
Quick turnaround this morning with Rutgers’ regular-season finale coming up at noon, so let’s clean the glass with four quick points from elsewhere in the state:
-
New Jersey was quickly ejected from the MAAC tournament when No. 2 seed Saint Peter’s was out-toughed by Fairfield on Friday night. Neither Rider team had made the tourney, the Saint Peter’s women were shown the door in the first round and then the Peacocks – perhaps the favorite from N.J. to make March Madness – had no way to contain Brandon Benjamin (26 points, 15 rebounds) in a surprising 74-55 defeat.
-
The Princeton women are Ivy League regular-season champions once more, and they won it outright, to boot. If they shared the title with Columbia, the Lions would have been the No. 1 seed at the tournament next week at Cornell, but Harvard defeated Columbia on Saturday while Princeton breezed past Yale to finish 12-2 in the league. It’s Princeton’s 12th Ivy regular-season championship since 2010, and you can be sure this is a team I’ll have much more to write about next week.
-
The Seton Hall women had a late-night thriller against St. John’s, pulling out a gritty 63-61 win thanks to Jordana Codio’s career night of 35 points and six 3-pointers. The third-seeded Pirates had just eight available players due to the war of attrition they’ve been dealing with (read here for more), but Codio put the team on her back for a second consecutive game and Seton Hall remained faintly alive. Beating UConn in the final is a tough ask of any team in the nation, but today’s semifinal against Villanova looms large as a resume-boosting opportunity.
-
Besides Seton Hall-Villanova at 5, there are two other New Jersey teams in action Sunday. Rutgers closes out against Penn State, but the Scarlet Knights are locked into the No. 14 seed either way thanks to Northwestern’s loss last night and they’ll face No. 11 Minnesota in the Big Ten second round Wednesday. Then fourth-seeded Monmouth, having enjoyed and hopefully benefited from the double-bye tips off its conference tournament at 2:30 with a quarterfinal clash vs. Drexel, with whom the Hawks split the regular-season series 1-1. The player Monmouth must lock down is Eli Beard, who dropped five 3-pointers on the Hawks back on Jan. 15 and who led Drexel with 21 points in their second-round win yesterday over Northeastern.
