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Pete ThamelESPN
PHILADELPHIA — The NCAA tournament has been played since 1939, an annual athletic carnival engineered to match the opposite ends of college basketball’s caste system.
Over eight decades, thousands of games and dozens of precocious March darlings, Saint Peter’s found a way on Friday night to set a new historical standard for underdog success in the NCAA tournament.
By stunning No. 3 Purdue 67-64 at Wells Fargo Arena, the Peacocks became the first team seeded No. 15 to advance to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament. It’s a daunting historical marker, considering that no team ranked No. 13 or No. 14 and just two No. 12 seeds have advanced this far — Missouri in 2002 and Oregon State last year.
Saint Peter’s will play the winner of No. 8 North Carolina and No. 4 UCLA for a chance to reach the Final Four on Sunday.
The Peacocks have a chance to continue authoring perhaps the greatest underdog story this tournament has seen. A 13-point underdog on Friday, Saint Peter’s also was an 18.5-point underdog against Kentucky in the first round, making them the only team to win multiple games as a double-digit underdog in an NCAA tournament since it expanded in 1985, according to ESPN Stats & Information research. They were 8-point underdogs against Murray State in Round 2.
Outmanned physically by Purdue’s giant post players and outclassed in the recruiting rankings, Saint Peter’s exhibited the type of unflinching verve that will remain a standard in this tournament for years to come.
Saint Peter’s rode a key late-game defensive switch by coach Shaheen Holloway to force 15 turnovers and hold Purdue to 42.6 percent shooting from the field and just 1-for-12 shooting from 3-point range in the second half.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Saint Peter’s upset is that it can’t be tied to the offensive outburst of a single player, but the collective will of 10 Peacocks. Daryl Banks led Saint Peter’s with 14 points, one of three Peacocks in double-digits. But Saint Peter’s won by showing the collective swagger that allowed them to upset No. 2 Kentucky and No. 7 Murray State in the tournament’s first two rounds.
When the buzzer sounded, the Saint Peter’s players darted off the court to celebrate, leaning over the scorer’s table to deliver high fives to Holloway’s sons, who were sitting in the front row.
For Purdue, the upset continues a run of mid-tournament heartbreak for a program that has made four of the past five Sweet 16’s but hasn’t reached a Final Four under coach Matt Painter. The last Final Four for Purdue came in 1980, and there were few chances better than this veteran team with a historically low seed in front of them to reach the Elite Eight.
Saint Peter’s executed with precision, pressed with veracity and showed an indomitable will that helped it contain Purdue’s twin towers of 7-foot-4 Zach Edey and 6-foot-10 Trevion Williams. Instead of getting rattled, Saint Peter’s unblinking approach forced Purdue to unravel.
Purdue was undone by offensive futility down the stretch, as Holloway’s switch to a zone near the four-minute mark stymied the Boilermakers and fueled a stretch of nearly five minutes without scoring. That zone led to a flurry of scattered possessions, which included a pair of misses on consecutive possessions by Williams, and led to Purdue not scoring a field goal for a near five-minute stretch, from the 5:18 mark until a Mason Gillis putback with 25 seconds remaining.
After a gutty turnaround in the lane by Banks tied the score at 57-57, Purdue’s Jaden Ivey airballed a shot that resulted in a shot-clock violation. That was Purdue’s second shot-clock violation of the second half.
By then, Saint Peter’s held a two-point lead, and Banks iced the game with a pair of free throws. (A high-arching 3-pointer by Ivey with 8.0 seconds remaining forced Doug Edert to ice the game with 4.1 seconds left, and Ivey missed a potential game-tying 3-pointer at the buzzer.)
Ivey finished 4-for-12 from the field and hit just 1-of-6 3-pointers in what will likely be his final game at Purdue.