Florida Atlantic won two games in New York during its improbable run last year to the Final Four, and now everyone wants to know if the Owls can follow a similar formula and do it again.
Eighth-seeded FAU’s city site has changed from Madison Square Garden to Barclays Center beginning with Friday’s East Region matchup against No. 9 Northwestern, with a potential pairing against No. 1 overall seed and defending NCAA champion UConn looming Sunday.
“A lot of ups and downs this year, but man, everybody’s after us, after what we did last year,” said sophomore guard Nick Boyd, who played high school hoops at Don Bosco Prep and St. Mary’s Rutherford in New Jersey. “But it’s going to make the story even more special.
“We’re just looking forward to proving ourselves once again under these bright lights.”
As a No. 9 seed last year, FAU posted victories in the Sweet 16 over Tennessee and the Elite 8 over Kansas State at MSG before a heartbreaking last-second loss to San Diego State in the national semifinals.
“We are extremely excited to bring our group back up to New York where we have a lot of fond memories,” Owls coach Dusty May said. “Especially being in Brooklyn, New York City, the mecca of college basketball, this is going to be a great environment and another memorable experience for our players.”
May’s Boca Raton-based program switched conferences this season from Conference USA to the American Athletic, but it returned 14 of 15 players from last season’s roster — a rarity in a vastly altered college format featuring NIL deals and the transfer portal.
FAU finished 14-4 in conference play — behind only South Florida — and 25-8 overall to earn an at-large bid despite a loss to Temple (16-20) in the conference tournament.
FAU, which is led by 18.2 points per game from junior guard Johnell Davis, suffered terrible Quad 4 losses to Bryant and Florida Gulf Coast, although they also posted impressive Quad 1 wins over Texas A&M and Arizona.
“I tend to look at everything as the glass is half-full, but there have been times when we’ve been frustrated at our attention to detail when we played teams that we were supposed to beat or maybe we were the prohibitive favorite,” May said. “So we were battling human nature most of the season.
“But overall, the big moments, the body of work, certainly overshadows those bumps in the road, and those are part of our experiences which makes us, us.”
Before even thinking about a potential Sunday showdown with UConn, Florida Atlantic faces a tough first-round pairing against Northwestern, which finished tied for third with Nebraska in the Big Ten and received an at-large bid for the second consecutive year for the first time in school history.
Fifth-year senior guard and Albany native Boo Buie leads the Wildcats (21-11) with 19.2 points and 5.1 assists per game.
“It’s exciting to be in New York. Such a great city for basketball. And getting here [Wednesday], you could feel it once we got to the city,” Northwestern coach Chris Collins said. “Our guys are excited and ready to go. We know we have a very tough challenge in front of us against a really experienced, talented team that’s well-coached and has great NCAA Tournament experience coming off a Final Four run last year.
“So we know we’ve had a good week of practice. We’re excited to be here. Looking forward to the opportunity to play FAU and see what we can do.”
