N.J.I.T. Basketball

There are 351 college basketball teams in NCAA's Division I for the 2013-14 season. Only one has no conference to call its home.

The New Jersey Institute of Technology Highlanders, 16-13 last year as the easternmost members of the five-team Great West Conference, will wander the nation as nomads in the year to come. Four members of the now-defunct GWC, which was the only conference in Division I that did not automatically send its champion to the NCAA Tournament, found new homes for this season—Houston Baptist headed to the Southland, while Chicago State, Utah Valley and Texas-Pan American all joined the WAC.

Meanwhile, in Newark, NJIT found itself the odd man out.

Because of his team's status, head coach Jim Engles experienced difficulty scheduling for the upcoming season, reported Big Apple Buckets.

“I woke up at times over the last few months in the middle of the night thinking ‘How are we going to play in January and February?’ It was definitely on my mind,” Engles said.

According to NJ.com, the Highlanders will travel to 10 different states throughout the course of this season, and 15 of their 29 games will be played outside of the Garden State. The season opens Friday night with a road trip to Tulane. The Highlanders will then travel to Albany, Army, New Hampshire and Maine before playing their first home game Nov. 23 against Lafayette.

In January and February—the source months of Engles' sleepless nights—the Highlanders will make road trips to places like North Carolina A&T and North Carolina Central (the latter of which will also play NJIT at home in the Highlanders' season finale), Delaware State and Maryland-Eastern Shore. They will also play host to Division III's City College of New York and non-NCAA schools Fisher College and Maine-Fort Kent. 

But further down the road, where does NJIT fit in?

The Newark Star-Ledger has previously reported that the Highlanders were expected to push for entry in the America East Conference or Northeast Conference.

Judging from the 2013-14 schedule, the team is looking to make in-roads with the AEC, with home-and-home tilts scheduled against three teams (Albany, Maine and UMass-Lowell) along with the road trip to New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the Highlanders will play four games against NEC teams in 2013-14—hosting Central Connecticut State on Nov. 26, LIU-Brooklyn on Dec. 12 and one road game each against St. Francis College and St. Francis University.

Engles told Big Apple Buckets that the 11 games against AEC and NEC opponents are "almost like auditions for us to get into a league."

The major storyline of the 2013-14 Highlanders season will be where the team ends up for 2014-15—with the ultimate goal being a stable home, something the team hasn't had during its brief existence in NCAA Division I.

Remember when ESPN quoted New Jersey's Science & Technology University's (N.J.I.T.) Jheryl Wilson saying: "We hit rock bottom. We can only go up?" You probably don't because the Highlanders were even more irrelevant on Feb.17, 2008 than Adam Morrison has been since leaving Gonzaga.

In case you missed or forgot what happened to N.J.I.T. in 2007-08, let me fill you in: the Highlanders became the seventh team to go winless for an entire season. It also took them 19 games to finally emerge as victors the following season.

Two years removed, Wilson's words have the potential to prove true. The bulk of N.J.I.T.'s production will return and a six man recruiting class will add to Coach Jim Engles' options.

Gary Garris, who averaged 10.7 points and 5.7 rebounds per game last season, will be the Highlanders' senior leader. Wilson and Isaiah Wilkerson led N.J.I.T. in scoring and will likely be the go-to-guys once again.

According to ESPN.com's recruit rating system, the average rating of N.J.I.T.'s six incoming freshman is 78.

To provide some perspective, power programs like Duke, UNC, Kentucky, etc. generally average mid to high 90's; mid-majors average anywhere from low to high 80's, depending on the school. A recruiting class this deep and at the independent level of play is something that should not be overlooked.

Engles hopes these freshmen can compete immediately to help improve the Highlanders' statistics from their meager numbers last season. Just under 50 ppg on 34.2 percent field goal shooting, 63.1 percent from the stripe, and 24.8 percent from long range will not produce many W's.

The Highlanders will be a more competent team this year. Engles was a first year coach last year, and, although he had already played two years of college ball, Garris was a first year Highlander.

Now that the core is more comfortable with each other and with the coach, there should be more chemistry. The new players may take some time to fit in, but they should be able to contribute early on.

Engles will need to plan for a similar schedule to the ones the Highlanders have had in the past, mostly independent matches with games against Rutgers, Virginia, and Boston College scattered throughout.

N.J.I.T. is still hopeless against any power conference team, even Rutgers. However, the strength of the independent teams is subject to change each year, potentially providing the Highlanders with some easily winnable games.

With only a few contests scheduled against high level teams and more talent on board, N.J.I.T. should be able to, as Wilson stated, "go up" this season.

I’d like to think I have some idea what it felt like to play basketball for the New Jersey Institute of Technology last night.

My senior year of high school—three years ago, now—I was captain of the varsity basketball team. We were pretty undermanned, having graduated 14 seniors over the past two years, and quite frankly were by far the least athletic of the eight teams in our league.

We knew it was going to be a long year.  We just weren’t sure quite how tough it was actually going to be. We had some close games early—we blew our home opener and a few other games early in the year—but simply couldn’t compete with three or four teams.

Suddenly, we were 0-12. The season, by the way, was only 16 games.  With a couple playoff teams remaining on our schedule, we didn’t exactly have many opportunities to pick up a win. Our next game—at home against fellow cellar-dweller Washington Irving—was almost do-or-die.

It wasn’t my best game. After hitting a three-pointer on our first possession, I got into foul trouble. Quickly. As in, three fouls in the first quarter. Only two left for the other three. As in, sat the whole second quarter and played only 45 seconds in the third after picking up my fourth foul. It was a cheap foul on a ball handler; I hardly even touched the guy and they called me for the block.

We led by six entering the fourth quarter, but they were aggressive from the start and kept it close. Midway through the quarter, I found myself in a position to make a difference—finally. Our small forward drove to the basket, and, upon finding himself cut off by a double-team, kicked the ball out to me for an open three.

I drained it and we never looked back.

My stat line was unimpressive—six points, one rebound, and one assist against a team that ended up going 2-14 in league play. I certainly played much better games throughout the year. But the image of that one three-pointer will never leave my mind.

That’s how it must have felt for the NJIT players Wednesday night. The players who had never won a game in their collegiate careers.

That’s how it must have felt for Jheryl Wilson, whose career-high 26 points couldn’t have come at a better time. That’s how it must have felt for Isaiah Wilkerson, who scored eight points in a row when the game got close late.

Sure the win came against Bryant, a team that, like NJIT, isn’t even technically in Division I yet.  Think anybody on the Highlanders (that’s NJIT’s nickname, by the way) cared?

Everyone associated with NJIT will remember Wed., Jan. 21, for only one thing: it’s the day the Highlanders won. Nobody on that team will ever, ever forget.

I’d like to think I have some idea what it felt like to play basketball for the New Jersey Institute of Technology last night, but the truth is my team made it to the playoffs sophomore year and won a respectable six games when I was a junior.

The truth is my team lost 12 games in a row, while NJIT lost 51.

The truth is I have no idea.

According to ESPN, Jheryl Wilson, a freshman guard at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, claimed, "We hit rock bottom. We can only go up," after the Highlanders' 27th loss of the season.

Unfortunately for Wilson and the rest of the Highlanders, N.J.I.T. dropped the final game of its season by 26 points to Utah Valley State. The loss capped off an abysmal year for the Highlanders, as their 0-29 record is only the seventh winless season in history. Making matters worse, while six other teams have gone winless, no team in Division I had ever ended up on the bottom of 29 games. 

N.J.I.T. entered the NCAA's Division I for the '06-'07 season, and won its first two games. However, the winning did not continue. The Highlanders finished last season with a 5-24 record, and of their 24 losses, the average margin was 17 points.

This season started off where last season ended for the Highlanders, as they were routed 70-28 by Manhattan in the season opener. Don't think things got any better for N.J.I.T.. The closest they came to winning a game was when they lost by nine points to Lehigh and Stony Brook. For the most part, the Highlanders could not even compete with teams, as their average margin of defeat was by 21 points. 

It appears that Jheryl Wilson and the Highlanders should stick to technology, but you can expect them to want to avenge this disgraceful season next year; however, they will have to do it without Jim Casciano, their head coach, due to his resignation. 

The last team to go winless in a season was Savannah State in the '04-'05 season, when it finished 0-28.

Before Savannah State, Prairie View A&M went 0-28 in the '91-'92 season.

The other four teams to finish a season without winning a game are: The Citadel ('54-'55), Baylor ('44-'45), William & Mary ('36-'37), and Dartmouth ('17-'18).