Fairleigh Dickinson Knights

Fairleigh Dickinson Knights basketball is a low-major program out of northern New Jersey that pulled off one of the most stunning upsets in sports history, and it has carried that giant-killer reputation ever since. Playing in the Northeast Conference, the Knights lean on tenacious, high-effort basketball to compensate for a roster that's usually undersized and under-recruited compared to power-conference opponents. FDU has become a symbol of March Madness chaos, the program every bracket-filler fears drawing as a 16-seed. It's a scrappy underdog identity earned the hard way.

Fairleigh Dickinson basketball's signature moment came in March 2023, when the 16-seed Knights upset top-seeded Purdue 63-58 in the NCAA Tournament's First Four/Round of 64 — only the second time in tournament history a 16-seed defeated a 1-seed, following UMBC's 2018 upset of Virginia. FDU entered that tournament as the lowest-ranked team in the field after losing its own conference championship game, making the run even more improbable. The university itself was founded in 1942 as a junior college in Rutherford, New Jersey.