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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

NJIT has one last chance to win

Mike Lopresti Gannett News Service

Looking for something to do this weekend? Join us in sending out the best karma we can muster as new boosters for the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

They need every one of us. Trust me.

It is now or never for our Highlanders. The season finale is Saturday at Utah Valley State, and a victory would make NJIT happier than Roy Williams throwing strikes at a Mike Krzyzewski dunking machine.

You see, our Highlanders are 0-28. Alas, that was no misleading omen when they lost the season opener against Manhattan 70-28. There is only one winless men’s Division I basketball team in the nation, and we’re it. The anti-Memphis.

Plus, the coach resigned this week. Saturday is Jim Casciano’s last game.

You need to understand what our lads have been up against.

NJIT is a demanding school, renowned for engineering and architecture, if not the 3-pointer. Our guys’ RPI might be last in the nation, but at least they can tell you how to figure the RPI on a computer. Plus fix the hard drive.

“First time I walked in the book store and saw the category of the books,” sports information director Tim Camp said, “I couldn’t figure out what they were.”

Our leading scorer, Nesho Milosevic, is a mechanical engineering major. So is our center, Dan Stonkus.

“Looking at it from the outside, you can’t understand,” senior guard Kraig Peters said over the phone Thursday. “It’s easy to go like, ‘They suck.’ It’s harder to come watch us play, and then understand a kid leaves the game afterward and goes to the library until 2 in the morning.”

Peters is team captain. He’s also a dean’s list student taking 19 credits this semester.

Two years ago, the administration – perhaps starry-eyed from studying the latest incoming SAT scores – came up with the idea of going Division I in athletics. But this is like diving into a tub of Slurpee if a program is not quite ready.

The last season in Division II, our Highlanders went 8-19. Rule of thumb: A team is probably going to struggle awhile in the big time when it is already losing to Caldwell College.

We actually won the first two Division I games last season. Bring on the Big Dance. Then, reality. The final record was 5-24.

Not only that, NJIT is an independent. That’s like being an orphan in “Oliver.” There are only 10 independents out of 341 Division I schools.

Our team is young. Seven freshmen. One is guard Jheryl Wilson from powerhouse St. Benedict’s Prep just down the street from NJIT. He lost three games in high school. When it comes to records, this has been the dark side of the moon for him.

“When things go downhill each game and you get the here-we-go-again-attitude, that kind of thing drives a team crazy,” he said of this season. “When we’re together, we talk about winning. We don’t want to lose.”

So the statistic sheet might look a little dreary. We’ve shot 35.6 percent, and it’s not like teams have had to send us to the line late in games. Our guys have fouled out 23 times this season, and the other guys have not fouled out once.

We’ve lost 14 games by at least 20 points, but only two lately. Not the sign of a team that has quit. Just the other night against Chicago State, we came from 15 points down to trail by three with less than 3 minutes to play. If the basketball gods had an ounce of humanity, we’d have found a way.

“Everyone thinks we stink anyway,” Peters said. “You implement that in your life. Instead of working five times harder, you work 25 times harder.

“The hardest part is being yourself. You have to find yourself, now that it’s not all peaches and cream. I have to get up and work. I just can’t sit here.”

So here’s to our plucky, thoughtful and perspective-minded Highlanders, and one last chance. This will be the second time this season NJIT has played Utah Valley State. If you’re from Newark, N.J., where else would you expect to find a rival than Orem, Utah? We lost the first meeting 81-69, by the way, so there is hope.

“If we win Saturday,” Wilson said, “I might do a back flip at the middle of the court.”