Before Tuesday, it had been two years since I was last at Saint Peter’s and its bandbox gymnasium on Montgomery Street in Jersey City that resembles more of a high school gym than one that houses a Division I college basketball team.
That day was a celebration of the Peacocks’ historic and remarkable run into the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament as a No. 15 seed.
It was a welcome home for the players and their coach, Shaheen Holloway, after a memorable two-week journey that captured the imagination of our nation of underdog-loving sports fans.
It struck me that day, though, that it was as much a welcome home as it was a farewell to that special team that would never be together again.
No team is exactly the same from one year to the next. Such is the reality of transient college athletics, particularly with the new transfer portal rules.
But that Saint Peter’s team as we knew it from that magical journey was about to be completely obliterated.
Holloway was poised to move on to become the coach of Seton Hall, where he starred as a college player, and almost every one of his players was about to follow him out the gymnasium door and transfer to other programs.
As Bill Edert, the father of Doug, the Saint Peter’s guard who became a face of the program during those NCAAs, said after the ride was over: “The lead singer of the band moved on,’’ referring to Holloway. “Saint Peter’s is a small, mid-major school, and I guess everybody that was older there figured it was time to move on.”
This made that day of celebration strike me as one with a depressing undertone to it.
Daryl Banks III transferred to Saint Bonaventure. KC Ndefo went with Holloway to Seton Hall. Edert transferred to Bryant College. Clarence Rupert went to Southern Illinois and Matthew Lee went to Missouri State. The Drame brothers, Fousseyni and Hassan, left for La Salle — and then Duquesne and are both in the Dance this year.
With such overwhelming change, it felt like it might be forever (or never) before Saint Peter’s might get another shot at NCAA Tournament glory like that.
Yet a mere two years later, Saint Peter’s, with its completely overhauled basketball program is headed back to the Big Dance with a new coach, Bashir Mason, and new players.
And there they were on a chilly, blustery Tuesday afternoon in Jersey City, again being celebrated — this time in a school sendoff outside of its gymnasium.
An Academy bus idled as it sat along a curb on Montgomery Street outside the gym, waiting to take the Peacocks to Newark Airport for their flight to Charlotte, N.C, where they’ll play No. 2 seed and SEC power Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament first round Thursday.
The sendoff was a modest one, with about 100 people forming a walkway as the players and coaches made their way from the gym to the bus to the airport to Charlotte and whatever else awaits them once they play basketball again.
While this team wants to make its own mark, that Elite Eight team and what it accomplished two years ago are in the minds of this team.
“That team showed what’s possible, and that’s all we need,’’ Corey Washington, the Peacocks leading scorer, told The Post before boarding the bus.
“We haven’t talked about it much, what was done [by that team], but it’s a known,’’ Mason told The Post. “There are guys here that were a part of that team that want to carve out their own legacy, and have their imprint on leading us back to that.’’
Mason, a Jersey City native who coached Wagner for 10 years before taking the Saint Peter’s job, wants to carve out his own legacy on Montgomery Street.
“The standard is what the standard is,’’ Mason said. “I’m taking over an Elite Eight-level program and it’s not going to go backwards on my watch.’’
Saint Peter’s was 14-18 in Mason’s first season, and here we are. The 19-13 Peacocks won the conference title with upsets in the semis (Quinnipiac) and the final (Fairfield) and now they get Tennessee, a 19.5-point favorite.
Mason loves the grittiness of the rag-tag band of brothers he’s bringing to the Dance.
“Our group is a reflection on Jersey City,’’ Mason said. “It’s a melting pot of guys from all different neighborhoods and all different walks of life that have all ascended here. They come from similar backgrounds of blue-collar, hard-working mentality. It fits well here.’’
That goes for Mason as well.
“I’m Jersey City through and through — blue collar, hard-nosed, tough,’’ Mason said. “That’s what I want my team to reflect.’’