March Madness: Stetson's Finley Sheridan, Vermont's TJ Long and UConn's Jayden Ross brought a taste of Long Island to the NCAA Tournament
Finley Sheridan of Stetson, TJ Long of Vermont and Jayden Ross of UConn. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Growing up in Merrick, Finley Sheridan always envisioned what it might be like to be a part of March Madness. It couldn’t get much better than that, he thought. Then he and his team from Florida’s Stetson University won the Atlantic Sun Conference championship and discovered they would be playing at Barclays Center against defending national champion and East Regional top seed Connecticut.
“This is an awesome experience,” he said on Thursday as the Hatters held a shootaround before their first Big Dance in their 53 years in Division I. “When I was seeing all the different places we could go, all the different options, I was thinking about this. I was telling all my friends ‘I hope we get UConn at Barclays’ because I wanted to come home and see my family.”
“Getting to do this here is awesome,” added the 6-10 Sheridan, who attended Calhoun High School and then Long Island Lutheran.
It was very much the same for Vermont’s TJ Long of Rockville Centre. He and the Catamounts won the America East championship and earned the No. 13 seed and a date with No. 4 Duke.
“It means a lot — it’s kind of everything you could ask for,” Long, a 6-4 junior guard, said Thursday. “I’ve been wanting to play in this tournament my whole life. And for it to be this close to home in front of a bunch of friends and family [and] to be here, I couldn’t really ask for anything more. . . It’s the best.”
Neither Sheridan nor Long got an extended stay at the subregional.
Long’s night didn’t go well. Vermont lost to the Blue Devils, 64-47, and he suffered what appeared to be a bad knee injury with 1:18 left in the game and had to be helped off the court. He had three points, three assists and four rebounds in 36 minutes before the non-contact injury.
UConn cruised past Stetson, 91-52. Sheridan got into the game and played two minutes near the end.
The one guy with a Long Island connection who will be playing on Sunday is 6-7 UConn freshman Jayden Ross, a 2023 Newsday All-Long Island selection out of Long Island Lutheran. Ross played four minutes in the win over the Hatters and had three rebounds and a steal.
He hails from Bristow, Virginia, but spent his final season of high school in Brookville.
“I was only there one year, but it [was like] a family there,” Ross said Saturday before the Huskies practiced in preparation for their game against ninth-seeded Northwestern at 7:45 p.m. Sunday. “I made a lot of great connections. So this is like being close to home — a second home for me — and it means a lot getting to play here.”
Sheridan and Long both said they enjoyed seeing their teammates reacting to lights, sounds and views of their city. Long described their reaction as “seeing it all and discovering gravity for the first time.”
Sheridan was planning to take his teammates for pizza. He said, “I don’t have a go-to place, but I know for certain an average slice here is way better than anything they get in Florida. I have my favorite places back on Long Island, but I can’t bring them to Umberto’s [of Bellmore] — that’s my favorite.”
Long’s contingent at Friday’s first-round game numbered more than 50. Sheridan’s crew was approximately 25 friends and family, he said. Ross thought his group for the first-round game was a small band, but it included his brother and one-time LuHi teammate, Jacob Ross.
“Getting to the NCAA Tournament is the top of the mountain,” Sheridan said. “Being able to share it with the people who have supported you along the way makes it even better.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.