Long Island players help boost Saint Peter's run
Saint Peter's Fousseyni Drame (10) and Hassan Drame (14) react after Saint Peter's defeated Purdue in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday in Philadelphia. Credit: AP/Chris Szagola
It is the great Cinderella story of this year’s NCAA Tournament and maybe the greatest of all time. And it also is very much “of Long Island.”
Saint Peter’s has turned the men’s basketball tournament on its ear and broken brackets aplenty by rising out of a No. 15 seeding to reach Sunday’s East Regional championship game. It is the first 15th-seeded team to make the Elite Eight and will face No. 8 seed North Carolina at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center for a spot in the Final Four.
Two of the Peacocks' starters and one significant reserve attended high school on the Island. A fourth is a freshman who is redshirting.
“Since Day 1, when we first came into the NCAA Tournament, that was our mindset: let's win this game,” KC Ndefo, who played at Elmont, said Saturday. “So that's what we came out and did every day, just tried to execute the game plan and contend.
“We’re intimidated by nobody.”
Among the Island products on the Peacocks, Ndefo is probably the best-known. The 6-7 senior center is among the nation’s leaders in blocked shots and has eight in three NCAA Tournament wins. As a high school sophomore at Elmont, he helped the Spartans win the 2016 NYSPHSAA Class A championship. As a junior the following season, he capped a 22-point performance with a buzzer-beater to defeat South Side in the Nassau A title game.
“One thing you see when you watch him today that I saw from the time he began at Elmont was the laser-like focus in the heat of competition,” former Spartans coach George Holub said in a telephone interview from Bradenton, Florida. “When we won the state, he was our rim protector. It’s the same role he plays for Saint Peter’s.”
The other starter is Hassan Drame, a 6-7 junior forward, and the reserve is his twin brother, 6-7 Fousseyni Drame. They both hail from Mali but came to Long Island at 15 to play three seasons at Our Savior New American in Centereach.
“It was one of the toughest decisions we ever made in our life, leaving friends and family at [a] young age and come somewhere that you don't know anybody or speak the language,” Fousseyni Drame told Newsday of the move to Long Island in a 2019 interview.
Out of high school, both were pursued by slightly more name-brand Division I programs yet liked coach Shaheen Holloway — a Queens native — and didn’t mind the low-budget facilities of the Jersey City school.
Brent Bland is a 6-3 guard from Wheatley Heights who attended Half Hollow Hills West and is redshirting for the Peacocks.
The slipper fit Saint Peter’s first on March 17 when it stunned No. 2 Kentucky in overtime, 85-79, in a first-round game in Indianapolis behind Daryl Banks III’s 27 points and Hassan Drame’s seven points and eight rebounds. Two days later on the same court, Ndefo had 17 points, 10 rebounds and six blocked shots and Hassan Drame had eight points and eight rebounds in a 70-60 win over seventh-seeded Murray State.
The Peacocks rolled on by taking out No. 3 Purdue, 67-64, on Friday. With Ndefo limited to 19 minutes by foul trouble, the Drame twins combined for 12 points.
“It's unthinkable, unreal,” Ndefo said. “Just to do this, make history for this program . . . We want it more than [other] guys and it shows on the court. We're doing whatever we have to do to get the win. We're grinding it out.”
Asked about going against some of the nation’s top players, Hassan Drame replied, "We don’t see their height [and] we don’t see their talent.”
Added Fousseyni Drame: “Like he said, it's true . . . We don't really know those names. All we see is a player.”
Ndefo almost wasn’t a part of this season’s team. Just as he transferred from Elmont to Lincoln High in Brooklyn for his senior season (where he was ultimately ruled ineligible), he looked to transfer after leading the nation with 3.6 blocks per game last season. He didn’t like what he found in the transfer portal and asked Holloway if he could return in the week before fall classes began.
“In the end, I knew what was best for me and who had my best at heart,” Ndefo said. “So coming back to this program was definitely something I wanted to do.”
The Drames might have attracted interest from bigger programs, but most of the Peacocks didn’t; in the end Holloway said he believed the Saint Peter’s message brought this personnel together. “Go to a place that best fits you and do what you're trying to do, not worry about the name on the front of your jersey, just worry about the opportunity that you have.”
While Saint Peter’s run seems like an Impossible Dream-type event for everyone on the outside looking in, it may not be the case for the Peacocks.
“We dreamed about the moment and envisioned it, speaking it into existence,” Ndefo said. “The twins always said it the most: time will tell. With hard work and dedication, we all stuck together and we all had this vision in our head. Thank God we're here today.”
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.
