Purdue made some unfortunate history last year, becoming just the second No. 1 seed in the 39-year history of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament field to lose a 16 seed.
Farleigh Dickinson upset the then-No. 1 overall season Purdue 63-58 in a shocking result.
Grambling State head coach Donte’ Jackson, however, isn’t putting much stock into history repeating itself as the Tigers, fresh off their first NCAA tournament win over Montana State, are focused on the current Boilermakers in the Midwest Region.
“Honestly, I feel like that’s old news. That’s last year. Right now, we’ve got to figure out the best game plan for us. We’re not Fairleigh Dickinson, we’re Grambling,” Jackson said. “We’ve got to go out here and do what’s best for us and try to devise a scheme to put our guys in the best situation, and score the ball at a high level and defend at a high level.”
The Southwestern Athletic Conference champion Tigers overcame a 14-point second-half deficit Wednesday night to defeat the Big Sky champion Bobcats 88-81 in overtime, earning an opportunity to face Purdue, the Big Ten regular season champions and a favorite to win the whole tournament.
Jackson says that he will be studying film to devise a plan, but there won’t be any big-time match-ups on his film log.
“Will I watch that film? Yes, I’m going to pick apart that film left and right and try to figure it out, and I’ll try to pick apart film from other, I guess, smaller colleges that Purdue will play. Doesn’t really make sense for me to watch a lot of the Big Ten film because we’re not the Big Ten. It doesn’t help us a lot.”
Jackson also said the key to the Tigers’ win over Montana State was confidence and that, along with other key intangibles, will carry them into their matchup with Purdue.
“Defense, effort, intensity travels. That travels to any gym in the country,” he said. “Once we made those adjustments, I felt like we were right where we needed to be. So there was no reason to panic because we’d been in this situation where.
I’m not going to panic because it’s not going right. We’ve got to stick to what we believe in and what got us here.”
Yes, Purdue has looked like a title contender all season and owns another 1-seed as the NCAAs begin this week. Yet one bad night at the worst possible time hangs over a program that has had multiple March Madness stumbles.
“Yeah, we are trying to prove ourselves from last year because we shouldn’t have lost to FDU,” forward Mason Gillis said. “But we know we can’t change that. The only thing that we can do is go out and play our best every single game from here on out.”
