How St. Peter’s Became the Belle of the March Madness Ball

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — In 1872, 4 years earlier than building started on the Statue of Liberty, St. Peter’s College welcomed its top quality, all male and primarily sons of Irish immigrants. As soon as the statue was full, the elegant embodiment of the American dream stood along with her again to Jersey Metropolis, a snub deeply ingrained within the gritty ethos of town and the small liberal arts college that old-timers nonetheless confer with solely as “the faculty.”

Practically 150 years later, the scholar Jesuit college continues to teach first-generation strivers. About 48 p.c of its 2,134 undergraduates are Latino; 18 p.c are Black; and eight p.c are Asian. College students converse practically 40 languages and are available from households with a median earnings of $55,300.

Most commute to and from the college each day. The others, roughly 25 p.c of undergraduates, stay on a two-block-square campus that’s anchored by a brick-and-stone quad and straddles one of many busiest visitors arteries of town, New Jersey’s second largest.

That is what makes the glass-slipper journey of the No. 15-seeded St. Peter’s basketball staff on this 12 months’s N.C.A.A. males’s basketball event notably compelling.

“It’s not only a Cinderella story,” stated Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, a son of Cuban immigrants and the primary particular person in his household to earn a university diploma (from St. Peter’s) in 1976. “It’s David versus Goliath.”

On St. Patrick’s Day, St. Peter’s dispatched Kentucky, a No. 2 seed, in extra time, gorgeous basketball followers in all places and dancing its manner into the hearts of a rustic desperately in want of a diversion.

The staff delivered final weekend by beating Murray State, a No. 7 seed, 70 to 60.

And on Friday, for the primary time in its historical past, St. Peter’s is heading to the Candy 16. Its opponent? Purdue, a Huge Ten college 16 occasions its dimension and a No. 3 seed.

“It’s the story of the underdog,” stated Tom Weatherall, a 1991 St. Peter’s graduate who grew up in Jersey Metropolis and labored within the college’s admissions and improvement workplaces for six years. “They symbolize willpower and grit.”

Mr. Weatherall now runs Make-A-Want New Jersey, a department of the nationwide nonprofit. Its castle-shaped headquarters in central New Jersey has been lit up in “peacock blue” each night time this week.

If solely quickly, the wins have left New Jersey overflowing with a satisfaction that even its star flip in “The Sopranos” and its declare as Springsteen’s maker and muse by no means might. “It’s a blue-collar, lunch-pail type of combat,” Mr. Weatherall stated of the staff’s aggressive type.

A banner hanging from the entrance of McGinley Sq. Pub, a brief stroll from St. Peter’s, captured the statewide euphoria: “Miracle on Montgomery St.”

“That is up there with the Soviets dropping to Crew U.S.A. in ice hockey,” stated Angelo Hatzipetrou, the pub’s proprietor, who takes the signal down every night time, assured it may very well be swiped as a memento. “That is Tyson getting knocked out by Buster Douglas.”

At Departed Soles, a brewery in Downtown Jersey Metropolis, prospects are lining as much as purchase the commemorative four-pack of Busted Bracket, an amber lager named in honor of the 1.53 p.c of March Insanity brackets that survived St. Peter’s two upset wins.

“There’s Jersey satisfaction,” stated Brian Kulbacki, the brewery’s proprietor, who organized for a neighborhood artist to design a brand new beer label that includes the college’s colourful mascot, the peacock. “After which there’s Jersey Metropolis satisfaction.”

This previous week, Emilio Ortiz, a 20-year-old finance main who serves because the staff’s mascot, stopped Eugene J. Cornacchia, the president of St. Peter’s, close to the quad. He held out his cellphone to point out off his newest video interview with a community information host after which spoke of the event expertise normally.

“What this journey has dropped at me is an excessive message: It doesn’t matter what college you go to, what firm you go to. All that issues is, like, the center that goes into it,” stated Mr. Ortiz, who was raised in Jersey Metropolis.

“And that’s what the boys are exhibiting,” stated Mr. Ortiz, who lives on campus and works as a resident assistant along with his peacock duties. “We’re not a big-name college. They’re simply giving it their all.”

Pupil tickets to the sport in opposition to Purdue, on sale for $10 every, offered out in underneath three minutes. Followers hoping to witness historical past tried calling in favors from anybody with connections to the college, the staff or its now-famous coach, Shaheen Holloway. By Thursday night, single tickets have been beginning at round $300 on StubHub.

The final time the St. Peter’s males’s basketball staff made a run like this was in 1968, when it toppled Duke College, a identified hoops powerhouse, in a later spherical of the Nationwide Invitation Event. Tom Mac Mahon, a walk-on guard who performed on the 1968 staff, stated he deliberate to journey from Florida to be at Friday’s sport.

“The entire thing modified my life,” stated Mr. Mac Mahon, the previous chief govt of the testing facility LabCorp, whose donations to St. Peter’s paid for a brand new campus middle and a renovation of the Run Child Run Area, the place the boys’s basketball staff practices and performs.

“What I achieved in my life — it began with the training I obtained at St. Peter’s,” he stated. “And I’ve by no means, ever forgotten it.”

It’s unclear whether or not the bump supplied by the college’s newfound fame or its trending social media hashtag, #StrutUp, will increase enrollment, which fell by about 5 p.c through the pandemic.

Dr. Cornacchia, the college president, stated he was relieved that building on a brand new dorm could be completed in time for subsequent semester, ought to predictions of an admissions uptick show correct.

Messages of help have flooded in from throughout the nation, he stated, and as far-off as Europe and Japan.

“I’ve been simply type of knocked over by the quantity of publicity we’ve got acquired,” Dr. Cornacchia stated. “It’s priceless.”