NEW YORK — The first team to earn an automatic bid into the NCAA men’s basketball tournament came as a bit of a surprise Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn.
Top-seeded Long Island University, coached by longtime NBA guard and native New Yorker Rod Strickland, beat seventh-seeded Wagner 64-56 in the Northeast Conference semifinals to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time in eight seasons.
The semifinal at the Steinberg Wellness Center, just off of famed Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and only a few blocks from where the Nets play at the Barclays Center, turned into the most important game of the conference tournament after third-seeded Mercyhurst beat fifth-seeded Stonehill at home in the day’s earlier NEC semifinal. Mercyhurst will play at LIU on Tuesday in the NEC title game, but because the Lakers are ineligible for the NCAA Tournament, the bid goes to LIU regardless of the result.
Mercyhurst is in its second season as a member of the NEC since moving up from Division II. NCAA rules require a two-year transition period for schools moving up, during which the school is not eligible for the postseason.
Greg Gordon scored 19 to lead the Sharks (23-10), and Shadrak Lasu made a key 3 as the shot clock expired with 2:26 left that put LIU up 58-50. Gordon, the defensive player of the year in the NEC, also stole an inbounds pass with 28 seconds left that helped seal the victory.
Fins up pic.twitter.com/iC369kWvMH
— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoATH) March 7, 2026
Nick Jones led Wagner (14-17) with 27 points.
Strickland said he was aware the stakes had changed at the start of the game. Gordon said that the news took a while to filter to the players.
Gordon, a Chicago native who has played in junior college, UAB and Iona, said the Sharks are saving the full-fledged celebration until the mission is truly complete.
“We want the trophy. We want to cut the net. We want the ring,” he said.
This is the second time in four years the NEC’s automatic bid was determined in a semifinal. In 2023, Merrimack won the conference tournament, beating Fairleigh Dickinson, but the Warriors were in their transition period and ineligible.
FDU went on to become the second No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 seed, knocking off Purdue of the Big Ten in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Last year, a similar scenario played out in the Summit League with its auto bid. St. Thomas reached the conference tournament final while transitioning to DI, but top-seeded Omaha won the title game after already earning the Summit’s automatic bid.
In 2021 and 2022, an ineligible DI newcomer reached the ASUN title game and made the result moot in determining an NCAA auto-bid.
North Alabama was the transitioning team in 2021 and lost to Liberty. The next season, Bellarmine won the ASUN tournament title game, but Jacksonville earned the NCAA auto-bid.
Strickland, who played 17 seasons in the NBA and was drafted by the New York Knicks in 1988, is in his fourth season as coach of the Sharks. It has been a steady climb since going 3-26 in 2022-23.
“We had to go through our journey to get to this point,” Strickland said. “I got a great group of guys.”
This is LIU’s first trip to the men’s tournament since the school restructured its athletic department to merge the Brooklyn and Long Island campuses. The basketball team remained Brooklyn-based while the school established a Division I FCS football team that plays in Nassau County at the LIU Post campus, just outside of the city. But all the teams now play under the Sharks nickname. LIU-Brooklyn made seven NCAA Tournament appearances as the Blackbirds, including three straight from 2011 to 2013.
LIU fans have embraced their new identity. When the buzzer sounded, Gordon and his teammates ran over the press tables to celebrate with them, putting their “Fins Up.”
Fin up at LIU-Wagner in the NEC semifinals, which has turned into the game for the conference’s auto bid. pic.twitter.com/DDnmhFHjIb
— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoATH) March 7, 2026