Rod Strickland has turned the Long Island University Sharks from February background noise into a full-fledged NCAA Tournament story, complete with a first-round date against No. 1 Arizona. For a program that had not reached the Big Dance since 2018, the 59-year-old former NBA point guard and 17-season pro has quickly reshaped LIU into a conference champion and shoved Brooklyn’s mid-March hoops scene into the national spotlight. Now comes the real stress test: finding out if this rebuild can hold up on college basketball’s biggest stage.
How LIU clinched the bid
The Sharks locked in their NCAA ticket by beating Wagner in the NEC semifinal on Saturday. Because Mercyhurst was reclassifying and ineligible for the NCAA Tournament, LIU secured the league’s automatic qualifier before the title game, the school reported. From there, the Sharks finished the job and ran the table in the conference tournament, marking a return to the NCAA field after an up-and-down stretch earlier in the decade, according to LIU Athletics. The victory cemented LIU’s place in the 68-team bracket and sent a Brooklyn crowd out into the night in full celebration mode.
Strickland’s road back to the sidelines
Strickland’s résumé is as long as the NBA schedule. Drafted by the New York Knicks in 1988, he played 17 seasons in the league before moving into college and professional development roles. His post-playing stops have included work on staffs at Memphis and Kentucky and time in the G League pipeline. The shift from player to administrator to coach has been gradual but consistently in the public eye, and that profile helps explain why a smaller program like LIU would roll the dice on a high-profile former pro, per Wikipedia.
Turnaround under Strickland
This season’s payoff was hard to miss. Strickland was named NEC Coach of the Year after guiding LIU to one of its strongest campaigns in recent memory, with 21 regular-season wins and a 15-3 record in conference play, according to the program’s official accounts. That jump came after a sustained recruiting and player-development push that the staff credits for the leap in performance, as reported by LIU Athletics. The Sharks also sat at or near the top of the NEC in several defensive categories, giving them the hard edge that powered their late-season surge.
Matchup vs. Arizona puts program on the map
Selection Sunday did not offer LIU any soft landing. The Sharks drew top-seeded Arizona in the West region, the kind of assignment that instantly tests whether a rapid rise can withstand blue-blood pressure. The New York Times framed both Strickland’s hire and the Arizona matchup as a high-stakes experiment, outlining his four-year arc at LIU, which includes 41 wins over the past two seasons and a 51-74 record overall. The outlet quoted Strickland watching the reveal and saying, “I was just looking for LIU on that board.”
Legal history and public record
Strickland’s story also includes a less flattering chapter. Public records and long-form profiles note multiple DUI arrests late in his playing career and a short jail term after a 2001 conviction. Those incidents remain part of the documented record and appear in biographical summaries of his career, per Wikipedia. Around LIU, the focus from the program and its fans has been squarely on what is happening on the court right now.
Brooklyn’s reaction and what to watch
Local coverage and wire reports captured the unplanned street parties that broke out once LIU’s place was secure, with the Sharks immediately tossed into bracket talk alongside other potential mid-major spoilers. Bracket trackers at major outlets followed LIU’s automatic-bid path in real time, spotlighting how quickly a recently rebuilding program could grab national attention, as summarized in the Associated Press recap of automatic qualifiers carried via AP/Yahoo.
However the Arizona showdown plays out, Strickland’s run at LIU has already rewritten the program’s short-term history and handed Brooklyn another reason to glue itself to March Madness. The Sharks will now get to work on the West region’s top seed while the city waits to see if this surge is a one-week fling or the start of a full-blown March upset story.
