Saint Peter’s is riding high as the Cinderella story of the 2022 NCAA Tournament after wins over Kentucky and Murray State. The attention the Peacocks are receiving now is a far cry from their days as high school basketball recruits, when they were largely overlooked by the nation’s top programs — or any Division I programs at all in some cases.
Perhaps their most recognizable player has been described as a "plucky guard with a puffy hairdo from Nutley (N.J.)." Such was the summary of
Doug Edert in a
NJ.com article this week about how Saint Peter's was constructed by coach Shaheen Holloway, a former McDonald's All-American player for defunct
St. Patrick's (Elizabeth, N.J.).
Holloway, who was named the MVP of the
1996 McDonald's All-American game over Kobe Bryant, told the newspaper he vetted Edert during his AAU basketball days with the New Jersey Roadrunners. He loved Edert's fire and lethal 3-point shooting.
"We have to have him," said Holloway, whose team is the third 15th seed in tournament history to reach the Sweet 16. The Peacocks (21-11) play third-seed Purdue (29-7) on Friday at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Edert, who scored 20 points in the team's stunning 85-79 opening round win over No. 2 Kentucky, was a four-year letterman at
Bergen Catholic (Oradell, N.J.) where he piled up 1,017 career points.
As a senior team captain in 2019, Edert led the Crusaders to a 25-5 record and Non-Public A state title with a 75-61 win over Camden Catholic. He had a game-high 19 points in the championship with four rebounds and three assists, giving Bergen Catholic its first Non-Public A title in 17 years.
Doug Edert scored more than 1,000 points during his four-year career at Bergen Catholic.
File photo by John Jones
Edert, who has been embraced as a media darling in part due to his "Ted Lasso-like" mustache and reportedly signed an NIL deal with Buffalo Wild Wings, didn't have such fanfare or recruiting attention out of high school. Nither did his current teammates.
Other top Saint Peter's players as preps:
Daryl Banks III — The 6-3 junior guard from Los Angeles is one of three Peacocks from the
Patrick School (Hillside, N.J.), which was morphed from St. Patrick's after it shut down in 2012. He's the Peacocks' leading scorer at 11.4 per game. Banks, who had 27 against Kentucky, had a strong four-year prep career. A two-year captain, Banks once scored 43 points in a high school game.
KC Ndefo — A 6-7 senior, the nation's top shot blocker at 2.8 per game to go along with 10.7 points per outing, was also a four-year letterman and two-year captain at
Lincoln (Brooklyn, N.Y.), the same school that produced Lance Stephenson and Sebastian Telfair. Ndefo led the Railsplitters to a state title in 2016.
Matthew Lee — The 6-foot junior guard is the Peacocks' primary ball-handler. He played four seasons at
Dohn Community (Cincinnati) where he scored more than 1,000 career points and averaged 25 points, 8.3 assists and 5.4 rebounds per game as a senior. His dad Alfred was reportedly the first Puerto Rican born athlete to play in the NBA.
Fousseyni Drame — The 6-7 junior from Mali did garner some
recruiting interest (he was ranked the nation's 536th top player from the Class of 2019) after leading
Our Savior New American (Centereach, N.Y.) in scoring as a sophomore and junior before averaging 16 points and 12 rebounds as a senior. Drame is the Peacocks' leading rebounder (6.6 per game) and fourth leading scorer (6.9).
