Long Island Blackbirds Men's Basketball

The LIU Sharks men's basketball team represents Long Island University in NCAA Division I basketball competition. They play their home games at their Brooklyn Campus in the Steinberg Wellness Center and Barclays Center, formerly known as the Wellness, Recreation & Athletics Center, and are members of the Northeast Conference. Their current head coach is Rod Strickland who was hired in June 2022. The Sharks have appeared seven times in the NCAA tournament, most recently in 2018.

The LIU Sharks are the result of the July 1, 2019 unification of the athletic departments which had previously represented two separate campuses of LIU, the Division I LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds and the Division II LIU Post Pioneers.

History

Blackbirds

The LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds team represented the Brooklyn campus of LIU. Following Long Island University's founding in 1927, it soon entered intercollegiate athletic competition. Initially, its sports teams wore blue uniforms and became known as the Blue Devils. In 1935, a ''Brooklyn Eagle'' reporter saw the basketball team in its new black uniforms and stated that the team looked like blackbirds, and a new nickname was born.

LIU was a national basketball powerhouse in the 1930s and 1940s under Clair Bee, who compiled the highest winning percentage in major college basketball history, and the 1935–36 team was retroactively recognized as the pre- NCAA tournament national champion by the Premo-Porretta Power Poll.

After several players were implicated in the point-shaving scandal of 1951, LIU shuttered its entire athletic program. It returned as a member of the College Division (now Division II) in 1957. At the same time as the Blackbirds returned, LIU's C.W. Post College Pioneers began competing in the College Division as well with the athletic identity renamed LIU Post in 2012.

The Blackbirds joined the Tri-State Collegiate Basketball League, a conference that included only College Division teams, for the 1959–60 season. In 1965, they finished tied for first place with Wagner, and the teams met in a playoff game on Hoftra's home court on March 3, to determine the conference champion and winner of the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Led by George Barbezat and Al Grant, the Blackbirds overcame a 14-point deficit to defeat Wagner, 78–69.

Prior to the 1965–66 season, the Blackbirds became a charter member of the Metropolitan Collegiate Conference, a league that included both University Division and College Division teams, and competed in both the Tri-State and Met conferences through the end of the 1966–67 season, after which the Tri-State League dissolved.

The Blackbirds repeated as Tri-State League champions in 1966, earning a second automatic berth to the NCAA tournament. Larry Newbold scored 22 points to lead the Blackbirds to an 87–74 home victory over Bridgeport on February 13, 1967, completing a perfect conference season for LIU and clinching their third straight Tri-State League title and NCAA tournament berth.

LIU reclassified to the University Division (the predecessor to Division I) for the 1968–69 season. The Met Conference dissolved following the 1968–69 season.

The Blackbirds became a charter member of the Northeast Conference, then known as the ECAC Metro Conference, in 1981.

On March 12, 2013, the team achieved what was the greatest run in Northeast Conference history with a third straight NCAA tournament bid.

The Blackbirds' final head coach was Derek Kellogg, who was hired after his firing by Massachusetts in 2017, with the 2017–18 season his first as LIU mentor.

In October 2018, LIU announced that it would merge its two existing athletic programs—the LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds and LIU Post Pioneers, the latter an NCAA Division II member—effective with the 2019–20 school year. The merged athletic program now competes as the LIU Sharks, with the new colors of blue and gold, with Kellogg becoming the Sharks' first head men's basketball coach. The Sharks inherited the Division I and Northeast Conference memberships formerly held by the Blackbirds.

Blackbirds postseason

NCAA Division I tournament results

The Blackbirds appeared in the NCAA Division I tournament seven times. Their combined record was 0–7.

NCAA Division II tournament results

The Blackbirds appeared in the NCAA Division II tournament three times. Their combined record was 6–3.

NIT results

The Blackbirds appeared in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) ten times. Their combined record was 7–8 and they were NIT champions in 1939 and 1941.

Rivalry

Beginning in the 1975–76 season, an annual '' Battle of Brooklyn'' was a tradition for the LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds and St. Francis Brooklyn Terriers men's basketball teams. Each season, a game (the schools usually played each other twice) is dedicated in tribute William Lai and Daniel Lynch, former athletic directors at Long Island University and St. Francis College, respectively. Each year the most valuable player of the game was given the Lai-Lynch Trophy in memory of the two ADs. Long Island was 27–21 in Battle of Brooklyn games. St. Francis won the final game in 2023. St. Francis Brooklyn discontinued sponsorship of intercollegiate athletics after the 2022–23 season, bringing the series between the two schools to an end.

Notable players

* Jules Bender (1914–1982), basketball player in the American Basketball League
* Charles Jones (born 1975), NBA basketball player
* Barry Leibowitz (born 1945), American-Israeli basketball player in the American Basketball Association and the Israeli Basketball Premier League
* Carey Scurry (born 1962), NBA basketball player

References

External links

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{{Northeast Conference men's basketball navbox