The WPI Engineers men's basketball team is the
college basketball program representing
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The Engineers compete in the
Division III (DIII) of the
National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) and the
NEWMAC. WPI's men's basketball program began competing regularly as a varsity sport in
1918
This year is noted for the end of the First World War, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, as well as for the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 50–100 million people worldwide.
Events
Below, the events ...
. The team is currently coached by Chris Bartley.
WPI plays its home games at Harrington Auditorium, located on the campus in
Worcester, Massachusetts, with a capacity of 3,000.
History
Although an informal team played in 1902, the WPI Engineers basketball team was sponsored by the Athletic Association in 1903, but then was abolished in the spring of 1910. The sport was brought back in 1915, but only as an intramural. It wasn't until the winter of 1917–1918, that basketball became an intercollegiate sport again. The team won back to back New England Championships during the
1919–20 and
1920–21 and seasons. According to the
Premo-Porretta Power Poll, the 1919–20 team would have been ranked 25th in the country.
The
1965–66 team was defeated by
Army 71–62 on December 8, 1965. The win marked the first career coaching victory for the Hall of Fame coach,
Bobby Knight
Robert Montgomery Knight (born October 25, 1940) is an American former basketball coach. Nicknamed "the General", Knight won 902 NCAA Division I men's college basketball games, a record at the time of his retirement, and currently fourth all-ti ...
.
During the
2012–13 season, the team was ranked second in the nation in
National Collegiate Athletic Association's
Division III and had their best start ever, going undefeated for their first 22 games. On February 24, 2013, WPI beat
Springfield College
Springfield College is a private college in Springfield, Massachusetts. It confers undergraduate and graduate degrees.
It is known as the birthplace of basketball because the sport was invented there in 1891 by Canadian-American instructor J ...
in overtime to win the NEWMAC Championship and secure a place in the
2013 NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament
The 2013 NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament was a single-elimination tournament of 62 teams held to determine the men's collegiate basketball national champion of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III. It began ...
.
The Engineers had a program record 27 victories during their
2021–22 season, which included a NEWMAC regular season championship, a NEWMAC tournament championship, and an Elite Eight appearance in the
2022 NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament
The 2022 NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament was a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division III college basketball in the United States. Featuring sixty-four teams, it began on March 4, 202 ...
. This marked the program's second NCAA quarterfinal game and first since
1985
The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations.
Events January
* January 1
** The Internet's Domain Name System is created.
** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...
.
References
External links
*
{{WPI Engineers men's basketball navbox
Basketball teams established in 1918
1918 establishments in Massachusetts