The Fairleigh Dickinson men’s basketball team had a tough time getting to its meeting with Long Island University on Thursday.
The matchup between the Knights and Sharks had to be delayed after FDU players got stuck in the elevator at Steinberg Wellness Center in Brooklyn while trying to get from the locker room to the court.
The players spent 15 minutes in the “hot” elevator, and they were eventually rescued by the FDNY.
Jordan Sarnoff, Fairleigh Dickinson’s special assistant to the athletic director, told ESPN the elevator “got stuck.”
“Our student-athletes remained calm and talked as a group,” Sarnoff said.
The Northeast Conference contest was delayed roughly 17 minutes before things finally got underway.
The delay didn’t seem to give the Sharks much of an advantage, as FDU still managed to defeat LIU in the end, 84-82, in overtime.
Fairleigh Dickinson made national headlines last season when it upset No. 1 seed Purdue in the NCAA Tournament, becoming just the second No. 16 seed to ever topple the top seed in the tournament’s history.
Fox Sports college basketball analyst John Fanta poked fun at the situation on Thursday night with a post on X, alluding to the elevator drama and last year’s victory over Purdue.
“Purdue’s got nothing on FDU. But the Knights have met their match in a New York elevator shaft,” Fanta said jokingly.
FDU wasn’t the first college basketball team to get stuck in an elevator in recent memory, with the University of Miami men’s team getting trapped during last year’s NCAA Tournament.
The Hurricanes were stuck in the elevator for 30 minutes after they held a defensive-centric meeting prior to their upset win over Houston.