East Texas A&M Basketball: The Dream Start Meets Its First Loss — FDU Wins the Lions' Home Opener 80–76 on Education Day
East Texas A&M's historic opening week finally ran into a loss. FDU beat the Lions 80–76 on Wednesday morning at the Field House in Commerce, in East Texas A&M's first home game of the season — an Education Day tip at 10:30 a.m. — dropping the Lions to 2–1 after road wins at Oklahoma and Rice and the program's first-ever AP Top 25 vote.
COMMERCE — The unbeaten start is over, but the week that made it still stands. FDU defeated East Texas A&M 80–76 on Wednesday morning at the Texas A&M-Commerce Field House, the Lions' first home game of the season, tipped at 10:30 a.m. as the program's Education Day game. The loss drops East Texas A&M to 2–1.
What the Lions did before Wednesday is why a Wednesday-morning game in Commerce drew national searches. East Texas A&M opened 2–0 for the first time in its Division I era with two true road wins — 68–64 at Oklahoma, one of the largest point-spread upsets in the sport's recent history, and 72–71 at Rice, where the Lions erased an 11-point deficit and outrebounded the Owls 54–41. On Monday, the program received a vote in the Associated Press Top 25 poll for the first time in its history, and its athletics department noted the Lions had risen 80 spots in the KenPom rankings.
Wednesday was the home crowd's first look at head coach Jaret von Rosenberg's team, in front of an Education Day audience of schoolchildren. FDU — Fairleigh Dickinson — was the steadier team at the finish, closing out a four-point win that gives the Knights the return game of a home-and-home the Lions won in New Jersey last season.
The Lions' season now settles into the Southland Conference race they were picked last in — a prediction the first week has already made look wrong. Whatever happens next, the opening week is in the program's record book: two road wins, an AP vote, and a home opener that people across the country were searching for by name.
