Men's Basketball | 3/21/2023 10:25:00 AM
Tobin Anderson's name and face have been plastered over media outlets in the past few days, and with good reason. In his first season at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Anderson's team posted perhaps the most unlikely victory in NCAA Division I college basketball history as FDU upset the East Region's top seed Purdue. Pregame recordings, halftime interviews, postgame interviews, and morning show appearances followed in the aftermath of the biggest win of Tobin Anderson's coaching career. And while the victory is certainly worthy of the notoriety, it was obviously far from his first. That occurred 23 years and a handful of months earlier in the village of Potsdam at Clarkson University, Anderson's first head coaching position.
Win number one came on November 19, 1999, a 90-89 overtime triumph over SUNY Potsdam, one that occurred during the North Country Invitational. It wasn't in front of thousands of people in a packed arena and watched by a million more on television, but it was in view of a raucous and packed house at Clarkson University's Alumni Gymnasium. That game saw Josh Ordway net 42 points and Ashton Fritz score 29, two players that rank third and fourth, respectively on the Golden Knights' all-time scoring list. The team began the season 4-0, winning its first four games in a stretch of just five days against SUNY Potsdam, Oswego State, Nazareth College, and Utica College, en route to a 14-12 record in the 1999-2000 season.
While two games over .500 may not seem earth-shattering, what Tobin Anderson was able to accomplish in his first season at the helm of the Golden Knights was nevertheless impressive as it marked the first winning season for the program in more than two decades. Anderson would record two more winning seasons following his first, reaching the postseason on three occasions overall (1999-00, 2001-02, and 2003-04). The team tied for first in the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association in his final season at Clarkson, a year before the conference transitioned to becoming the Liberty League.
Formerly an assistant with the Green and Gold for one season (1996-97), Anderson helped mentor three Clarkson assistant coaches, all which remain in the coaching ranks to this day. Matt Kingsley, Anderson's first assistant in 1999-00, is the Associate Head Coach at Yale University, Jason Leone, a three-year assistant with the Knights, is now the head coach at Oswego State, and Matt Capell, the assistant in 2003-04, is the head coach with St. Thomas Aquinas.
Following his tenure at Clarkson, where he won 67 games in five campaigns, Anderson became the head coach at Hamilton College and served there for seven seasons. He then moved on to Siena College for two years as an assistant, and was named the head coach at St. Thomas Aquinas in 2013. This past May, Anderson moved on from St. Thomas Aquinas for his first head coaching stint at the NCAA Division I level at Fairleigh Dickinson University, a team which surprised the basketball world with what may very well be the biggest upset in NCAA history. But win number one will always be remembered, too.
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