Across from the old row houses along Montgomery Street, on the gymnasium side of Saint Peter’s College, a Jesuit priest in black is having an animated discussion with the driver of a white delivery van. Construction workers are rebuilding the parking decks, across from the auto parts and repair places. And up the street sirens are blaring on bustling Kennedy Boulevard, where a video board flashes a few basketball highlights and the all-caps message, “JERSEY CITY PROUD.”
You want grass, the emerald and manicured kind you might find on a campus that regularly produces powerhouse revenue-sports teams? Cross the Kennedy sky-bridge and you will find a few precious patches of it behind the statue of Saint Peter the Apostle, the fisherman who became the first pope. In other words, there are few testaments to the fact that in the early evening of Sunday, March 27, 2022, five Division I basketball schools out of 350 still had a chance to win the national championship, and this school was one of them.
The unassuming Run Baby Run Arena on the campus of Saint Peter’s fits into its urban Jersey City campus. Ian O'ConnorThe blue-collar Peacocks would lose their Final Four shot to the blue-blood North Carolina Tar Heels that night in Philadelphia, yet no witness will ever forget who they were and what they represented. As the 15th-seeded MAAC Tournament champ, Saint Peter’s upset second-seeded Kentucky — the elimination of John Calipari’s one-and-done NBA factory alone made the Peacocks a forever part of March Madness lore — then beat Murray Stateand Purdue before falling to North Carolina in the East Region final.
Saint Peter’s had an endowment of $37 million; Kentucky’s was $2.1 billion. The total Saint Peter’s budget for all athletics was $6.2 million, or $2.3 million less than the annual wage Kentucky pays Calipari, who was earning more than 31 times the salary paid to then-Peacocks coach Shaheen Holloway, the man who eliminated him.
