A week ago, Andy Enfield and tiny Florida Gulf Coast University had the look of a sure speedbump on some other team's NCAA Tournament road, a little-known upstart program from South Florida making its first trip to the NCAA Tournament. Nice story, thanks for playing, have a safe trip home.
But after a pair of upset victories over the weekend in Philadelphia, the Eagles have become an overnight sensation, the darlings of the Big Dance, the ultimate bracket trashers.
And Enfield, the all-time leading scorer in Johns Hopkins history who took over as FGCU's head coach two years ago after stints as an assistant in the NBA and at Florida State, is the man of the hour, the subject of feature stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times, and a rising star in the coaching ranks.
From The Post:
The plot twist in this year's college basketball fairy tale is that Cinderella is coached by Prince Charming.
Make that a charmed prince of a guy, by all accounts, who could have retired in his 30s after amassing sufficient riches as co-founder of a health care-related technology company. Instead, Andy Enfield, a Johns Hopkins graduate who earned an MBA in finance at the University of Maryland, abandoned Wall Street and, accompanied by his lingerie-model bride who put her own high-wattage career on hold, headed south to chase a dream of coaching basketball.
The Eagles grabbed headlines with a 78-68 win against mighty Georgetown on Friday night, becoming just the seventh No. 15 seed to knock out a No. 2 since the tournament field expanded to 64 teams in 1985. They followed that up with an 81-71 win against seventh-seeded San Diego State on Sunday, becoming the first 15 seed ever to advance to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen.
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