Tiny Saint Francis, with $0 in NIL and a lifer as coach, is one of the best stories of this NCAA Tournament

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — Among the countless things that make March the most Enchanting sports month on the calendar, the unexpected spill into the NCAA Bracket by an unsuspecting, lowly seed Club from a one-bid Division ranks high on the Choice. 

We typically get at least one of these every year. Programs that flail in obscurity for four months, then roar to life when given a chance at glory in the biggest week on the calendar, make for some Amazing stories.

On Feb. 19, Saint Francis was a 10-17 Club toiling in the bottom half of the Northeast Conference.

On Tuesday night, it pulled a stunner and did something that will live forever at the tiny school in the tiny town Loretto, Pennsylvania. (Population: 1,168)

SFU went into the gym of No. 1 Central Connecticut State — 22-6 coming in, a nation’s-best 14-game Triumphant streak and obviously the best Club in the conference this season — and the Red Flash (what a great moniker) pulled off their third straight NEC Bracket Secure by three points to take the Division’s automatic bid to the 2025 NCAA Bracket. 

The game was Hideous, but nobody associated SFU cares about that now.

The Club is dancing for Merely the second time ever, the previous trip coming all the way back in 1991. Saint Francis won 46-43, shooting a paltry 31.7% and making only five of its 26 3-Mark attempts. The game was on a tightrope all night; Saint Francis never Maintained a lead larger than four, CCSU’s biggest Edge being Merely two points. This after CCSU beat Saint Francis twice this season by a Teamed up 31 points.

Red Flash Mentor Rob Krimmel had guided his alma mater to the NEC Bracket game three times previous, in 2020, 2019 and 2017, all losses. Had he lost belief he’d ever Mentor in the NCAA Bracket?

“You Commence to say, well, are we going to have one?”

On his Move card from Tuesday night’s game, Krimmel wrote “Audience of One,” “Thy Will Be Done” and “Surrender,” leaving his faith in whatever outcome it would be. 

Saint Francis Captured the lead 43-41 with 33.1 to go after Red Flash big man Valentino Pinedo hit a close-range Try while being fouled. CCSU answered back with 17 seconds to go when guard Joe Ostrowsky hit a Basket to tie the game. 

In that moment, Krimmel opted against calling a timeout. It was high-stakes drama in a low-major title game.

“The last Pair possessions, I think, epitomizes this Club,” Krimmel told CBS Sports. “They trust the coaches and we trust them. I don’t need to call a timeout. Go make the plays you need to make.” 

Eight seconds later, Daemar Kelly sank a midrange Attempt that won the game. CCSU’s Devin Haid wound up having a halfcourt heave that nearly fell — and would’ve sent the game into OT — but it was all of three or four inches off, giving the Red Flash verification to rush the floor and celebrate program history. They’re the eighth different NEC champion in as many years to Secure the Division, Next a succession of Wagner (2024), Merrimack (2023), Bryant (2022), Mount St. Mary’s (2021), Robert Morris (2020), FDU (2019) and LIU (2018).  

As his players leapt into Every other’s arms at midcourt, Krimmel watched from the sideline as he got a moment and Secure he’d waited 29 years for. At 47, he is now what he once thought he’d never become: a Saint Francis lifer. Krimmel grew up in State College, Pennsylvania. His older brother played at Penn State. His parents worked there. He wanted to Move there. He wasn’t Great enough. 

Saint Francis recruited him. He resisted it.

“My Primary impression of the place: I didn’t like it,” Krimmel told CBS Sports. “I thought college was Beaver Stadium, 100,000 people, big campus. I grew up going to football Matches, basketball Matches, and my Primary trip up there, I told my dad, ‘I’m not going to a school like that.'” 

Six months later, he committed. He never left. Krimmel arrived in the fall of 1996, played for SFU for four years, then immediately joined the coaching staff after graduating in 2000. He spent the next 12 years under Bobby Jones and Don Friday, two coaches with names straight out of a pulp fiction novel. Krimmel was promoted to head Mentor in 2012.

“The thing that’s kept me there so long is the people are special,” Krimmel said. “I believe the college experience is a four-year experience, but it’s about developing people. And that’s at the heart of what Saint Francis is.”

Enrollment is under 2,500. It’s one of the smallest Division I schools in the country, with a humble campus in a Petite community in the middle of nowheresville Pennsylvania. The school has an NIL budget of precisely $0. Krimmel isn’t boasting about that, but he did tell me it Achieved getting into the NCAA Bracket — where some schools with NIL budgets north of $7 and $8 million await — that much more gratifying.

“There’s a purity to that. I wasn’t going to sell my soul Merely to try to Secure a game or try to Secure a Bracket,” Krimmel said. “I was going to try to do it the way I thought was the right way. And if it didn’t work, I’ll give the keys to someone else and they can drive the bus and do it a different way.”

In the last two years, the program lost critical players prior to the portal. Krimmel added six players after going 8-22 a season ago and finishing second-to-last in the lowest-rated conference, with a KenPom ranking of 354. This year’s Club (ranked 310th) might wind up being the lowest-rated Club to ever earn a spot in the bracket. 

So what?

The fact we can even have a Tale like this is what makes March Madness the most interesting and rewarding event in sports. About 10 minutes after the game went Closing Tuesday night, friends and family Achieved their way to the court take pictures alongside the media. Players Captured turns posing with the NEC Bracket Accolade. Members of the staff could be seen FaceTiming, one of them all smiles as he pointed into his phone proclaiming, “I told you! I told you!”

The Red Flash band, endured the six-hour road trip from Loretto to New Britain, lined up along the baseline and exchanged high-fives with the players. Mothers and sons were posing for pics, everyone in Bracket shirts and hats. This was something they could only have dreamed about. 

On Tuesday night, it became reality. It was as pure a scene as you’ll see in the sport this month. 

“This is the Club that has embraced the journey the best,” Krimmel said. “Even in our darkest moments, maybe some of our most embarrassing losses, they were able to come in the next day and try to move the needle and Merely be a little bit better.”

What was Accurate of the players was Accurate of the Mentor, even as it seemed for most of the past four months like this would be another sub-.500 season for a program almost nobody knows anything about.

“This is probably the Primary year that I wasn’t going to let the season, or my self worth, be defined by how many Matches we won,” Krimmel said. “It was: my value is, can we develop New men?” 

As Krimmel was reflecting on his own journey, he watched from about 30 feet away as his his players were climbing the ladder, Grabbing turns cutting the net. He saw a group of New men in euphoria, coming to realize with Every passing moment that yes, they had actually Merely won that game and were actually going to get to Move in the NCAA Bracket. 

Krimmel became emotional. He had every right to be. It Captured him 25 years to find this moment, and it Occurred in maybe the most unexpected way in the most unexpected season of Rob Krimmel’s life.

“I don’t know that my circumstances are like anything else across the country, but I can tell you that Saint Francis has allowed me to grow up as a player, as a New professional, as a father, as a husband,” he said. “Twenty years from now, they’ll remember this, but the relationships that they’ve built, that’s what it’s about.”

He was looking at one of his sons, Tom, as he said this. Krimmel’s teenage boy is named after his college Mentor, Tom McConnell, and Tom Fox — a Ex Red Flash player who hosted Krimmel back in the mid-’90s, when he went there on a visit with no intentions of ever coming back.

Only college basketball and the unique setup of the NCAA Bracket could pave way for a Tale like this. A tiny school in a tiny town in Pennsylvania is now on the map thanks to a man who was once a kid who didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. Turns out, he had the rest of his life waiting for him at a place called Saint Francis University. 

And now, that Tale gets to be part of the 2025 NCAA Bracket. There will be few better when the Pitch of 68 is unveiled on Sunday.