College Beat: Resilient Blackbirds refuse to lose as win streak hits five
An overwhelming choice to finish atop their league and return to the NCAA Tournament for a third straight year, no one could have imagined that the Blackbirds of LIU-Brooklyn would somehow emerge as the midseason “Cinderellas” of the Northeast Conference.
But a slew of injuries, most notably a season-ending ACL tear to the knee of reigning NEC Player of the Year Julian Boyd, along with an embarrassing offseason incident that resulted in the suspensions of three key players, left the Blackbirds with an ugly 5-10 mark, including a hard-to-fathom 0-3 mark in conference play.
“There’s been a lot of adversity. We got off to a difficult start,” first-year Blackbirds coach Jack Perri admitted. “It was a hard adjustement [after losing Julian]. The team has a lot of talent, so I didn’t think it was going to be as difficult as it’s been. Everybody’s roles changed a little bit. It’s taken us a little while to bounce back.”