School Name: | Saint Peter's University |
Location: | Jersey City, New Jersey |
Arena: | Run Baby Run Arena |
Capacity: | 3,200 |
Conference: | MAAC |
Head coach: | Bashir Mason |
Saint Peter's University is a private, coeducational Roman Catholic college in the United States. Located in Jersey City, New Jersey, it was founded in 1872 by the Society of Jesus. Today, Saint Peter's University is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. SPU offers over 33 majors to more than 3,200 undergraduate and 500 graduate students. Its college mascot is the Peacock, and its sports teams play in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Women's teams had historically been known as "Peahens", but now use the Peacocks nickname.
The school is located on a 15 acre (61,000 m²) campus 2 mi (3 km) west of New York City. Evening and weekend classes are offered in Jersey City, Englewood Cliffs, and South Amboy.
The college fields 17 athletic teams. All teams are known as the Peacocks; Saint Peter's is the only NCAA Division I institution with this mascot. The baseball, softball and soccer teams play at Joseph J. Jaroschak Field, in Lincoln Park. All other teams play at the The Victor R. Yanitelli, S.J. Recreational Life Center, located on campus. The basketball arena within the Yanitelli Center has been known as Run Baby Run Arena since 2020. After a major donation by former Peacocks player Thomas Mac Mahon, at the time a member of the university's board of trustees, he received the right to name the arena. Mac Mahon chose "Run Baby Run", the rallying cry of the high-scoring 1967–68 Peacocks team he played on.
Basketball has long been the most popular sport at the college. Under legendary coach Don Kennedy, the men's team gained national attention by defeating heavily-favored and nationally-ranked Duke University in the 1968 NIT Tournament quarterfinals, en route a fourth place finish.
St. Peter's has won the MAAC conference men's basketball championship and the accompanying automatic bid to the NCAA tournament four times (1991, 1995, 2011, 2022), has appeared in the NIT 12 times, (1957, 1958, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1987 and 1989), and made one CIT appearance (2017). The women's basketball team has won seven MAAC championships and automatic bids to the NCAA tournament, (1982, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2002); it also won the MAAC championship in 1983 and 1984, years when the MAAC champion did not receive an automatic NCAA tournament berth.
In recent years the basketball program has seen a resurgence, owing much to the success of Keydren "Kee-Kee" Clark '05. In 2004 and 2005, Clark led the nation in points scored per game, becoming just the eighth player to repeat as NCAA Division I scoring champion. On March 4, 2006, Clark became only the seventh NCAA player to score more than 3,000 points in his career; on the next day, he passed Hersey Hawkins to become the sixth-leading scorer of all time. At the time of his final game on March 6, 2006, Clark held the NCAA all-time record for 3-point shots, with 435. A second fourth-year student and a forward on the basketball team, George Jefferson, died on June 21, 2005, due to a previously undiagnosed heart condition.
John Dunne was named the 14th head coach in Saint Peter’s College men’s basketball history on May 24, 2006.
Saint Peter's reached a new level of national attention in the 2022 NCAA men's tournament. The Peacocks, seeded 15th in the East Region, shocked 2-seed Kentucky, becoming the 10th 15-seed to advance in the tournament. They then defeated Murray State, thereby becoming only the third 15-seed and first MAAC team to reach the tournament's second weekend, and followed that up with a win over Purdue to become the first 15 seed ever to reach a regional final. Their run ended with a loss to North Carolina in the regional final. Shortly after the tournament, head coach Shaheen Holloway was hired away by his alma mater of Seton Hall, where he had also previously been an assistant coach. Bashir Mason, previously the head coach at Wagner, was named as Holloway's replacement. Most of the players involved in that run left after the season, either by exhaustion of athletic eligibility or transfer. The most notable losses were three-time MAAC Defensive Player of the Year, forward KC Ndefo, who transferred to Seton Hall; and the team's breakout star, backup guard Doug Edert, who became a national media figure during the tournament and transferred to Bryant.