7-foot-1 Division III star A.J. Matthews of Farmingdale State
Joel Cairo for The Wall Street Journal  The Polytechnic
Institute of New York University is a roughly
1,800-undergraduate engineering school in downtown Brooklyn.  It
is not—by any stretch of the imagination—a basketball school.
And yet, NYU-Poly's men's basketball squad faces a most unusual
problem for a team of its modest talents: how to defend a
7-foot-1 pro prospect.  "You have to stay in front of him,
hopefully," said 6-foot-7 Stefan Stovanovich, NYU-Poly's tallest
player, who gets to guard Farmingdale State's A.J. Matthews.
"And hope for the best."  On Thursday, in the sort of mismatch
typically found at the high-school level, NYU-Poly plays host to
Matthews and Farmingdale State. The occasion raises the
question: How does a team on the lower rungs of college
basketball prepare to face a player of this size and caliber?
NYU-Poly plays on the NCAA's Division III level, a world away
from Division I, where the powers of the sport reside. D-III