New Headline: "Coach Confirms Howard's Last Stand: 5 Critical Errors Cost Team Victory
Previewing HBCUs in the NCAA men's and women's tournaments.
Howard hadn't made the NCAA tournament in 28 years before Kenneth Blakeney arrived as head coach in 2019. For a while, it looked as though he might not be the right man to end that drought. Though Blakeney starred at nearby DeMatha under Hall of Famer Morgan Wooteen and won a national championship at Duke under Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski, it took time for him to find his own voice as a coach.
The Bison went 4-29 his first year, then managed just five games his covid-shortened second season, winning once. As Howard gets set to make its third NCAA tournament appearance in the last four years with Tuesday's First Four game against UMBC, Blakeney got emotional reflecting on the journey. "Being at DeMatha and being at Duke, you don't see the culture as it's being built.
You get in the back of the line and you do what the older guys are doing in front of you," Blakeney said at Monday's First Four press conference. "So I didn't understand how to build culture. I understood how to follow culture.
And there's a huge difference. I had to learn how to build a culture, and that took some time. And thankfully my man over here, [AD Kery Davis], was great.