Black college basketball this week is in the house … eh, The Barn.
In a span of a week or so, two HBCU basketball teams will be in town: Southern University plays Minnesota in women’s basketball Nov. 10, then two days later, the SU men face their Gophers Nov. 12.
The Jaguars women are picked first in the SWAC preseason poll. Junior forward DeMya Porter, first-team preseason All-SWAC, averaged nearly 10 points and five rebounds a game last season, and shot over 51% from the field. Junior guard Jocelyn Tate is the conference’s preseason defensive player of the year. She had 66 steals (3.4 average) and 194 total boards (5.7 rpg), 69 of them off the offensive glass.
Porter and Tate are two of five juniors and nine seniors on this year’s squad. Head Coach Carlos Funchess returns for his seventh season, vying for the school’s third consecutive SWAC Tournament crown.
SU’s non-conference PWI road schedule features three B1G schools, beginning at Illinois (Nov. 7), then Minnesota next week, and next month at Iowa (Dec. 13); Notre Dame (Nov. 18), and Syracuse and Auburn in a Puerto Rico tournament later this month. The latter three clubs have Black head coaches.
Coach Funchess told me during last month’s SWAC Media Day that such a schedule will toughen his players in preparation for conference play beginning at Prairie View on Jan. 4.
“I was always taught one way you can improve is by playing people who might be considered better,” stressed the veteran coach, “and so I think that’s the attitude that we take on the road to these types of games.”
The SU women pride themselves on their defense. “We are a defensive team first. We play hard,” Funchess proudly pointed out. Offensively, “I like to play with pace,” he added.
Southern men look to avoid a 2014 repeat
The Southern men’s basketball team hopes to avoid a repeat of the last time they played in The Barn, then called Williams Arena, an 85-57 defeat on Dec. 10, 2014.
Kevin Johnson was named SU head coach in 2023 and has nearly 30 years of coaching experience. Under his tutelage, the Jaguars have established themselves as one of the nation’s most disruptive teams defensively and one of the deepest depth-wise on offense.
Last season, they ranked 11th nationally in steals per game (9.3) and 19th in the nation in turnovers forced per game (14.65).
However, Johnson’s 2026-27 squad is relatively new with only two returnees and 14 newcomers. Last season, SU went 11-7 in league play, reached the SWAC Tournament title game for the first time since 2016 and finished 17-17 overall.
Like their SU female counterparts, the Jaguars’ non-league slate is challenging with PWIs from the ACC, Big East, Missouri Valley, Mountain West, SEC, West Coast and Big Ten – their Nov. 12 meeting against Minnesota caps off a three-games-in-five-days road swing after visiting Drake (Nov. 8) and Iowa State (Nov. 10).
Furthermore …
The two Minnesota basketball teams will host HBCUs three more times before the end of this year. The men host Texas Southern (Dec. 16) and Alcorn State (Dec. 20), and the women host Grambling State (Dec. 20) in the first-ever HBCU doubleheader at The Barn.
Finally …
Harvard’s Carrie Moore (Minnesota played her squad on Nov. 2) and Vanessa Blair-Lewis of George Mason last week were named to the 20-person watch list for the 2027 Kathy Delaney-Smith Mid-Major Coach of the Year Award. Moore and Blair-Lewis are the only Black coaches on the list.
This bothered both me and fellow women’s basketball reporter Rob Knox, who decried in his Substack post, X and Threads last week how several Black college coaches were omitted or not even considered for the list.
“HBCU women’s basketball programs aren’t charity cases. The case for recognition is already there,” Knox pointed out. “These omissions immediately caught my attention: Howard’s Ty Grace, Southern’s Carlos Funchess and Alabama A&M’s Dawn Brown.”
Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses at challman@spokesman-recorder.com.
Copyright © Charles Hallman