Howard’s Bryce Howard dares to dream about a deep a deep NCAA Tournament run. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Jeff Gilbert)
The Howards and the UMBCs of college basketball come to Dayton every year to win and advance. But don’t think they’re just happy to be here. They have bigger dreams.
Dayton, OH – The unknowns, the afterthoughts and the unwanteds are sent to UD Arena every year for the First Four.
The games are televised on a JV cable channel called truTV.
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Not talking about the teams that come here from the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten or ACC. Those No. 11 seeds are the level of programs, in a given year, that might earn a top four seed. They play regular season games on the ESPN channels and broadcast networks.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com. Follow on X @jw_gilbert
Talking about the teams relegated to ESPN+ from conferences whose tournament champions are routinely placed in the two 16 vs. 16 games here every year. They joyfully come to determine which ones will board a plane to go play a No. 1 seed with a shot at an entire university’s one shining moment.
These NCAA Tournament teams – and they legitimately are NCAA Tournament teams – are not expected to come close to winning once they leave the First Four. But they have dreams no one can steal.
Unheard of dreams like UMBC in 2018 when it became the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1, ambushing Virginia by 20 points. Saint Peters was a No. 15 seed in 2022 and upset No. 3 Purdue in the Sweet Sixteen. A year later, Fairleigh Dickinson, the No. 68 overall seed, advanced out of the First Four and beat No. 1 seed Purdue in the first round.
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Tuesday night at 6:40 p.m., Howard and UMBC, two schools in the Washington, D.C., metro area, will lay the groundwork for their own impossible dreams when they play each other as 16 seeds. The winner gets No. 1 seed Michigan on Thursday in Buffalo. But, despite no one giving them a chance, they dare to imagine what it would be like to be one of those Cinderella stories.
“I think about it every day since we won,” Howard’s Bryce Harris said Monday at UD Arena, flashing a big smile in reference to the Bison winning the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament. “Honestly, I’ve been thinking about it ever since we won my sophomore year.”
The Bison won the MEAC in 2023 and were a 16 seed in Harris’ sophomore season, bypassing the First Four. They played Kansas in the first round and lost. The next season they played in the First Four and lost to Wagner. After missing most of last season with an injury, Harris is back as a graduate student with more chance to win an NCAA game or the dream scenario of two or three games.
Howard coach Kenny Blakeney speaks with fellow Duke alum Jim Spanarkel who will call the game on TV. Blakeney said, just like Duke, Howard expects to make the NCAA Tournament every year.
“Ever since we got that glimpse of March and what comes with the NCAA Tournament, it’s something that you constantly think about because you want to win,” he said. “Especially coming in as the underdog, that’s the American story, baby. Everybody loves that.”
The players from Howard (26-7) and UMBC (16-14) recalled memories like Baylor beating Gonzaga in the title game, the FDU shocker against Purdue, Villanova’s Kris Jenkins last-second shot to beat North Carolina in the final and the Kemba Walker game that lifted UConn to a championship.
None of them are afraid to dream big. Especially at Howard. The HBCU school that has produced a lot of firsts for black Americans likes to call themselves the Dream Factory. Being in the NCAA tournament for the third time in four years isn’t an accident according to head coach Kenny Blakeney, who experienced two NCAA titles at Duke.
“It’s our standard – it’s the history and the tradition of our university,” Blakeney said. “That’s why we call it the Dream Factory. Howard is a university of dreamers. The thing that I thought was the only thing that we need to do on this campus now is have a sustainable basketball program and also get somebody as a president of the United States. We’ve touched every other stone.”
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The elusive touchstone every March for underdog programs like Howard and UMBC, as well as Wednesday night’s 16 vs. 16 teams Prairie View A&M and Lehigh, is the tournament run that introduces their school to the nation.
UMBC’s Ace Valentine knows another big upset will put his program in the spotlight again.
“It’s just amazing to see how much publicity they get,” UMBC’s Ace Valentine said. “Just being an underdog every game and coming out and proving yourself, it has to feel crazy getting so much publicity, getting so much love from fans.”
Publicity travels. March Madness not only crosses the barriers between 16 seeds and the elite programs, it also crosses borders. Howard’s Ose Okojie is from Canada and has a younger brother playing at Mercer. He watched the tournament growing up on Canada’s all-sports network TSN.
“I have vivid memories of watching with my dad and my mom,” he said. “The whole country of Canada is really big into basketball, especially March Madness.”
Okojie remembers well the Saint Peters run when he was in high school. He got the best of his teammates on some friendly tournament wagers.
Ose Okojie grew up in Canada but that didn’t make him any less of a fan of March Madness.
“Watching that run was really, really legendary,” he said.
UMBC’s distinction of being the first 16 seed to beat a No. 1 is legendary as well. So much so that the dream never slips from memory. A large image of the Sports Illustrated cover immortalizing the Retrievers accomplishment is a constant reminder in their practice gym. The current players were middle schoolers then, so memories are fuzzy. But Valentine and Josh Odunowo grew up 15 minutes from the campus.
“I noticed it, and it was cool to see an underdog have that light on them, put on a show,” Valentine said.
“I didn’t know too much about UMBC until they had the upset,” Odunowo said. “As I got older, I started to realize the significance of what happened.”
To get here and even have this chance, requires a significant happening. Teams like Howard and UMBC must win their conference tournaments. They play in one-bid leagues with no chance at an at-large bid. No matter how good they are, their measurables of strength of schedule and Quad 1 wins, etc., will never match up to teams in leagues like the Big Ten.
No power conference team will play at Howard or UMBC. All the non-power teams can hope for are road games in November and December and maybe a neutral-court game.
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The NCAA selection committee didn’t care that Howard had won the MEAC regular season championship or that UMBC won the America East regular season. The committee just had a spot in the First Four on their master bracket waiting to fill in the blank with the tournament winners. If Howard or UMBC had lost, they wouldn’t be in the tournament.
UMBC coach Jim Ferry knows the difference between coaching in a league that earns multiple bids and in leagues like the America East. He earned back-to-back bids in 2011-12 at Long Island by winning the Northeast Conference tournament.
Jim Ferry understands the difference between relief and joy when it comes to making the NCAA Tournament.
Ferry was an assistant coach at Penn State when the Nittany Lions just missed the NCAAs in 2017-18 and won the NIT.
“Total amount of joy,” he said. “At the power five level, it’s relief. Let’s not BS each other. It is what it is. At that level, it’s relief because if you don’t get in, you’re out. Where our level, it’s pure joy because we all are fighting for that same thing and there’s only one spot.”
Joy is where you find it.
One of the top players on each team has found NCAA joy through different paths, which is the way of modern college basketball.
Harris left home in Brentwood, New Jersey, and made a home in the nation’s capital. He got a fifth year with the Bison after missing most of last season with an injury. He is the rare graduate student playing for the school where he earned his undergrad degree.
“I embrace Howard because Howard embraced me first as a young player,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of culture and characteristics on Howard University’s campus that makes you proud to put the jersey on.”
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Harris knows the history of so many well-known graduates like Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. That means something, he says, to everyone at Howard.
“Knowing that those are the students and the alumni and that’s in their DNA also puts that in my DNA,” he said.
D.J. Armstrong took the long way to UMBC for a chance to play in the NCAA Tournament. He transferred after playing JuCo and Division II in Texas.
For UMBC’s Armstrong, the path was much different. His father Darrell Armstrong played Division II ball at Fayetteville State in North Carolina and 14 seasons in the NBA. His son began at a junior college in Texas and then spent two seasons at Division II Texas Permian Basin.
“I really just wanted to prove myself each and every time I got to play, whether it was JuCo or all the way up to now,” Armstrong said. “I’m just grateful that they trusted me and had the same confidence in me as I do with them.”
Ferry played at the Division II and III level and began his coaching career in Division II. He recruited five Division II players to UMBC for this season.
“We kind of know what translates from Division II to Division I,” he said. “Division II guys like D.J. were just looking for an opportunity to play Division I basketball. He doesn’t get any NIL. He just wants to play basketball. For me, it was understanding that level, certain leagues, and the guards sometimes translate a little bit better. He just plays the game the right way.”
Bryce Harris loves Howard and relishes the chance to make a basketball name for his school.
And so here they are from different backgrounds, traveling different paths to pursue what few have accomplished before them. Their dreams of a tournament run transitioned from the ethereal to real when they first walked down the long ramp toward the “March Madness” emblazoned on the hardwood.
“Having this arena be the place where you kick off the tournament – that’s where the magic of March starts,” Harris said. “You walk down the ramp and it says ‘The Road to March Starts Here.’ You participate in March Madness, that goes down in the history books. We call it basketball immortality.”
The stuff dreams are made of.
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