HBCU Basketball At A Glance: 2022 SWAC Year In Review

In a year where the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) dominated the headlines on the gridiron, basketball carved out its own niche and provided some of the more entertaining and surprising moments among mid-majors during the 2021-22 college basketball season. The additions of Florida A&M and Bethune Cookman proved to make for an entertaining level of parity in SWAC play. Whether it was upsets against Power 5 schools or the movement of coaches inside and outside of the league, there was rarely a dull moment for followers of the league. Let's take a look at some of the twists and turns that made the 2022 SWAC campaign a memorable one for fans.

Texas Southern wins a BIG one in Gainesville

Bunches on bunches of early-season road games are an unfortunate fact of life for some HBCU Division 1 basketball programs. It can be a rough row to hoe for teams that engage in this endeavor prior to the conference season starting. Enter Texas Southern...First seven games? Seven losses. So, it was natural for both the casual and rabid college hoops head alike to rate TSU's chances of going into Gainesville to play the then 20th ranked Florida Gators and coming out with the dub as slim and none. Boy...Were we wrong.

The Tigers came out of the gate breathing fire and dominated long stretches of the game en route to a history-making, double-digit first win for the SWAC against Florida. The Gators were undefeated (26 - 0) all-time against Southwestern Athletic Conference competition prior to this early season match-up. It's safe to say that the big-time nature of the upset helped turn Texas Southern's season around, with the Tigers eventually finishing 19-13 on the season, winning the SWAC tourney, and notching a 'First Four' NCAA tournament win against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. Head Coach Johnny Jones has feasted off of the transfer portal in recent years. He'll need to do so again to replace the likes of Bryson Gresham, Jordan Karl Nicholas, and John Walker III. It's going to be interesting to see how Coach Jones fills the void left by those cornerstone players. The rest of the conference isn't waiting around to close the gap.

Grand Opening...Grand Closing

While there was relative stability at the top of the league on the sidelines, it belied some pretty substantial moves among schools in the conference that have the potential to become real factors in SWAC hoops affairs down the road. Arguably one of the biggest coaching changes in the league this year was former Alabama State Head Coach Mo Williams leaving that position to accept the open Jackson State slot. Williams, a native of Mississippi, could be the catalyst to jumpstart a program that has a decent amount of in-state, recruitable talent to choose from. Coach Williams' roots and NBA pedigree could be just what the doctor ordered for a program that needs a fresh start. While the results at Bama State were uneven, Williams was able to attract some fairly decent talent during his short tenure in Montgomery. How will those connections translate to re-building Jackson State basketball?

Conversely, the state of Alabama has two SWAC members (Alabama A&M and Alabama State) that are in the unique position of finding coaching fits that will maximize the latent competitive potential of both programs. There's been little news out of both athletic departments regarding potential hires to date. However, there are two increasingly popular in-state names that could be intriguing options for both programs to at least kick the tires on in the coming weeks. The first has turned the Division II SIAC on its' collective ear during his tenure in the league. Miles College Head Coach Fred Watson has a total of 350 wins during his stints at Miles and Benedict College. He's also steered the Golden Bears to the winningest three-year stint in the school's basketball history, gaining back-to-back berths in the NCAA Division II tourney and being named the SIAC and Jerry Johnson Division II Coach of the Year respectively. The other wildcard is Talladega Head Coach Chris Wright. Wright has turned the Talladega hoops program into an NAIA power, playing for the National Championship this past March.

Jackson State legend Lindsey Hunter is out as Mississippi Valley head coach, replaced by MVSU alum and former player George Ivory. The unsettled nature of the coaching pecking order in the conference has created some pretty interesting scenarios for the conference as a whole as we embark on the off-season. One name that isn't in the musical chairs coaching news? Alcorn State's Landon Bussie guided the Braves to a sneaky good season, winning the SWAC regular-season title and punching their own ticket to the National Invitational Tournament (NIT). Oh yeah...He also won SWAC Coach Of The Year honors in the process.

In spite of all the coaching traffic on the men's side, there has been ONE sure thing when it comes to SWAC hoops excellence this season. The Jackson State women weren't just Thanos-level dominant in conference; They nearly wrote their own legendary chapter on the national women's basketball landscape by pushing Kim Mulkey's LSU crew to the absolute limit in the first round of the women's NCAA tournament:

Unanswered Questions...Untapped Potential

Soooo...The end of the 2021-22 SWAC basketball season has left us some pretty pressing questions to answer:

1. Who will Alabama A&M and Alabama State hire to fill their respective coaching vacancies? Will those hires be able to finally tap into the latent in-state recruiting potential residing at each school?
2. What will SWAC Coach Of The Year Landon Bussie do for an encore?
3. Will Texas Southern strike gold in the transfer portal again? Can they maintain their momentum from a successful post-season?
4. Can ANYBODY in conference stop the Jackson State women from repeating?
5. Will Southern build on the glimpses of excellent play shown during this season? Can they start making in-roads into the talent-rich basketball scenes in Baton Rouge and New Orleans? Can Grambling do the same?
6. Will the real Prarie View return to prominence?

The college basketball off-season is in its infancy, but answers to these questions (and others) will say a LOT about where the power dynamic in the league will reside when the 2022-23 SWAC Basketball season gets here. there may be a lot of eyes on football in SWAC country, but the league has the potential to generate some well-deserved buzz of its own.

Thank you for coming with me on this snapshot review of the 2021-22 SWAC Basketball season! If you want to see more content related to HBCU athletics, Subscribe! Feel free to tip or pledge if you really enjoyed my content. Stay tuned for more of my HBCU sports coverage on this platform, as well as FanSided's Busting Brackets and Saturday Blitz websites, as well as The HBCU Digital Network!