2025-26 Langston Lions
097 · 2026-03-25 · medium
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics represents what college basketball was supposed to be: fair, all-inclusive, the kind of amateurism that pays expenses but doesn't line pockets. James Naismith co-founded the NAIA tournament in 1937, it's been staged in Kansas City ever since, and the 25 dollar day pass at Municipal Auditorium is still the best deal in basketball. Nowadays, 64 small-college teams engage in an epic battle for the Red Banner, which is also the organization's logo, and can you imagine fighting like hell over a blue Frisbee? God, I hope you can't. There are indeed more than two races in America – and the NCAA Tournament did include Latin and Asian players during the 1940s – but this was the first postseason tournament with Black inclusion, once John Wooden's Indiana State program forced open that door in 1948. A decade later, after the NAIA fully integrated with a separate and equal District 29, Tennessee State (née A&I) won three in a row under Naismith protégé John McLendon. Future MEAC and SWAC colleges with Red Banners in their trophy closets include Grambling (1961), Prairie View (1962), Coppin State (1976) and Texas Southern, which routed Campbell 71-44 in the 1977 final. No HBCU has won the NAIA tournament in the half-century since, and no HBCU has won at any level since Central Intercollegiate charter member Virginia Union in 2005. The mass exodus of CIAA and SIAC schools to NCAA Division I in the 1970s and 1980s was perfectly understandable, given the circumstances: there was television money and exposure opportunity there, what with the expanding Tournament and all. Once in a while a Hampton would beat an Iowa State, and White Guilt took a holiday. But exceptions never prove rules; as of 2026, 11 of the 18 Black Big Dance victories have come against other No. 16 seeds – primarily HWCUs, due to the bad optics of truTV Tuesday night MEAC-SWAC elimination games in Dayton. Meanwhile, while few have been paying attention, a new HBCU empire has emerged in Oklahoma. Langston (née Oklahoma Colored A&N) was the first state land-grant university to join the SWAC in 1931, but left in 1957 once postwar enrollment boomed; its teams simply couldn't compete against the church-funded private schools anymore. There was a good home waiting in Naismith's intercollegiate Association, and eventually in the Sooner Athletic Conference. The Lions finished 1-27 in 2021-22, hired Chris Wright away from fellow HBCU Talladega College, and made what might be the greatest single-season turnaround in basketball history, much less the college kind. Langston won 31 and lost only three the following year, fueled by a dynamic D that's led the NAIA in opponent field goal percentage and points per possesssion ever since. In 2023-24, the Lions went 35-2, with a runner-up run all the way to the NAIA championship game, where they lost to Freed-Hardeman from western Tennessee. Last year was for reloading, without any returning starters, but here they are again. On Tuesday night in Kansas City, 29-7 Langston went up against distant rival Freed-Hardeman in the NAIA title game for the second time in three years, fought real hard, but came up short by five points to a buzzsaw on a 32-game win streak. “HBCUs face obstacles that most people in college basketball can’t fathom,” Wright likes to say in interviews. At least one of those schools is tantalizingly close to finally overcoming that final hurdle; perhaps, maybe, in 2027.