Fearless Tigers know this drill quite well
Date with UNC far from home fits with school’s scheduling grind
The party at Toyota Center after Texas Southern won another Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament title Saturday moved to the team’s meeting room at H&PE Arena on Selection Sunday.
The players didn’t take their eyes off the TV, gawking and waiting patiently for “Texas Southern” to show up on the bracket.
It’s as if seeing the team name flash on the screen made it even more real than it was.
“It kind of caught me unexpected,” said freshman guard Demontrae Jefferson, who is second on the team in scoring at 14.9 points per game. “It got me real excited, real happy. I don’t know how to explain it.”
A giant is opposite Texas Southern for the first round of the NCAA Tournament — North Carolina.
Run of success
Five regular-season conference titles since 2011, four conference tournament titles since 2013 and four consecutive postseason berths in hand, the Tigers (23-11) have a claim as the best thing going in Houston for college basketball.
Now, a crack at history. The Tigers will try to become the first 16 seed to knock off a No. 1 seed against the Tar Heels (277) in the South Region at 3 p.m. Friday in Greenville, S.C.
TSU doesn’t expect to be shell-shocked by the matchup. The program has made waves for winning but also for playing the entirety of its non-conference schedule on the road. They had one game in Houston at Rice in November but didn’t play a home game until Jan. 14.
TSU had one stretch where it played at Louisville, Cincinnati, LSU, TCU and Baylor in consecutive games.
Could it be this team’s saving grace against the Tar Heels?
“We won’t even try to focus on the seeds,” junior guard Zach Lofton said. “We’re going to play another high-major team as we did all through November and December. We just have to focus on that and believe in coach and play our hardest. It’s the biggest game of our lives.”
Coach Mike Davis was actually a bit disappointed in the 16 seed. He hoped the perception of TSU had changed and warranted better.
You won’t find him complaining, though. TSU had to settle for the National Invitation Tournament last year, when it won the SWAC regular-season crown but fell short in the conference tournament.
And it’s OK for a midmajor like TSU to be disappointed in settling. What the Tigers have done for the last five years changed expectations.
“We want this to be a deal where we expect it,” Davis said. “Next year is going to be even more challenging because the other teams in our conference are not going to sit around and let us be the team to make it every year. They want to celebrate as well.
“We have to raise our standards every single year.”
Exceeding expectations
TSU athletics director Charles McClelland didn’t see this coming — not all this winning. He was just looking for stabilization when Davis came aboard in 2012, and now he has much more.
He had been a part of winning before as the athletics director at Prairie View A&M but said what Davis has done in Third Ward is special.
McClelland said TSU is a name recruits can take seriously. They can join the program knowing there is a legitimate shot at the NCAA Tournament every year.
He understands the name the Tigers will be playing Friday is nearly bigger than the game itself, but there is value in that.
“What we try to do with our student-athletes, one is to graduate them but two, put them in positions that they’ve never been in in their life,” McClelland said. “To be in prime time playing North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament, what more could you ask for for Texas Southern University?”