The HU Wins the MEAC Championship

By Wole Akinso

(@Wole_USS)

Norfolk, VA— The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference men’s basketball championship game between the top-seed Howard Bison and third-seed Norfolk State Spartans delivered.  The players for both teams put everything out there in the Norfolk Scope Arena, unfortunately someone had to lose. The Bison defeated the Spartans in a nail-biter, 65-64 to win the MEAC tournament championship and awarded an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Its first MEAC tournament championship since 1992.

The Bison was led by reserve senior guard Jelani Williams who made two key free throws with six seconds left on the clock to essentially win the game. Williams finished the game with 20 points. He talked about what was going through his head as he walked up to the free throw line after being fouled by Spartan guard Terrance Jones with six seconds left on the clock.

“Don’t laugh, I got to credit my dad with this.  When I was really young, I was terrible at shooting free throws, and he taught me how to slow myself down by singing a lullaby to myself. Something that he used to sing to me to get me to go to sleep as a two, three-year-old."

“When we used to go out to the court, he would show me how he would do it.  So obviously you got the crowd and everything going crazy. You understand the depth of the moment and I just sung myself a lullaby in my head and did my routine and thankfully they both went down.”

Williams was clutch coming off the bench.  The Spartans were unable to guard him one-on-one throughout the game.  The Williams and the rest of the second unit controlled the game, outscoring the Spartans’ bench 33-10. Howard Coach Kenneth Blakeney believes that he has “10 starters” on his team and it showed throughout tournament including the championship game.

“All of those guys on the second unit has started a game for us at some point in time.  So, when you’re talking about depth and looking at a situation like a three-game tournament in a 72-hour period for us a little bit longer, we just wanted to continue to try to wear teams down over a 40-minute period and see by the end of the game our strength in numbers work against their lack of strength in numbers.  And luckily, we were very successful in doing that over this tournament.”

Howard had a dominant season.  The Bison won the regular season championship, MEAC tournament championship and they beat the back-to-back MEAC champs, Norfolk State three times this season. 

This was a tough loss for the Spartans.  They seemingly had this game won, being up four (64-60) with 23 seconds left in the game.  Howard guard Marcus Dockery hit a highly contested three to cut Norfolk State’s lead to one (64-63).  After Howard called a timeout, Norfolk State guard Cahiem Brown threw the inbounds pass away for a turnover which gave Howard the possession of the ball with 13 seconds left.  Norfolk State coach Robert Jones has won the MEAC tournament in back-to-back years (2021 and 2022) and now his ball club will miss the opportunity to go to the NCAA tournament.

"To have that moment to not go into the NCAA Tournament is very heartbreaking."

Norfolk State senior guard and MEAC Player of the Year Joe Bryant Jr. fought valiantly.  The Bison shut him out in the first half but in the second half, he led the Spartans to a near victory scoring 18 points in the half.  The same could be said about Norfolk State senior guard Dana Tate Jr. He started the game on fire.  He was in an amazing rhythm in the first half, scoring 15 of the Spartans’ 27 first half points.  He ended the game with 19 points. 

Howard Freshman forward Shy Odom was named MEAC Tournament Most Outstanding Player.  Odom averaged 12.6 points and six rebounds in the tournament.  He was also MEAC Rookie of the Year.  He scored nine points and had seven rebounds in the MEAC Championship game.

In the West region of the NCAA Tournament, the sixteenth-seed Bison will take on the top-seed Kansas Jayhawks, Thursday at 2 p.m. eastern standard time.  The game will take place in the Wells Fargo Arena in Iowa.  Can Howard shock the world?  Only time will tell but it has already been a magical ride for the Bison.