Harris and his Howard teammates will tip off the 2026 Men’s NCAA Tournament playing University of Maryland-Baltimore County in Tuesday’s first game.
Ose Okojie and Harris have now been part of three Bison teams in four seasons to reach the tournament and are making their second trip to Dayton in three seasons.
The “dream factory” as the Howard program refers to itself has been built in a style more often seen in the pre-name, image, and likeness era of collegiate athletics.
Multiple players sticking it out with one school and getting rewarded for helping a program which won five games in its first two seasons under head coach Kenny Blakeney in becoming the MEAC power in his seventh season.
“They are able to position themselves to make phone calls for the next 30 to 50 years with our Howard community that will pick up the phone and certainly help them in any way possible,” Blakeney said.
“Howard is a university of dreamers.”
They will be playing a program that lived an NCAA Tournament dream in 2018.
Credit: Steven Wright
Credit: Steven Wright
UMBC was the first program to win as a 16-seed over a 1-seed in tournament history. That moment is etched in each player’s minds who enter their facilities and see a wall completely covered by a Sports Illustrated cover calling them the “Sweetest 16″.
While they have 10 newcomers on the roster, they still for the most part need to recruit as if NIL deals do not exist.
Jim Ferry, a former Duquesne and Penn State head coach who last coached in the tournament with LIU Brooklyn in 2012, remarked Monday how they have several players without NIL deals who play basketball just to play.
“We’re not a big NIL money team,” he said. “A lot of these Division II kids aren’t asking for money. I’m out with these guys, some kid calls up or an agent calls up and says, ‘well, it’s going to cost this much.’ All right. Good. I hang up and say good luck.”
Ferry does have multiple guys on his roster in at least their second season with the Retrievers this year, but he wants more players to follow the lead of junior Ace Valentine and accept challenges rather than run from them.
“I think kids need to learn from what Ace did. He took the criticism. He understood what needed to be done, worked his tail off, came back, and oh, by the way, look what happened,” Ferry said. “He was able to lead a team and a program to one of the greatest years in the history of the school because he didn’t run away from things that weren’t good and try to patch it by just running away.”
Texas and NC State meet for the second time this season in the second game Tuesday. Both come in with first-year coaches showing they are comfortable reworking rosters in the NIL era.
Sean Miller is back at UD Arena for the second straight year. He took Xavier to the tournament in his second year-one with the Musketeers in 2023 and led Texas to its second straight bid into the First Four this season.
Miller said he knows that what was is now no longer in the new age of college athletics. Any issues building from day one need to be identified immediately.
“What works best for us to be the best that we can be at the University of Texas, it might be different for somebody else at a different program or different area of the country,” Miller said. “I think it’s just a moving target, and there’s a lot that goes into it, a lot of thought.”
He brought multiple players with him from Xavier, including Dailyn Swain from Africentric in Columbus.
NC State had to pull double-digit players out of the portal for first-year head coach Will Wade.
Wade is taking his fourth program — VCU, LSU and McNeese State the others — to the dance. It’s the second time in three seasons he has his team dancing during his initial season leading a program.
Credit: Steven Wright
Credit: Steven Wright
He said putting together rosters on the fly doesn’t allow for much research into whether a player may be as complete of a fit as they would want.
“It’s a lot more challenging the higher level you go to because there’s less and less players that kind of gel through the filter that can play for you and make an impact,” Wade said, who was an assistant during VCU’s initial run at the First Four in 2011. “We have some limitations, but we’ve got some great, great stuff too.
“It’s certainly a challenge when you have to go get bulk players. I think it’s a lot better when you’ve only got to get three or four.”
All four teams that will be playing Tuesday forged their own paths in the offseason in similar and different ways.
All for the same dream of playing in the NCAA Tournament.
“You participate in March Madness, that goes down in the history books,” Harris said. “We call it basketball immortality.”
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