BALTIMORE, Maryland — Juan Dixon won his first career game as a Division I men’s basketball head coach on Monday night, leading his Coppin State Eagles to a double-overtime victory over Florida A&M. Just 48 hours earlier, after his team had blown a late lead against Savannah State to lose its 17th straight game, Dixon rubbed the bags under his eyes and stayed on message. He reminded his group of how difficult it is to win in college basketball, a sermon he has repeated on loop for much of the past two months and reinforced with stories of his time as a player at Maryland.Winning in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference is especially difficult. Dixon’s team traveled more than 12,000 miles to play its 15 nonconference games, all losses by an average margin of 22.9 points. When Coppin State finally did make it to the MEAC conference opener, an eight-point loss at Norfolk State last week, its four-hour return bus trip was doubled and became an all-nighter because of a snowstorm in Virginia. In Game No. 17 — the Eagles’ third home game of the season — they played in front of 624 fans.
“We just haven’t been in enough close games to know how to win,” Dixon said.
It is a shared struggle for Division I programs at historically black colleges and universities, where resources continue to be severely limited and upward mobility for coaches remain almost nonexistent. Most schools have no choice but to stack their nonconference schedules with “guarantee games” against cash-rich Power Five schools, essentially trading losses for money that will help keep their programs and athletic departments afloat.
CONTINUE READING
No comments:
Post a Comment