The college basketball offseason is here, and we decided to have some fun over the next few months, ranking ALL 364 teams in D1. Number 169 is Texas Southern basketball.
Before you say we’re crazy – or that all of this is up for debate, let’s go over the very intricate process of how we came to this conclusion. We took a very statistical approach – with the help of Chat GPT – taking into consideration everything from March Madness wins and finishes, to AP Poll appearances, to conference players of the year. And then, a good friend of ours, Scott Blanchard, took our approach to the MAX.
Click here to visit the FIRST article, which explains how the formula works!
Here’s the breakdown of Texas Southern basketball!
NCAA Tournament Success
- Championships: 0
- Finals appearances: 0
- Final Fours: 0
- Elite Eights: 0
- Sweet 16s: 0
- NCAA wins: 3
- Bids: 11
Consistency Over Time
- Wins per season: 14.9
- Bids per season: 0.22
- AP Polls: 0
Player Quality & Talent
- All-Americans: 0
- NBA players drafted & played: 3
- Conference Players of the Year: 12
Conference & Other Success
- Conference regular season titles: 12
- Conference tournament titles: 11
- NIT titles: 0
- Other tournament titles: 0
Overall scoop on Texas Southern basketball
Only a few HBCU schools remain in these rankings, and Texas Southern basketball has been hands down the most dominant of the bunch of the past decade and change.
In fact, even a step further back, in the past 17 seasons, just six times have the Tigers finished with a losing record. Unfortunately, that does include the past four seasons. But together, head coaches Johnny Jones and Mike Davis led the Tigers to seven NCAA Tournaments in a 10-year stretch. The Tigers were known for playing an insane non-conference slate and being favored to win the SWAC, which more often than not, they wound up doing.
In fact, they’ve taken 12 SWAC regular season titles and 11 conference tourney titles. They’ve also had a dozen former SWAC Players of the Year:
- Harry Kelly (1981, 1982, 1983)
- Randy Bolden (1997, 1998)
- Travele Jones (2011)
- Omar Strong (2013)
- Aaric Murray (2014)
- Madarious Gibbs (2015)
- Derrick Griffin (2016)
- Zach Lofton (2017)
- Jeremy Combs (2019)
While the current era (despite the past few seasons) has been legendary for its competition, the era under head coach Robert Moreland was also outstanding. In 25 seasons, Moreland won 350 games and took them dancing three times, on top of multiple regular season chips. Moreland actually was the coach before they went DI, starting in 1975. He passed away in 2024 at age 85.
Obviously, HBCUs are tough to grade. In the current era, they are far from the majority of other mid-majors. But it wasn’t always the case, and recently, they have been a step above the competition. They’ve also got a new head coach, Shyrone Chatman, as Jones is off to LSU in an assistant role. We’ll see if Chatman can lead them to another winning season and keep them as a team to beat in the SWAC.