Prairie View — Prairie View senior guard Dontae Horne doesn’t view last week’s move through the SWAC Tournament as a run.
It’s just what the No. 8-seeded Panthers had to do to get to where they wanted to be. So they put together four thrilling wins over five days, knocking off higher seeds like No.1 Bethune-Cookman, No.5 Alabama A&M, and finally third-seed Southern in the SWAC Championship in Atlanta to earn the program’s first NCAA Tournament berth since 2019.
But don’t call it a run. This was destiny, even if Prairie View’s record or consistency through the season didn’t necessarily scream that.
“We kind of knew as long as we hung together and gelled together, we always knew we were a good team,” Horne said to the Defender moments after the Panthers learned they will play Lehigh in a First Four matchup of the NCAA Tournament on Wednesday in Dayton, Ohio, with the winner earning the right to face to face No.1 seed and defending national champion Florida in the first round. “We just had to put it together.”
Put it together, the Panthers did. They made history in the process, becoming the first eighth seed to win four games in the SWAC Tournament.
“We always believed from the start when we first got here,” said Tai’Reon Joesph, the team’s second-leading scorer. “We talked about it when we all came together in the gym and the locker room. We were like, we can win this. We just had to stay locked in the whole season in order for us to do that.”
A couple of rough stretches through the SWAC season made it look unlikely that this season would unfold the way that it has for the Panthers. Suddenly, head coach Byron Smith started pushing all the right buttons to produce key wins, beginning with the Jan. 31 home win against rival Texas Southern, followed by impressive wins over Grambling State and Jackson State, and finally the season-ending victory over TSU to complete the season sweep.
Yeah, the Panthers were just an eighth-seeded team after the regular season ended, but they played like one of the better teams in the conference. They have won nine of their last 10 and are entering the NCAA Tournament on a seven-game winning streak.
The Panthers and the second-seed University of Houston are the only Houston men’s teams that are a part of the field of 68.
“It says a lot. It says a lot about this coaching staff, says a lot about the kids,” said Prairie View athletic director Anton Goff, who can now brag about being in the rare air of having a SWAC Championship football program and men’s basketball team in the same school year. “And we had a couple of different losing streaks in there, which made us be eighth. But we were super competitive all year.
“For us to put it together when we needed to put it together shows great resolve and fortitude from these guys.”
It also shows how masterful a coach Smith is. He has cobbled together an 18-win season under some enormous restraints, beginning with being a program that doesn’t benefit from a dime of NIL money.
That has forced Smith to work magic with a roster that flips almost every year because he is forced to cast his rod too often to come up with fifth-year senior guys who are pretty much out of options and nearly out of eligibility by the time they land on the Hill. His top two scorers and two of the better players in the SWAC this season, Joseph and Horne, are perfect examples.
“It’s tough. It’s definitely not an easy road that we have to go,” Smith said. “But you do the best that you can, and you control what you can control.”
That’s precisely what Smith did last week because he entered last week’s SWAC Tournament on an expiring contract that looked like it might have meant the end of his nine-year head coaching tenure at PV.
“It’s big time. We talked all year about this team having the talent, having the makeup to be in this tournament. . I’m super excited to walk through the door with these guys and having a chance to play in the prestigious tournament, the NCAA Tournament.”
Byron Smith
He went into last week with 14 wins and needed 17 in order for an automatic one-year extension clause to kick in. Friday night’s semifinal win over Alabama A&M guaranteed Smith another year.
Saturday’s championship win over Southern and the reality of an NCAA Tournament berth should initiate a conversation about a multi-year contract extension soon.
Goff sounded like a man super excited about the direction Smith has the Panthers moving in, especially considering the injuries Smith has had to work around, including Joseph, the one-time leading SWAC scorer, who was slowed considerably by an injury late in the season.
“It says he knows what buttons to push and when to push them,” Goff said. “It’s as simple as that. He had to navigate through some injuries. When you have the leading scorer in the SWAC go down and then find another guy to replace him, then figure out a way to get that young man back in the flow. He did a heck of a job.”
Smith has felt the pressure, but he has been guided by the desire to give his players the best coaching and the best experience he can. Then let the chips fall as they may.
“You keep your head down. You focus on trying to get better every day, because this is what the Good Lord has given me,” Smith said. “I nurture it, I’m going to take care of it, and I’m just really trying to be the best basketball coach that I can every single day.
“I really believe as any coach in this conference. If I have the opportunity to have some of the fruits, then I think you can see us being in the position each and every year.”
Smith declined to speculate on his future; instead, he kept the focus on his players and the opportunity in front of them.
“Everybody has to think about themselves, but if I were the type of person who doubted God…,” he said. “What happened this week in Atlanta, that confirmed that God is watching over Byron Smith.”
