Despite NAIA title game loss, Langston University still has a lot to celebrate

Langston University’s quest to become the first historically Black college to win a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics national championship since 1977 fell short, as the Lions lost to Freed-Hardeman University 71-67 on Tuesday night at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri. 

It wasn’t the result the Lions (35-2) hoped for in their first NAIA championship appearance, but for Oklahoma’s only HBCU, it signaled the turnaround coach Chris Wright had hoped for when he took the reins of the program in 2022.

“Langston is a special place. It’s a place where I know that we can win and win big every single year,” Wright said after the game. “That’s the expectation, and so this is not our last deep run [in the NAIA tournament] here.”

Langston’s appearance in the NAIA championship game marked the second time in three years an HBCU made it to the national title game. The other program, Talladega College, also was coached by Wright.

Before joining the Lions, Wright was fresh off of three consecutive NAIA tournament appearances, including a 2022 runner-up finish. Langston had won one game in two seasons before his arrival, compiling a 1-37 record from 2020-21 to 2021-22.

Most of the candidates Langston athletic director Donnita Drain-Rogers interviewed for the coaching position mentioned a multi-year process to turn the Lions’ program around, compete for conference championships and qualify for the NAIA tournament. Wright sold her on the vision of winning immediately and didn’t waver from that goal, she said.

“He’s got great players, but Coach Wright is just phenomenal with building a culture, and it has been amazing to sit there as athletic director and just see how he’s created this masterpiece in two years,” Drain-Rogers said. “The support has grown for the men’s basketball [team], [and we’re] getting good [attendance] numbers for regular-season games. Our fans are traveling well. We have a lot of people that believed in them.”

Wright describes his culture as tough, consistent and disciplined basketball with a special emphasis on defense. He aims to not just recruit NAIA players but players who have produced at higher levels. He and his staff recruit players talented in offensive play and train them in defense.

“We just feel like being at this level for a lot of years, we kind of have a blueprint that’s made [us] successful,” Wright said. “We knew that we could get talented guys in here and flip the program.”

The program’s transition from one win to 31 in a single season (from 2021-22 to 2022-23) is one of the biggest turnarounds for a collegiate basketball team, putting Langston in the same company as Gannon University, which added 29 wins in one season and is in the NCAA record book for the largest one-year turnaround.

Langston assistant coach Jon Warren, who played for Wright at Central Baptist College and Talladega, has coached under him for four years. Warren remembers the first open gym after Wright’s hire and how the coaching staff worked 10-hour days in the summer of 2022 while trying to figure out how to transform the program.

Based on his experience, Warren knows Wright can recruit and develop players.

“[Wright is] 100% truthful. He’s not gonna fake it. He’s always going to keep it 100 with you, whether you want to hear it or not. You gotta respect that as a man,” Warren said. “Some of the guys buy into it. … We also tell them in the recruitment process you’re gonna have to defend if you want to play here. So it’s no surprise when they get here, and we’re demanding defense every day.”

Senior Cortez Mosley, a transfer from Colby Community College in Kansas, decided to join Langston’s program because he always wanted to attend an HBCU and believed Wright could repeat the success he had achieved at Talladega.

“I’m just grateful to be one of the pioneers and one of the leaders to be a part of this cultural change at Langston, and putting my faith in Coach Wright is really what got me here,” Mosley said. “I’m gonna look back on it and just have so many great memories of the time I spent at Langston. It really was just us versus everybody.”

Mosley finished this season as the Sooner Athletic Conference defensive player of the year for the second consecutive season. As a graduating senior, Mosley hopes his leadership and style of play will set the foundation for next year’s team. 

“Hopefully the team moving forward just knows the importance of defense and knowing that’s what the culture is based on,” Mosley said. “Just defensive togetherness and being tough, not just physically but mentally tough. Going through all the adversity we faced, man, I learned so much in these two years, just staying tough through it all.”

Over the last two seasons, the team has experienced injuries, two players lost their fathers, Wright’s father died and Wright’s 2-year-old son fell ill, which helped put things in perspective for Wright and his team.

“Our program really is built on love. Sometimes it’s tough love,” Wright said. “As a coach, you get what you tolerate. But just demanding excellence out of everyone in our program every single day, it’s not always fun, but we are a tight-knit family. We do this together. And I think that’s been the difference for us.  

“Just how unselfish these guys are, how much they love each other, how much they care about each other. I think that stretches far beyond the basketball court.”

After the tournament loss Tuesday night, Wright reminded his players how they have responded to adversity.

​​”I just told them how much I love them, how proud I am of the season that they had, and just how important it was for us to get all of our seniors to graduate,” Wright said. “That’s a huge victory.”

With two NAIA tournament appearances, two conference tournament championships and a national title runner-up finish since Wright’s hiring, Drain-Rogers believes he has fulfilled his vision of running a winning program.

“I feel like the sky’s the limit for Coach Wright. I hope that he will be coaching Langston basketball for years to come,” Drain-Rogers said. “I’ve been in this business a long time. I personally feel like he’s one of the best coaches in the nation. So, it may be very difficult to keep him, but I feel like he’s forever changed men’s basketball, and basketball period, at Langston University.”

During Langston’s NAIA tournament run, Drain-Rogers and Wright received numerous calls and texts from HBCU coaches and alumni, and multiple social media posts, wishing the Lions well.

“Our players take a lot of pride in being able to represent HBCUs across the country on the stage and this platform,” Wright said. “It’s extremely hard I think for anybody to get here, but when you’re at an HBCU, it really is an uphill battle. … It’s really cool to see the respect that we’ve gotten from so many people across the country.”

The support has meant a lot to the program, especially since Langston’s players were actively rooting for their HBCU counterparts in postseason tournament play.

“I was rooting for Grambling when I saw them playing in their play-in [game],” Mosley said. “When I seen them make it to the tournament, it made me happy, so we’re all one big HBCU family.

“That’s a reason to stay motivated. They don’t really highlight NAIA schools, so hopefully I’ll be a part of something that changes that.”

Most of the players were a part of last year’s team that won 31 games, which was the highest program win total in 10 years. This season, Langston finished with 35 wins.

Several players from this year’s championship team will return next season, including conference player of the year Anthony Roy, and Wright believes there is more success in store for the program.

“That’s our goal every single season, to put ourselves in a position to compete for a national championship,” Wright said. “We know how hard that is to duplicate that, but I know that I’ve committed to doing everything in my power the next 364 days to try to put us in the best situation possible to get back here and to win it.”