WASHINGTON — This was supposed to be the year.
The secret from the hilltop leaked out last season due to an unforeseen set of circumstances. Injuries to several key members of Howard’s basketball team left James “J-Byrd” Daniel as the team’s lone go-to scoring option, a role he happily ran with all the way to becoming the country’s leading scorer. With Daniel returning for his fourth year alongside fellow seniors Marcel Boyd, Soloman Mangham, Damon Collins, Tyler Stone and redshirt Junior James Miller, this was Howard’s best chance to show D.C. and the outside world how much it had grown, that it was ready for a run to March Madness, for its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1992.
The Undefeated knew. ESPN’s race and culture site started a web series to follow the team this season. With four straight games in a week-and-a-half’s time against other local schools, the nonconference schedule was rife with potential drama. But what was supposed to be a chronicle of Daniel and company’s ascent to college basketball relevance has been something entirely different to date.
Before the campaign could even begin, Daniel went down with a high-ankle sprain and has not played yet. A late-December return looks like the best case scenario for the starting point guard, but Howard’s injury concerns run far deeper.
Boyd hasn’t played since the Georgetown game on Nov. 27 with a foot injury. Miller posted back-to-back 30-point performances against Georgetown and American, emerging as another potential weapon for Nickelberry. Then he, too, went down with a wrist injury in the team’s game against Maryland after 12 scoreless minutes. He could be out another month.
On Sunday, head coach Kevin Nickelberry had to choose which banged-up player to start against George Washington, Collins or junior guard Dalique Mingo. He went with Mingo, bringing Collins off the bench. The latter lasted just five minutes before rolling an ankle, coming out at halftime on crutches with an ice pack wrapped over the injured area.
“This heralded group of seniors have only played together in 37 games in four years,” said Nickelberry after Howard’s 79-62 defeat, where he lost his fourth starter this season. “Hopefully we can get these guys back on the floor for the stretch run.”
While he’s happy with his team’s fight amid the circumstances, it was impossible for Nickelberry to hide his disappointment at not having the team he wanted for the showdowns against Georgetown, American, Maryland and GW, having come away with just one win.
“After this year, I’m going to be miserable at this opportunity we wasted,” he said. “The team that we had on paper, coming into the summer, was a team that could have gained some respect for Howard.”
The injuries have changed the story for The Undefeated as well. Jerry Bembry, who heads up the editorial side of the project, was at Sunday’s game, video camera in hand. While the footage of game highlights will no doubt be part of the next episode of “View from the Hilltop,” so will the footage of Collins loping his way on crutches through the bowels of the Smith Center.
“We have to readjust what we’re doing every week,” said Bembry of the project. “Now it’s a story of injuries. It’s a story of tragedy, with a kid losing his mom just before Christmas.”
Yes, the season has been a story of loss off the court as well. The night before Howard’s game at Maryland last Wednesday, senior guard Kofi Andoh’s mother passed away following a three-year battle with cancer. Not normally a starter, Andoh took the court in College Park to begin the game. He scored Howard’s first points.
Of course, even if Howard had somehow won all those local games, there is no guarantee the Bison would have made the NCAA Tournament as an at-large bid. The path to the dance for teams in the MEAC always leads through the conference tournament, with only the one automatic bid available to the champion.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t perks to doing well in the conference regular season. In addition to first-round byes, the top two seeds play their quarterfinal games the Wednesday of Championship Week, giving them a day off before the semifinals that the lower seeds don’t enjoy. Last year, Howard struggled its way to the 10 seed, where the Bison were knocked off by seventh-seeded North Carolina Central.
This year’s path may go through NC Central again. The Eagles own a 6-4 nonconference mark heading into Tuesday’s tilt at LSU, having already taken down Missouri in Columbia and having pushed Ohio State to the wire in a six-point loss in Columbus. None of that will matter for the Eagles come March either. Only one MEAC school will get the chance to play on the sport’s biggest stage.
Whenever rain clouds form over a narrative, the race to trace the silver linings begins. But one doesn’t have to squint too hard to see where Howard’s early adversity may have offered the Bison a chance to realize the full potential of their team. Mangham has emerged as a steady scoring threat, shooting 41 percent from beyond the arc. And freshman Charles Williams has emerged as a potential difference maker, setting a career high with 21 points against Maryland, then pouring in 27 just three days later against GW.
“You just see his confidence go up and up every game,” said Bembry of Williams. “They have another scoring option if Miller doesn’t come back early.”
The Bison have three winnable home games before hitting the road for three tough, late-December road tests at Old Dominion, VCU and Harvard. When Daniel, Boyd, Collins and Miller do return, if Howard can get back to full strength and up to speed, the Bison may finally realize the potential Nickelberry saw when he recruited this now-senior class years ago.
“By league play, I expect to have them all back,” Nickelberry said of his team, which will open its MEAC slate with Florida A&M at Burr Gymnasium on Jan. 4. “I wouldn’t want to play us. We’re going to be a scary team.”
