Paolini, an Italian with Ghanaian roots, who will be playing in her second Grand Slam final on Saturday despite having never gotten past the second round of a major tournament before her surprising run to the final of the French Open in June.

Short in stature (5-feet-4) and highly energetic, the curly-haired Paolini will likely be a crowd favorite after her gutsy three-set win over Donna Vekic that was the longest women’s semifinal match in Wimbledon history.

Who is Paolini, who will face Barbora Krejcikova on Saturday as Wimbledon crowns a different champion for its eighth consecutive tournament?

Here are five things you should know about Paolini who, after 13 years as a pro, is currently the seventh-ranked player.

She’s “fast because of Ghana.”

Paolini is Italian, born and raised, but as she addressed the media after her semifinal win Thursday, she expressed her pride in having “different bloods in my body,” and gave special praise to her bloodline that descends from the West African country of Ghana.

Her family: Her father, Ugo, is Italian and her mother, Jacqueline grew up in Poland. Paolini’s maternal grandmother is Polish, and her maternal grandfather is Ghanaian.

Paolini, like tennis player Naomi Osaka (born to Japanese and Haitian parents), embraces the multicultural aspects of her background that make her unique.

“That’s a, I think, important part of my life,” Paolini said. “My mom, she’s Polish, but my grandfather is from Ghana. I think I’m fast because of Ghana. 

She’s the first women’s player to reach consecutive French Open and Wimbledon finals in the same season since Serena Williams.

Williams last did that in 2016 when her victory at Wimbledon over Angelique Kerber came a month after she lost her French Open title match to Garbiñe Muguruza.

That 2016 Wimbledon title was the last for Williams at Wimbledon, where she won seven championships.

Since Williams won three of the four Slams in 2015, only Iga Świątek has won multiple Grand Slam titles in the same year (she won the French and US Open in 2022).

Neither Paolini nor Krejcikova have ever won a Slam at Wimbledon, so a new winner is guaranteed to hoist the trophy.

Not only does Paolini join elite company in becoming the first woman since Williams to play in consecutive French Open and Wimbledon finals, she’s also the oldest player (28) to reach their first semifinals in different Slams since 1977.

“Two Grand Slams in a row was crazy to believe,” Paolini said after her semifinal win.

Paolini had never advanced past the second round of a major before this year.

Paolini was ranked No. 31 entering the 2024 Australian Open in January, and even as she got past the second round of a major for the first time in her career by winning her first three matches. Those wins came over players ranked No. 92 (Diana Shnaider in the round of 128), No. 42 (Tatjana Maria in the round of 64) and No. 57 (Anna Blinkova in the round of 32).

No earth-shattering wins there, but it was progress (she lost in the round of 16 to Anna Kalinskaya, ranked No. 75 at the time, in straight sets).

Getting a sniff of her first solid run at a major clearly boosted Paolini’s confidence. She won her first WTA 1000 tournament in February at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, losing only two sets the entire tournament. After Elena Rybakina withdrew from the quarterfinals in Dubai, Paolini advanced to her first WTA 1000 semifinal.

Her run to the finals of the French Open was anything but a breeze as Paolini battled through three consecutive three-set matches (the last one to go the distance was a quarterfinal win over No. 4 Elena Rybakina).

Paolini lost to Swiatek, the top player in women’s tennis, in the French Open final.

Before 2024, Paolini had never won a main draw pro match on grass.

Before this year’s Wimbledon, the WTA posted its top 15 rankings of the most dominant women on that surface.

Ons Jabeur, world No. 10, was first.

Coco Gauff, world No. 2, was 15th.

Swiatek, world No. 1, didn’t make the list.

Paolini, of course, was not likely on the radar.

She entered this year having never won a grass court match in the main draw of a pro tournament, having played her pro career among all levels of pro tennis (ITF events, qualifying draws and WTA tournaments). Her career record on the grass courts at Wimbledon before this year: 0-3.

But there were signs that Paolini might have some success entering Wimbledon as she reached the semifinals on the grass courts of the Rothesay International tournament in Eastbourne, Great Britain (a WTA 500 event), by winning her first two matches.

With the wins at Eastbourne and Wimbledon, Paolini has now won eight of her last nine grass court matches.

“Maybe I didn’t realize before, but my coach was telling me that I could play well here,” Paolini said after winning her Wimbledon quarterfinal match. “I wasn’t believing too much … In Eastbourne. I was hitting the ball well on this surface, moving well. I was repeating to myself, ‘OK, it’s nice to play on grass. You can play well.’ ”

She’ll represent Italy in the Olympics.

Paolini’s rise from outside the top 30 in the WTA rankings at the start of the year to her current position as the No. 7 player in the world. Regardless of the Wimbledon final outcome, she will be ranked in the top 5 next week.

So the next stop for Paolini following Wimbledon will be the 2024 Paris Games, where she’ll compete in singles and doubles (with Sara Errani).

This will be the second Olympic games for Paolini, who lost her only singles match at the delayed 2020 Olympics in 2021 while finishing tied for ninth with Errani in doubles.

The expectations for Paolini will be higher as she’ll enter the games as one of the top players in the world. 

She’ll be one of the favorites to win a medal.

Which would be the icing on the cake to an amazing year where Paolini has gone from a relative no-name player with no consistent track record of winning to the talk of the tennis world as the first Italian woman to reach a Wimbledon final.

“It’s a dream,” Paolini said after winning her semifinal match. “I was watching Wimbledon finals when I was kid, so I’m enjoying it and just living in the present.”

But Mack never knew. 

That’s because instead of relaxing in hotel rooms, Mack was living in hotel parking lots, camping out in the tight back seat of his 2013 Ford Mustang. Tinted windows mostly kept others from discovering his predicament.

“It was embarrassing, and it’s probably the only time in my life I lied to my mom, telling her I was in places where I wasn’t,” said Mack, who used public restrooms and the locker rooms of the venues he played to survive the nearly two years of transient life. “My dad was the only person who knew, and he checked in on me all the time.”

That nomadic career surely makes what will happen on Thursday morning sweeter for Mack, when he’ll hear his name announced at the start of the 124th U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 (8:57 a.m. ET start time, 10th hole).

It’s a moment he dreamed of when he first picked up a golf club at age 6, and a milestone — playing in a major — he imagined when he turned pro would have occurred a lot sooner.

“You always dream of playing in something bigger,” Mack said. “I always wanted to play in the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship, and being able to play in my first major championship is going to be special for me and my family.”

Mack, who played at Bethune-Cookman University, joins the list of alums of historically Black colleges and universities to play in the U.S. Open, including Adrian Stills of South Carolina State and Jim Thorpe of Morgan State University. Mack played at Bethune through 2011 under Gary Freeman, who coached the BCU men’s and women’s teams to a combined 10 PGA Minority Collegiate Golf Championships.

“He was like a second father to me,” Mack, who is from Flint, Michigan, said of Freeman. “That was big being away from home to go down to Daytona Beach.”

After starting his career on mini-tours where he played across the United States and spent a lot of his stops in his back seat, Mack earned a spot to play on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica in 2018. But the thrill of playing in the glamorous locales of Columbia, Guatemala and Jamaica waned when the math stopped mathing (he earned $766.62 for a T46 finish at the 2018 BMW Jamaica Classic).

Throughout his career, Mack has had to hustle to continue to pursue his dreams. He debuted on the PGA tour in January 2021 at the Farmers Insurance Open (he was a substitute for his friend, Kamaiu Johnson, who had to give up his sponsor exemption after he tested positive for COVID-19), and later that month Tiger Woods awarded him a spot in the 2021 Genesis Invitational under the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption. In four PGA events in 2021, Mack earned $28,343.

Another big accomplishment for Mack was earning a card on the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour. That proved to be a one-year opportunity as Mack eventually lost his tour card at the end of the season with earnings of $45,872 in 20 starts. 

What guarantees the return of Mack each year to play golf are the lifelines provided by the mini-tour events, where winning earns him enough to play another week.

One of the most important mini-tour is the Advocates Professional Golf Association, a tour formed in 2010 with a mission to bring greater diversity and help developing golfers, particularly African Americans, earn spots to play at golf’s highest level. Mack returned to the APGA this season and is the first player from that tour to earn a spot in the U.S. Open.

“This is a milestone,” said Kenyatta Ramsay, the PGA Tour vice president of player development who has helped bring APGA tour events to major golf venues. “Give a lot of credit to the APGA for providing their guys with the opportunity to get competitive reps and make enough money to invest back into themselves.”

Mack’s ability to invest back into himself set up the moment on June 3 during what’s billed as “golf’s longest day,” where 687 amateur and pro golfers played in 10 Final Qualifying events for 44 available spots in the U.S. Open. Mack was playing at The Bear’s Club in Jupiter, Florida, where 73 players played 36 holes for five U.S. Open spots.

Mack entered the last of his 36 holes needing a birdie to force a playoff. He reached the par 5 in two, and two-putted from 40 feet to reach the playoff where three golfers played for the last U.S. Open spot.

Mack was one of two golfers to advance to the second playoff, where he hit a tough bump-and-run chip to within inches of the hole to make par (his opponent, Brendan Valdes, three-putted for bogey).

It was a moment that screamed for an emotional response from Mack who, instead, had his head down as he walked to shake the hand of Valdes before later sharing an embrace with his brother Alex, who was carrying his bag.

“He carried my bag on the Korn Ferry Tour, so it was a full circle moment of doing it together,” Mack said of his brother. “We later went to our parents’ house and had a nice celebration.”

Mack’s even-keeled temperament might be his biggest asset when he’s announced to play his opening round Thursday.

“Just standing on that first tee, I know I’m going to be nervous kind of like anybody in that situation,” Mack said. “But once I hit that first tee shot, I’m going back to work and hoping I can do something great from there.”

Mack has definitely faced many challenges to reach this moment, and enduring those nights in the back seat of the Mustang can only help him embrace what he’s about to face in his first major.

“My dad always told me ‘don’t ever give up,’ ” Mack said. “People go through things every day. I’ve been through a lot, and I would do it again just knowing the love I have for this game.”

“I was in the weight room and I could barely lift a 15-pound dumbbell to do a full split squat,” Brown recalled. “I had lost a lot of weight and when I looked at myself in the mirror I was kind of unrecognizable. And I just started crying.”

The issue that left Brown questioning whether she’d be able to continue her pro career: Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that causes inflammation of the digestive tract. After being limited to just 11 games last season and undergoing three surgeries (with a fourth surgery necessary in the future), Brown, the daughter of former NBA player Dee Brown, is averaging 8.5 points and posting career bests in rebounds (2.6) and assists (3.4) this season.

“Lexie was off to a tremendous start last season,” Los Angeles Sparks head coach Curt Miller said following a recent game. “I’m excited about — if we can keep Lexie healthy — what type of offense we’ll have. I’m excited to coach her in the prime of her career.”

Brown, in her seventh WNBA season, was playing the best basketball of her career in 2023. She scored a then-career-high 26 points in the fourth game of the season (she hadn’t scored 20 in a game since the 2019 season) and appeared on the verge of having a career year.

But signs of physical problems emerged early in 2023 training camp when what should have been normal practice sessions proved difficult to complete.

“I’m usually in the gym doing extra workouts,” Brown said. “But I just didn’t have any energy.”

She initially chalked up her lack of energy to what she described as “super intense” practices under a new coach (Miller was hired before the 2023 season). “One of the harder training camps I’ve been in since joining the league,” Brown said. “I just attributed it to being overwhelmed.”

As her symptoms worsened, Brown visited several doctors who were unable to figure out why she was having problems. Excruciating pain almost forced her to skip a June road trip, but she managed to power through to have her second-best scoring game of the season (21 points, on 7-of-10 shooting) against the Minnesota Lynx on June 11, 2023.

The day after the Sparks’ road win at Dallas on June 14, 2023, Brown saw another doctor in Los Angeles.

“The day after I saw that doctor, I was in surgery,” Brown said. “Everything happened quickly.”

Brown was told by her surgeon there was a possibility she had Crohn’s disease. “I had heard of Crohn’s disease,” Brown said. “But, honestly, I thought it was something that old people got.”

An attempted comeback a month after that surgery lasted just three games. After Brown scored a season-low two points in a July 25, 2023, loss against Indiana, she decided to shut it down for the season, still not 100% sure what was wrong. The surgeon mentioned it might be Crohn’s disease, but there wasn’t a diagnosis at the time.

The idle time sent Brown down a terrifying research rabbit hole about Crohn’s.

“Every time I had a new symptom, I would go straight to Google and be like, ‘OK, what does that mean?’ ” Brown said. “I was on Reddit and WebMD and there were a lot of situations and opinions and worst-case scenarios that were a little hard to deal with.”

Those searches offered suggestions on what to eat and what not to eat, leading to a diet and a significant weight loss — 30 pounds — off her 5-foot-9 frame. “Finally my mother told me, ‘get off Google, girl, you’re gonna drive yourself crazy,’ ” Brown said. “She told me to stop thinking about other people’s experiences, and to just tackle my experience head-on. That’s what I decided to do.”

As Brown sat out the latter part of the season — she only played in 12 games in 2023 — she wondered about her future.

“I kept thinking, ‘what am I gonna do? Am I gonna be able to play basketball again,’ ” Brown recalled. “I had worked so hard to get to that stage in my career, and I was playing well. My mind was all over the place.”

The official diagnosis of Crohn’s disease came in November 2023, which gave Brown a sense of relief.

“I had already assumed what it was, so it didn’t catch me off guard,” Brown said. “It was nice to have an answer.”

Having the diagnosis gave Brown and her doctors a plan on how to fight the disease. Not long after Brown started taking medication for Crohn’s, the symptoms began to subside. 

While Brown began to feel better, there were still questions about her future. 

“I was thinking what am I going to do,” Brown said. “I had worked six years to get this WNBA body, and it was gone. My mind was really all over the place. I was thinking am I going to play basketball again.”

It was a relief when the Sparks showed they had Brown’s back, signing her to a two-year extension on Feb. 6. Weeks later, Brown was back on the court with Athletes Unlimited, where she finished the season 10th in the overall leaderboard.

“I’m really happy with how my body feels right now,” Brown said in the midst of the AU season. “I’m way stronger than I thought I was and I’m happy to get back to the point of playing well.”

Brown, who is helping raise awareness for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, has had three surgeries so far with a fourth on the horizon.

“I’ll wait until after the W season,” she said. “It’s nothing dire and if it doesn’t happen after this season, it could be in a year or two. But there is one more surgery left.”

To be back in her happy space on the basketball court, Brown is grateful that in the toughest journey of her life the Sparks had her back. 

“I have so much appreciation for the Sparks organization because they believed in me at a time where they didn’t have to extend me,” Brown said. “I wasn’t feeling well last year and was playing well. I promised the team that, now that I’m feeling better, I would keep playing at that high level.”

“Anxiety, man, it’s like going crazy,” Latimore said during that visit to Sherman Park in St. Louis in November 2023. “The last time I was here, I almost lost my life.”

That last time, Oct. 10, 2023, was the day Latimore, a volunteer assistant coach of the St. Louis Badboyz, excused himself from his team’s practice to speak with the father of one of his players. Latimore and the father previously had a disagreement about his 9-year-old son’s playing time.

Words were exchanged as Latimore approached the parking lot (Latimore said he had a firearm with him because of the crime in the area, and that he handed it to a friend before reaching the father).

“That’s when I saw his gun,” Latimore said. “I tried to run, but I ain’t that fast.”

The first shot penetrated Latimore’s back, sending him to the ground. Three of the shots, in his forearm, buttocks and stomach, left him critically wounded. (Daryl Clemmons was arrested and charged with first-degree felony assault and armed criminal action. St. Louis police would not release the police report of the shooting to Andscape, saying the incident was “an active investigation.”)

“I’m still in shock,” Latimore said, walking gingerly near the spot a month after the incident. “I think I’m a fair coach. But it’s a job within itself when you have to coach the kids and manage the parents.”

Welcome to the world of youth sports, where instead of the kids being cheered and celebrated the atmosphere is becoming more and more dominated by adults gone wild.

Occasionally, the adults behaving badly carry marquee names including: 

• Cam Newton, an NFL MVP, who apologized for his fight with coaches during a 7-on-7 football tournament in Atlanta in February.
• Matt Barnes, an NBA champion and current podcast host, who was accused of shouting expletives at a referee during his son’s high school basketball playoff game before putting his hand on the shoulder of a high school student broadcaster. The student broadcaster, Jake Lancer, claimed Barnes threatened to “slap the s—” out of him. Barnes, fired from his NBC Sports California gig after the incident, said he put his hand on Lancer and “it was almost like I was talking to my son.”
• Mike McCarthy, the current coach of the Dallas Cowboys, who had a complaint filed against him in 2018 for verbally abusing officials following his stepson’s high school game.

More often, the out-of-control adults are people you’ve never heard of exhibiting shocking behavior in spur-of-the-moment attacks that have caused serious physical harm and — in extreme cases — death.

• In Florida, a 63-year-old umpire was knocked out in 2023 by the father of one of the high school players who told police he was “defending his kid.”
• In Washington, a 72-year-old referee suffered a broken nose and cheekbone in 2021 after he was shoved to the ground by a 31-year-old former Division I basketball player who was unhappy that his son was being separated from another player during an altercation.

Uncivil parents and adults in youth sports represent more than just viral videos. Their actions have led to adults being banned from games, referees abandoning their profession, and emotionally damaged kids who often walk away from sports for good.

Can this current climate of out-of-control adults in youth sports be fixed?

“Honestly, I don’t think so,” said Tracy Murray, a 1995 NBA champion who now helps coach his brother’s AAU program in California. “They are too far gone, and I don’t think they can be reeled back in.”

A youth basketball coach for more than 45 years, Todd Taylor vividly recalls the stress-free era of coaching when parents would drop their kids off at the camps he ran.

“Most times, I’d never see the parent,” Taylor said. He began coaching in Jamaica, Queens, the New York City neighborhood where he grew up, at the age of 17 in 1979. “Back then, parents were looking at our basketball teams as a place where their kids would be off the streets.”

The changes Taylor sees in parents today are the result of the repositioning of youth sports from a safe place where kids were dropped off to have fun to high-pressure environments where parents often closely monitor their child, and their investment.

“Now, kids come to practice with their grandparents, their aunts, little brothers, sisters, everybody,” Taylor said. He is a retired New York City police officer who coaches an Under-9 team in the esteemed Gauchos program in New York City. “Kids today are seen as a meal ticket.”

And parents see more opportunities with the increasing stream of NIL deals that have turned college athletes into millionaires, and have even been extended to kids before high school. When parents see a 13-year-old girls soccer player inking an NIL deal with Nike, and a 9-year-old youth football player signed to a six-figure NIL deal with a sports agency, the thought that is increasingly entering their minds is, ‘Why not us?’

“When Alex Rodriguez signed his [$252 million] contract, my mother said to me, ‘if I knew this, I would have been out there throwing a baseball with you,’ ” Taylor said, laughing. “But it wasn’t about [money] for us. It was about recreation.”

In this new era where 8-year-old players compete for national rankings, and coaches and personal trainers are convincing families their child has a chance to cash in, many parents believe the hype.

“People are telling parents that their 6-year-old kid can go Division I or go pro,” said Mike Sharrieff, the football coach at Johnson Middle School in Washington. “How can you tell a kid at 6 that he can do that?

“To the father who has never played big-time sports, he’s thinking those people know what they’re talking about.”

The bigger the lie the parents hear — as they’re being sold promises of fame and riches — the more they believe. As the parents dream big, the kids often become collateral damage.

“I’m one of 4,700 players in the 75-year history of the NBA to play in the league, so the chances of getting there are slim to none,” said Murray, a UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame inductee who played 12 years in the NBA. “Instead of putting their eggs into one basket with dreams of making the league, the parents should be thinking about getting their kid a college scholarship so they can start their adult life debt-free.”

Those parents, according to New York AAU coach Shawn Simms, believe constant demands of their kids to be better are coming out of a place of love.

“But they don’t understand that their love is outweighing the understanding of the game, and their love for their child is actually hurting them,” said Simms, who has been coaching for 30 years. “Not only are the kids messed up mentally, but they wind up falling behind in life because they’re looking at their parents and saying, ‘what can I do to please this person?’ ”

Having worked as a youth soccer coach for more than 30 years, Northern Virginia resident Vince Villanueva and his family find themselves at a crossroads about his path.

“One daughter tells me, ‘you love doing this, this makes you happy,’ ” Villanueva said recently. “The other daughter says, ‘it’s time to leave. It’s too risky.’ ”

Three decades of coaching soccer didn’t become risky for Villanueva until a Saturday afternoon in August 2023 when he filled in to coach a friend’s U-9 boys soccer game. During the game, Villanueva approached the boy to ask if he was OK to return to the game. The boy’s father said no, and witnesses told police that when Villanueva turned to speak with the father he was hit in the head with a metal water bottle. (Villanueva agreed to an interview, but said he could not speak specifically about the incident because of a pending court case.)

“I had a blowout of the orbital wall,” Villanueva, who does not remember being hit, told Andscape. “Back in October, doctors explained to me that my eye was healing, but healing in the wrong spot and causing double vision. Now I’m back to normal.”

Villanueva’s life has returned to normal, but the violent behavior of youth sports parents has continued. The viral videos of fights at youth sporting events are so disturbing that a youth soccer referee’s attempt to shame parents has attracted more than 100,000 followers to a Facebook page.

For Taylor, parents’ behavior has gotten so obnoxious that he established a rule not to coach the kids of his friends. That rule stems from a bad experience 20 years ago when he coached the 13-year-old son of a childhood friend who, growing up, possessed spin moves that made him virtually unguardable.

“We’re at a game at Roy Wilkins Park in Queens, and every time his son gets double-teamed I’m telling him to pass,” Taylor said. “But his father’s on the other side of the fence telling him ‘don’t pass the ball, do that spin like I taught you.’ ”

Taylor, seeing the kid he’s coaching confused by the conflicting directives of two adults, was furious.

“I turned around and told him ‘shut the f— up — that’s what you do but he can’t do that,’ ” Taylor recalled. “Parents have to let the kids play the game correctly.”

Villanueva recalls a girls U-9 soccer game two years ago where the constant screaming from overzealous parents left players from both teams and the young referee in tears.

“I gave the parents a warning: No more talking, just let them play,” Villanueva said. “It wasn’t even five minutes later and they were back at it, so I called the referee and the other coach over and said we forfeit, the game’s over.”

Robert Bannon, a sports official in southeastern Pennsylvania, recalls a mother who got so heated after being ejected from a game that “she went to her car, got a tire iron and started swinging.”

In more than two decades of officiating basketball, soccer and softball from the high school to the preteen level, Bannon said, there’s an age group who he believes he has to be the most alert about.

“I don’t have any problems with those games with the older kids,” Bannon said. “But I have a body cam that I keep in my ball bag that I [pull out] when I’m scheduled to do a 10- or 12-year-old event.”

It’s not the kids that Bannon fears, it’s their parents. And Bannon has a theory why.

“If I work a tournament with 16- or 18-year olds, the parents or grandparents aren’t really there and they’re having fun,” Bannon said. “But with the little ones, the parents are there. And it’s almost as if they’re living through their kids.”

What you see in today’s NCAA transfer portal with the constant movement of student-athletes is just an extension of what’s been occurring for years in youth sports. Parents and kids, unhappy with playing time, simply move to different schools and different teams in a never-ending search for stardom.

“I had a father pull his kid off one of my teams because he felt I should have been doing more for his kid,” Taylor said. “So, he started a whole new team built around his son so he could get the ball and be the man. All that’s doing is teaching the kid to be selfish.”

In the end, it’s the kids who suffer.

Many of those kids wind up leaving the games they play, as indicated by a report released in January by the American Academy of Pediatrics that found that 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13. Villanueva recently witnessed that abandonment firsthand when he sent out alerts to players and parents at the beginning of soccer season.

The response from one of his players surprised him:

“I’m done.”

He reached out to the player, a 15-year-old girl, who was one of his best players and had a solid chance to play collegiate soccer at the Division II level, to find out why she didn’t want to be on the team. Her response: “ ‘Every game I can hear my dad yelling at me,’ ” Villanueva recalled. “ ‘And when we get in the car after the game, the whole ride home I’m being berated about how poorly I did.’ ”

So, when she turned 15, an age where she felt she could make her own decision about sports participation, she quit.

“I coached her for six years, she was always energetic,” Villanueva said. “But over the years you could see it waning. When we had that discussion, I knew.”

Solomon Alexander, director of the St. Louis Sports Foundation, which operates under the St. Louis Sports Commission, said the problem of kids giving up sports completely will only worsen in this current climate of parents gone wild.

“I taught math for 10 years, and one thing I never heard was a kid getting all A’s and someone saying, ‘there’s the next Einstein,’ ” Alexander said. “But if an 8-year-old lucks up and hits a 3, the parents are saying, ‘that’s the next king, that’s the next LeBron.’ ”

That’s an added burden that few kids, especially preteen and teenage kids, can shoulder.

“Parents need to stop putting pressure on these kids, because nobody knows what they’re going to be,” Alexander said. “Kids are looking at sports as something ‘mom and dad want me to do.’ When that happens, you have rebellion, and you have kids that walk away from sports for good.”

Which, if kids abandon sports, could deny fans a chance to see future greats.

“We’re moving to the point where the next Serena Williams didn’t pick up a tennis racket,” Alexander said. “Because when she did this other thing, her parents didn’t yell, and it was something she could have on her own.

“Kids will move away from youth sports because they’ll feel it’s not worth the trouble.”

On the day Latimore was shot just off the Sherman Park parking lot in 2023, the kids on the field nearby panicked: Some ran, others hit the ground (as they are taught before the season in a situation with an active shooter), and all were frightened.

“We were in the middle of our normal practice, so when we heard the shots we didn’t know where they were coming from,” said Dejuan Bolden, who was also an assistant coach with the Badboyz. “We teach the kids not to run, and we reiterate that because we live in a dangerous city.”

Latimore was lucky. After arriving at the hospital in critical condition, he was discharged within a week. Seeing him at Sherman Park almost a month after the shooting one never would have guessed that he was standing in a place where he nearly lost his life.

Latimore’s visible scars tell his story. The kids present that day left the field minus any physical scars, but one wonders about the long-term effect of the violence they witnessed.

As Latimore looks down at the area where the shots that hit him were fired, he notices a shell casing on the ground. Picking up a stick, he poked the fragment.

“Different shell casing,” Latimore said. “Not from what hit me.”

A month after he was shot, Latimore was unclear whether he would return to coaching. But he’s was back on the sideline with a new team he helped launch, the North County Mustangs, in preparation for the 2024 season that begins in June.

“It’s bittersweet and I still have a lot of anxiety,” Latimore said of returning this season to coach. “But I’m happy to be back. Plus, my son just turned 4, and he’s going to be out here playing with the 5- and 6-year-olds.”

While approximately 10 players from the Badboyz have joined Latimore on the new team, there were several parents who decided not to follow him to the new program.

“We understand why,” Latimore said. “If they want to come, our door is open. We want to let everyone know that our main priority this year is safety.”

As Latimore spoke by phone recently while at his new team’s practice, there was a sense of normalcy heard in the background with the sounds of enjoyment from the kids a half a year after — for some of them — gunshots ended their season.

“We just wanted to have a fresh start,” said Latimore, whose new team holds practices about six miles north of Sherman Park. “We have the kids in a safe place and a better overall environment.”

“Just to know that we went out there and upheld the standard, and that they were there every step of the way,” Castle said in the UConn locker room after the game, wearing a championship towel and title hat on his head, “it really means everything to us.”

As UConn won its sixth NCAA championship in Monday’s relatively easy 75-60 win over Purdue, Castle had 15 points and five rebounds and was named to the All-Tournament team to cap a brilliant Final Four weekend where he averaged 18 points (on 50% shooting) and five rebounds in two games.

But Castle’s biggest contribution over the weekend was his defense, which was key in smothering the Purdue guards and holding the Boilermakers to only one 3-pointer made in Monday’s championship. Castle, for most of his 33 minutes on the floor, picked up Purdue guard Braden Smith in the backcourt and hounded him into a 4-of-12 shooting game.

“Our game plan was to wear their guards down and keep them off the 3-point line,” Castle said. “We knew they couldn’t beat us by making just 2s, so the plan was to limit them from taking 3s.”

Castle was right. Center Zach Edey, college basketball player of the year, scored a game-high 37 points. Those were the conceded 2s. But tightening up on the perimeter allowed UConn to hold the Boilermakers to their season low on 3-point makes (one).

“We didn’t care if Zach took [25 shots] to get 30, 35 points,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said. “This whole game plan was no [Braden] Smith, no [Fletcher] Loyer, no [Mason] Gillis, no [Lance] Jones. Keep that collective group under 18, 20 points as a group, they had no chance to win, no matter how well Zach played.”

On a team that dominated opponents this season in becoming the eighth team to win back-to-back titles (Florida was the last to win consecutive championships in 2006 and 2007), Castle was the only five-star recruit on UConn’s roster.

What made Castle so good as a freshman? He came in with complete respect for UConn and its accomplishment in winning last year’s title, and never demonstrated that he had the divalike baggage that some highly acclaimed athletes often bring with them.

“[His parents] kept him humble all the way through in a sport where we put these kids on a pedestal way before they should be,” Hurley said. “The way he handled the recruiting process, it didn’t turn into a fiasco.

“He saw our culture, he wanted to be coached hard. It’s just been the perfect situation for him ’cause his draft stock is right where they want it to be right now, and he’s won big. You can still do both, and everyone can win.”

While Castle said after the game that it’s too soon to decide his future and the possibility of being one-and-done, that draft stock Hurley spoke about is sky-high with expectations that he would be a lottery pick if he decided to enter this year’s NBA draft. Castle is ranked 14th in ESPN’s latest 2024 NBA draft rankings.

“A lot of NBA teams come through and watch us practice where he has the ball in his hands even more, where he gets to show all the things he can do that you don’t always see on game night,” Hurley said.

Castle is likely to show those skills on the NBA level next season. For now, on Monday night, he was simply a freshman in awe of having his first college basketball season capped by a national championship.

“In high school I never got a chance to win a state championship or any big championship,” Castle said. “To win it all, it’s such a crazy feeling. I’m just trying to let it all soak in.”

“Purdue had the No. 1 player [Zach Edey], all of these pieces and it was closer to home,” Jones, who grew up in Evanston, Illinois, said. “It wasn’t a difficult decision at all.”

While the dominant storyline of this year’s NCAA championship game features an old-school battle of dominant bigs — the 7-foot-4 Edey facing 7-2 Donovan Clingan of UConn — Jones hopes to step into a strong supporting character role as the Boilermakers attempt to win the school’s first NCAA national championship.

Jones scored 14 points in Purdue’s 63-50 semifinal win against NC State on Saturday. The importance of that stat: The Boilermakers are undefeated this season (15-0) when he scores 14 or more points in a game.

“Oh, really?” Jones said in the locker room after the NC State win when told of his scoring impact on the team’s success. “My confidence shooting comes with the work I put in. It’s just about me trusting my work and just letting it fly, knowing that my teammates have confidence in me.”

Jones is used to being a scorer. At Southern Illinois, where the offense flowed through him for four seasons, he was one of the all-time leaders in points (1,514, 12th in program history) and 3-pointers made (205, third in school history).

But Painter didn’t recruit Jones to be a scorer at Purdue, where the offense flows through Edey. He was attracted by the defensive toughness of Jones, who was named to the all-defensive team of the Missouri Valley Conference in each of his last two seasons.

“We put Lance on points [point guards]. We put him on 2s [shooting guards]. At times we’ll put him on a 3 [small forward],” Painter said. “So that flexibility really helps. He’s been great for us.”

Equally impressive to Painter? That Jones didn’t enter the transfer portal with his hands out.

“He didn’t talk about name, image, and likeness one time when he made a decision,” Painter said. “His thing was winning. His thing was getting into the NCAA tournament, trying to win a Big Ten championship. That jumped out right away.”

There’s always a risk of fitting in, especially transferring from a mid-major to a major program expected to compete for a national championship. What helped Jones acclimate to Purdue was the team’s four-game, 11-day trip over the summer to Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.

“We spent a lot of time together, and I was able to get the extra work with the guys and see how they worked out,” Jones said. “So, yes, I think that trip through Europe helped me.”

That trip made him feel a part of the team.

Tragedy struck Jones and his family two weeks after the team returned to Europe when his father, Robert Jones, died after a brief illness. On the day of his funeral, a chartered bus full of Jones’ teammates pulled into Evanston.

That solidarity, from a team that he hadn’t even played a game with, made Jones feel like he was a part of more than a team.

“What does that say about Purdue,” Lance’s mother, Katie Jones, said in an interview with the Big Ten network. “They are family.”

Jones will be surrounded by family — and his father’s spirit — when he steps onto the arena floor at State Farm Stadium.

“I knew we had a chance of winning the Big Ten and making a run in March Madness,” Jones said. “But to get here, to the championship game? This is something I could never have imagined.”

It was in the gym at York Preparatory Academy in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where Hamrick, then the school’s coach, witnessed the carnage Burns would leave behind on the daily.

“DJ would hurt a lot of people, and it would be bloody,” Hamrick recalled. “Bloody noses, busted lips, banged-up bodies. The funny thing about it? He never got hurt.”

In an era of basketball where the style of play has been shifted by analytics — and analytics dictate that the 3-point shot is king — this year’s Final Four features four teams taking an old-school approach. From 7-foot-2 center Donovan Clingan of UConn to 7-4 center Zach Edey of Purdue, the tallest player in Big Ten history, size matters in the quest for this year’s NCAA title. For NC State, Burns — who is 6-9 and 275 pounds — will be on display this weekend in Phoenix in one of basketball’s most uniquely shaped packages.

Unlike Clingan (listed at 280 pounds), and Edey (300) whose weights are stretched out over taller frames, Burns is a wide body whose listed dimensions are the latest example of the creative license teams take with their athletes. He can’t outjump his opponents (“you can’t get a foot under there, just not enough room,” Hamrick said), or outrun them and would fail most anyone’s first impression of a basketball player.

But to NC State, who will play Purdue on Saturday, the run-up to the school’s first Final Four since 1983 would not be possible without Burns.

“DJ is one of those guys that I don’t think there’s an answer for,” Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland said. The Red Raiders lost to the Wolfpack in the first round. “There’s no way to replicate what he’s doing.”

While Burns has emerged as one of the tournament’s biggest stars in leading NC State’s improbable run (the Wolfpack ended the regular season losing seven of nine games before the current nine-game winning streak), his play has been consistent all season and he’s averaged 13 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. His 29 points against Duke on Sunday in the Elite Eight was his best scoring game in his two years with the Wolfpack and it was a performance so impressive that it made Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić late to his postgame news conference.

“He’s amazing,” Jokić said. “I think he’s so skilled, especially lefty … seems like teammates like to play with him.”

While Jokić is a bit taller than Burns and a bit more svelte, the traits the two bigs share include:

• Superior footwork around the basket, with the uncanny ability to score. “We’re watching film and he hit a spin fadeaway kind of like Escalade from the AND1 Mixtapes,” Marquette guard Tyler Kolek said. Marquette lost to NC State in the Sweet 16.
  
• Incredible court vision and the ability to deliver pinpoint passes. “You kinda gotta pick your poison with them,” McCasland said, “because DJ Burns is such a good passer.”

The common thread with Burns, which was further solidified this season with NC State’s Final Four run, is if you commit to building around him, you can win.

He won at York Prep when Hamrick, upon meeting a 6-7 kid who played multiple instruments (piano, upright bass, tuba and the saxophone), decided to build his high school team around an eighth grader.

“He was playing with mostly juniors and seniors and he wasn’t initially the first option,” Hamrick said. “But late in the season we played a team with mostly seniors and DJ was impossible to stop. Those older guys started feeding him, and that’s when we decided to build around him.”

He won in AAU playing for the Georgia Stars, when he was coached by Chris Williams.

“I had seven kids in the top 100 in the country,” Williams said. “And all the guys knew that if DJ got touches, we were going to be successful.”

He won at Winthrop University, where he was the Big South Player of the Year (2021-22) and Big South Freshman of the Year (2019-2020) while helping the team to the 2021 NCAA tournament. And he’s now a winner at NC State, where coach Kevin Keatts had to change his approach to accommodate Burns’ unique skills.

“He changed me. I’ve never thrown the ball inside as much as I have in the last couple of years,” Keatts said March 31. “Great touch. Great footwork.

“I don’t know how you guard him. I hope nobody figures that out. I’m glad he’s here. I’m glad he’s on my team.”

So are NC State fans in Raleigh, North Carolina, many of whom showed up at Applebee’s on Tuesday to meet the DJs — DJ Burns and teammate DJ Horne.

“As far as the whole fan favorite thing, yeah, I have definitely noticed it,” Burns said March 28 when asked about NIL opportunities tied to his popularity. “It’s been kind of crazy going from having almost zero media attention to a camera following you around all day. It’s been cool.”

And it’s just rewards for a player who Hamrick immediately knew was different upon their first meeting.

“A bit shy then, but the same smile you see today,” Hamrick said. “Coaching him in a big game for the first time, he was a kid who just didn’t understand at the start. To him it was just a game, and all he wanted to do was play.”

When Hamrick was a coach, he read the poem If by Rudyard Kipling to his teams. He shared it with his players because someone shared it with him when he was a kid. He never knew whether that poem registered with his players until a game when Hamrick, believing his team wasn’t getting calls from officials, completely lost it.

“I’m losing my mind and I got a tech, but I wanted it — all of it — and kept at [the officials],” Hamrick said. “And then all of a sudden somebody lays hands on my shoulders and whispers in my ear the opening lines of the poem: ‘If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.’ “

Hamrick turned around and saw Burns.

“I was speechless, and I just shut my mouth and sat on the bench,” Hamrick said. “He got the whole lesson and I didn’t.

“At that moment, I knew that he gets it. He’s special. And he’s going to be OK.”

From the chatter overheard by Centennial High School coach Josh Giles, the game would feature a master class from the nation’s top-ranked player: Camden’s guard D.J. Wagner of New Jersey. It would be a class where Giles’ guy, Centennial guard Jared McClain, would be thoroughly schooled.

“Everybody was like, D.J.’s so much better, that’s all we heard all game,” Giles recalled. “Everybody’s looking at Jared. He’s always smiling and dancing and singing on TikTok. They’re saying he’s soft and he won’t have a chance.”

Wagner’s line that day: 26 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals.

McCain’s line: 26 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals.

“We won, and Jared played the No. 1 ranked player in the nation to a statistical standstill,” Giles said this week. “And that is what sets him apart. At the end of the day he’s usually going to find a way to win.”

McCain will put that knack for winning on display Friday when Duke, the No. 4 seed in the NCAA men’s tournament South Regional, faces No. 1 seed Houston. Houston brings the nation’s best defense into the highly anticipated Sweet 16 matchup in Dallas. McCain brings a hot-shooting hand that delivered 30 points and a Duke NCAA tournament record eight 3-pointers to lead Duke’s well-balanced attack in Sunday’s second-round win over James Madison.

It was an impressive NCAA tournament weekend debut for McCain that brought Duke coach Jon Scheyer to a level of appreciation that Giles had coaching McCain over four high school seasons.

“Jared, he’s built differently,” Scheyer said in the midst of McCain’s NCAA tournament debut in Brooklyn, New York. “He’s made for these moments.”

McCain’s freshman season at Duke was a tremendous success. He’s averaged 14 points and 5.0 rebounds, and was named to the ACC All-Rookie team on March 11.

But McCain’s popularity, in many ways, is bigger than basketball.

His combination of talent, sense of fashion and good looks has caught the eye of media personality Kim Kardashian, who has included McCain among the college athletes signed to her line of men’s clothing.

His penchant for singing led to comedian and actor Ken Jeong (a Duke alum) highlighting his talents this week on Twitter.

And his popularity on TikTok (2.5 million followers and more than 128 million likes) has led to his new status as a hitmaker. The song he featured in a series of videos (including the video Jeong retweeted) helped an obscure Irish singer/songwriter go viral.

“I started in COVID when I knew I couldn’t be made fun of,” McCain said before the season during an appearance on The Brotherhood Podcast. “I saw a lot of basketball players on TikTok and I was like, ‘I can do that. I can do that better.’ ”

The result has been a series of videos where McCain sings, dances and just generally acts goofy. He delivers with a million-dollar smile and painted fingernails that made him not only a social media star, but a high school NIL star as well.

“My daughters were in high school and they think he’s a dork,” Giles said, laughing. “But he’s a genuinely good dude that everybody who comes in contact with likes.

“Don’t let the dancing and the finger painting fool you.”

While McCain has embraced his TikTok stardom, feeding the social media beast and pushing his NIL partners daily, he’s a hooper at heart and takes the game seriously.

That commitment came when McCain was in the eighth grade and his family moved from Sacramento to Southern California to attend Centennial with a twofold mission: to be closer to their son, Jayce McCain, who was playing at Cal State San Marcos, just north of San Diego; and to put Jared McCain in a basketball environment that would maximize his potential. Serious pursuits of basketball greatness now require full-time trainers, which is how Shea Frazee (Houston Rockets guard Aaron Holiday is one of his clients) entered McCain’s world.

Frazee’s first impression of McCain, who had worked with McCain and his brother off and on before taking on the full-time responsibility?

“Slow-footed, no muscle definition,” Frazee recalled. “But, as an individual and as a human being, Jared had some qualities that I really hadn’t seen before. A natural curiosity and a willingness to try to figure things out.”

It was about that time that Giles heard that McCain, who already had a reputation as a baller, had moved to the area.

“First thing I heard was that he was a chubby kid,” Giles said. “When he got here, I remember saying ‘he sure looks good to me.’ ”

Even though Giles had a senior-heavy team returning that season, he realized almost immediately that McCain would play on the varsity.

“I remember an early game where — while he wasn’t playing — he was asking our assistant a ton of questions like, ‘when we blitz the ball screen from the weak side, do I have to tag the roller here?’ or ‘when the coach calls this, does he want me to be over here?’ ” Giles recalled. “He’s asking so many questions that the coach turned around and said, ‘kid, can you shut up?’ ”

McCain would not be deterred. He continued to ask questions, applying what he learned to his play, which increased in his freshman year. Giles was so impressed by the play of McCain and Donovan Dent and Aaron McBride, the two players he entered high school with, that he got rid of several of his top players (two of whom eventually earned major Division I scholarships after finishing their high school careers at other schools) the next season.

“We were in a rough spot in our program where we won a lot of games, but we weren’t good enough to beat Sierra Canyon or Mater Dei,” Giles said. “I felt guys were coming here saying, ‘what can Centennial do for me?’ So, I told them they could still attend Corona Centennial, but they just couldn’t play basketball. And we replaced them with Jared, Donovan and Aaron — we felt that good about them.”

“During the COVID shutdown you were either going to take advantage of not being in school and really work to get better, or you were going to sit around and not do s—. There were a few guys who worked their butts off. Jared was one of them.” — Josh Giles

The coronavirus pandemic that delayed the start of the 2020-21 season proved pivotal to McCain’s development as a basketball player and as a social media personality.

During the coronavirus lockdown, McCain posted singing and dancing videos to TikTok, a platform that exploded in popularity during the pandemic and was instrumental in keeping people, especially young people, connected.

As McCain sang and danced his way through the launch of his social media journey, he also dedicated himself to his basketball workouts and the weight room.

“During the COVID shutdown you were either going to take advantage of not being in school and really work to get better, or you were going to sit around and not do s—,” said Giles, who put his team through workouts on the Zoom platform during the lockdown. “There were a few guys who worked their butts off. Jared was one of them.”

When the team gathered to work out and practice together after the initial doom and gloom phase of the pandemic, the Centennial coaches were flabbergasted.

“I said, ‘look at the size of Jared,’ ” Giles recalled. “He put on 15 pounds, and it was all muscle. Sturdy, superstrong. That’s when you really started to see the difference.”

The added strength provided McCain a full arsenal of skills: a midrange jumper and ability to finish at the rim to go along with his silky jump shot. As a sophomore, he emerged as a key component to the Centennial team that in 2021, with Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James and rapper Drake sitting courtside, defeated Sierra Canyon (and James’ son Bronny) for the first of three straight CIF Southern Section Open Division titles.

2021 proved to be McCain’s coming-out party. Two months after winning that CIF title, he went to Peach Jam and averaged 20.5 points on the way to winning the MVP award at the prestigious Nike EYBL tournament.

“Peach Jam was when I realized he could excel at any level,” Frazee said. “I had seen him make the shots he was taking, but never on a platform like that. Jared’s on the best team in his age group [Team Why Not] and is, arguably, the best player on the floor.”

The more Centennial won, the more McCain’s basketball profile rose. But he was becoming equally as popular on TikTok, which led to McCain’s senior season when basketball and social media collided.

“We played a preseason tournament game at Bishop Gorman [Las Vegas] and we were trapped in a room for over a half hour because there were so many people outside,” Giles said. “We had to create a wall to get out and I told him to put his hood on, keep his head down and keep moving forward.”

Security traveled with the team following that incident, and in the games that followed the school’s principal, who traveled with Centennial, directed fans after games to line up in an orderly fashion for a meet-and-greet.

“I would take the team to dinner while he stayed at the gym to sign autographs and take pictures with his fans,” Giles said. “And then the principal and athletic director would bring him to where we were eating. He was a one-person boy band.”

When NIL became available, McCain struck gold as advertisers hungered to ride the wave of his popularity.

“All the attention, all of the money, he could have been an absolute prick on campus,” Giles said. “He never changed. He talks to everybody. Every person at Centennial High School that ever had an interaction with Jared McCain absolutely loves him.”

Shortly after McCain dropped in his sixth straight 3-pointer late in the first half of Sunday’s second-round win against James Madison, he turned in the direction of the Duke bench and offered a simple shoulder shrug. It channeled NBA great Michael Jordan’s reaction to his sixth 3-pointer in the first half during Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals.

“I think so, I’m pretty sure that’s what I hit,” McCain said, when asked if he was channeling his inner MJ. “I wasn’t really conscious out there.”

That stat line he posted on Sunday — 30 points and five rebounds — was impressive. McCain joined NBA players Zion Williamson, Tyreke Evans, Kevin Durant and retired player Carmelo Anthony as the last five freshmen to post 30 points and five rebounds in a men’s NCAA tournament game.

“He’s not fazed by anything,” Scheyer said of McCain. “I’m just really proud of his effort and just him being different.”

That difference in McCain and all that goes into his social media stardom also brings a certain level of hate that extends beyond the normal loathing athletes get when they attend Duke.

As the hate mounted this season, former North Carolina Tar Heel John Henson chimed in during The Field of 68: After Dark podcast.

“Bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, if I played and Jared McCain was singing on Instagram and all that stuff, man, we would have Reggie Bullock and been like, ‘Look, man, put him in a locker.’ Man, this dude is not getting off on us … Like, what kind of dawg is he? Is he a pit bull? Or is he a golden retriever? We can’t call everybody dawgs. But he’s a good player.”

That hate unveils one of McCain’s greatest superpowers: In an age where many young people wilt under social media pressure, he doesn’t care.

“Why am I being hated on? All I’m doing is dancing and smiling and trying to spread some positivity,” McCain said at the team’s preseason media day. “I’m just being me, so I can’t listen to other people’s opinions. It’s just them wanting to project their insecurities, them wanting what I have.”

Here’s one thing that McCain has had at every level of his basketball career. 

Success.

“He won in high school, a McDonald’s All-American, a USA Basketball gold medalist, all he’s had is success and he worked hard for it,” Giles said. “Even when he went to Duke, people asked ‘do you think he’ll play?’

“One day he’s gonna play in the NBA. Sooner rather than later.”

The agony of the 2023 SWAC tournament championship game loss is what the five returning seniors carried for an entire year.

“They remembered that pain,” Grambling coach Donte’ Jackson said Tuesday at his team’s NCAA tournament First Four news conference in Dayton, Ohio. “They didn’t want to lose another time around … when you get those moments, you’ve got to take advantage of them.”

The Tigers clipped the nylon following Sunday’s win over league rival Texas Southern and are looking to extend the school’s magical season in Wednesday’s opening-round game against Montana State.

For Grambling, reaching the men’s NCAA tournament for the first time is culmination of a lengthy journey.

“Still kind of at a loss for words,” Jackson said Tuesday at the first news conference held by a Grambling coach for an NCAA tournament game. “It’s been going so fast. Just happy to be here, ready to compete, ready to do what we do and kind of go from there.”

“I always say when you walk at Grambling, you know you’re at a football school. We’re trying to set the tradition where basketball is going to be great for a long time.” — Donte’ Jackson

When you think of Grambling you think of the legends that represented football, from the late Eddie Robinson, one of greatest football coaches of all time, to Doug Williams, the first African American quarterback to play in and win a Super Bowl.

Jackson is attempting to put his stamp on Grambling as a legit basketball program. In his seven years at Grambling, he has had his team knocking on the door — three appearances in the tournament semifinals, and one trip to the tournament title game before this year — before the 2023-24 breakthrough in which the Tigers beat Alabama State, Bethune-Cookman and Texas Southern on the way to the league title.

“Phenomenal opportunity for us to show our brand of basketball,” Jackson said. “I always say when you walk at Grambling, you know you’re at a football school. We’re trying to set the tradition where basketball is going to be great for a long time.”

It will be even greater, for Grambling and Jackson if he can lead his team to victory on Wednesday where he launched his college head coaching career at historically Black Central State University, located east of Dayton.

“Dayton is my second home. I met my wife here, I had my kids here, I spent 15 years there from 1999 to 2014,” Jackson said. “Ticket requests, sheesh, I had to make a Facebook and Instagram post. I have limited, limited tickets.”

The Tigers enter the First Four as one of the hottest teams in the country, winning nine of its last 10 games including the three games in the SWAC tournament. 

“I think, honestly, everybody started to click at the right time,” said guard Jourdan Smith, who played a year at Coastal Carolina before arriving at Grambling in 2022. “I think everybody bought in at one time. I feel confident coming in.”

Grambling felt confident going into the SWAC tournament a year ago, which it entered as the No. 1 seed. The sting of losing the 2023 title game as a top seed will never leave.

Smith and his teammates, both current and former, remain bonded in their grief.

“Winning this year, it was really for those guys from last year,” Smith said. “After we won, I called a lot of those guys, and they called me on the phone and said how proud they were. It’s more than just this team, we’re playing for last year’s team as well.”

But the reality of going into the NCAA tournament First Four in a season where Howard has played 13 different starting lineups will likely differ from what he desires.

“I’ve had to have amnesia a little bit, just not knowing from day to day who’s going to be at practice, how we would practice, and who would be ready to play,” Blakeney said after the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament championship win over Delaware State on March 16. “I’ve never seen anything like this before in college basketball.”

Yet, somehow, Howard won its second straight MEAC tournament title, the first time the Bison have gone back to back in more than 40 years (the Bison last won two in a row in 1980 and 1981).

“Our year has been somewhat fascinating and challenging,” Blakeney said Monday in Dayton, Ohio, shortly after his team’s arrival. “We’ve played this year with probably the most injuries of any team in the country — we lost 82 games due to injuries with guys that are in our rotation. For us to be able to be here and be a part of March Madness is truly a blessing.”

Key players who have missed a large number of games this season due to injuries and COVID-19 include:

• Forward Shy Odom, the MEAC Preseason Player of the Year, who played in just 19 games this season and missed the MEAC tournament.

• Guard Jelani Williams, who was expected to play big minutes this season after starting 16 games last season. Williams, whose career at Penn was delayed after a series of ACL tears, was playing major minutes for the Bison before his season ended prematurely in December 2023 after nine games when he suffered a broken wrist.

• Forward Dom Campbell, a starter at the beginning of the season who hasn’t played since Howard’s regular-season loss at Norfolk State on March 7. He’s been hampered by a multitude of injuries.

The impact? An increased demand on available players, who are being relied on to play major minutes (four Howard starters played 35-plus minutes in the MEAC title game victory).

“This year was really rocky for us in a lot of ways,” graduate forward Seth Towns, who scored 16 points in the MEAC championship game to earn a spot on the All-MEAC defensive team, said. “For us to come together at the end of the year is a testament to the leadership of the coaching staff and the incredible guys who were never willing to give up.”

The journey of Towns is the epitome of the team’s never give up mentality, having played his first college game at Harvard during the 2016-17 season. Injuries (back and knee) and the lost season of the coronavirus pandemic has seen Towns play through three presidential administrations (beginning with President Barack Obama, and now in Joe Biden’s presidency) and there’s an outside shot after four years of basketball (two years at Harvard, one year at Ohio State and now at Howard) he might have another year of eligibility.

“I’ve been out for so long, and I really didn’t know if I was going to be able to come back,” Towns said. When the season began, he didn’t know if he would be eligible to play this season. “And to do this at an HBCU and put on for the entire diaspora, it’s the most humbling, incredible blessing that I’ve ever experienced.”

Towns, for all the injuries over the course of his career, started 28 of the 31 games he played at Howard this season. The rash of injuries has led to the next-player-up mentality for the Bison.

And no player was able to capitalize more than senior guard Jordan Hairston.

It was a struggle for Hairston — from mid-December 2023 through the Feb. 3 game against Hampton when he made an eight-minute cameo — to get minutes. But Hairston, who came to Howard after early career stops at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and UNC Asheville, scored in double digits in seven of Howard’s final eight games, including a team-high 18 points in the MEAC title game that ended with him winning the MVP award.

“There were other guys who were better than me, and those were the guys to go with,” Hairston said of his role as mainly a spot player earlier in the season. “For me, it was sticking to my principles and being coachable. From that, my coaches trusted me and my teammates trusted me.”

While Hairston was named the MVP of the MEAC tournament, the most important player was junior Bryce Harris who, while listed as a guard, played more like a football linebacker as he bullied his way to the rim for 16 points to go with seven rebounds and a game-high four blocks.  

“We probably play one-on-one a half hour or an hour every day … and it’s just me and you, no rest, no foul calls,” Harris said of the bully-ball tactics that resulted in him becoming the team’s top scorer and earning All-MEAC first team honors. “It’s either you gotta get a stop, or I gotta get a bucket.”

The ability to overcome the the challenges this season that ended with the second consecutive MEAC tournament win (and the second season Howard has eliminated the league’s top seed, Norfolk State) is a testament to the program transformation that has resulted since the arrival of Blakeney.

Blakeney has gained his footing after two rough opening seasons (including the 2019-2020 post-coronavirus pandemic season when five-star center Makur Maker made headlines in the midst of a short-lived career at Howard), leading the Bison to three straight winning seasons and two straight NCAA tournament appearances.

“We never talked about defending [the title],” said Blakeney, who won two NCAA titles playing under the legendary Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. “We talked about pursuing it.”

Mission accomplished. Blakeney was been assisted by a Howard administration that allowed him to hire a talented staff of coaches, including associate head coach Rod Balanis, who came to Howard in 2021 after 20 years as an assistant at Notre Dame, and assistant coach Tyler Thornton, who was a graduate manager at Marquette after his playing career at Duke.

The result has been a collection of players who play as a cohesive unit with complete trust in each other and are fun to watch.

“I’m just so proud of these guys and their character and their work ethic,” Blakeney said. He put his hand on Towns’ shoulder. “To do what they do at this level, on this stage and consistently, it’s special.”

What so far has been the highlight of that magical season, the MEAC title, is what led to Towns clutching the MEAC championship trophy so tight after the victory.

“What it means to put this uniform on, to play for the name on the front of my jersey gives me goose bumps,” Towns said. “To represent the Mecca is an incredible honor.”