This is an analysis piece.
An abrupt, disappointing ending to South Alabama’s 2023-24 basketball season has left plenty around the program scratching their heads, wondering when the Jaguars might finally break through and become a serious conference championship contender again, the way they were in the 1980s and 90s.
The Jaguars lost 76-71 to Georgia Southern (a team they had beaten by double digits during the regular season) in their opening game of the Sun Belt Conference tournament in Pensacola, Fla., on Thursday, ending their season at 16-16. It was yet another frustrating finish for a program that has shown improvement in recent years under coach Richie Riley, yet has been unable to get over the hump.
The 41-year-old Riley is six years into his tenure at South Alabama and does not have a Sun Belt regular-season or tournament title to his credit. He is 110-83 overall and 57-50 in the Sun Belt at South Alabama, and has finished at or above .500 in each of his six seasons.
That’s definitely an improvement over the five straight losing seasons the Jaguars endured under Matthew Graves from 2013-18, but also probably not the heights expected when Riley was hired after leading Nicholls to a Southland Conference regular-season championship in just his second season. In his introductory press conference in March 2018, Riley vowed to “hang banners” and “win championships,” but so far has been in serious contention to do so only twice.
*** PAUSE ***
We should stop right here and note that there is no reason to believe that South Alabama athletics director Joel Erdmann is considering moving on from Riley, who has two years left on a contract that was extended in April 2022. In nearly all instances since he became AD, Erdmann has let a coach’s contract expire before making a change.
The lone exception came in 2020 with football coach Steve Campbell, who was fired with one season left on his contract and received a buyout of around $300,000. But Campbell was well under .500 during his South Alabama tenure and had never received a contract extension; Riley has received two.
*** UNPAUSE ***
In fairness, this was probably always going to be a transitional season for the Jaguars, who lost their top four scorers — Isaiah Moore, Kevin Samuel, Owen White and Greg Parham — from last year’s Sun Belt tournament runner-up. However, promising freshman Jamar Franklin transferred after the season to Georgia Southern, at best a peer program (he started vs. the Jaguars on Thursday but played only nine minutes and did not score).
There were other mitigating factors as well. Guard Maxwell Land — expected to be the Jaguars’ primary perimeter scorer after averaging more than 12 points per game on the low-major level at St. Francis (Pa.) in 2022-23 — suffered a season-ending knee injury just nine games into the season (he was averaging 10.1 points per game at the time of the injury).
Senior Judah Brown, a key perimeter scorer during last season’s tournament run, suffered a high ankle sprain in mid-November and missed nearly two months. He never regained his pre-injury form, and had just two double-digit scoring games during the conference season.
Riley also missed two games — losses at Texas State and at Louisiana — in early February following the death of his mother. The Jaguars immediately began to play better upon his return, winning six of eight games before Thursday’s tournament exit.
“This year’s been rough,” Riley said Thursday. “We’ve been up and down, we fought, we came out of here with 16 wins. We had a lot of deficiencies and we had some injuries early, but our kids never quit. We’ve got great kids in our program, really good human beings, and they fought and really gave everything they have. … It’s disappointing when you go home after your first game down here (in Pensacola), but they turned a year that could have been incredibly bad into a year that had some really good moments.”
Nevertheless, South Alabama is now up to 16 straight years without reaching the NCAA tournament. Since the Jaguars’ first “March Madness” appearance in 1979, the previous long dry spell was eight seasons between 1980 and 1989.
South Alabama last won the Sun Belt Conference tournament in 2006, but won the regular-season title and earned an at-large NCAA berth in 2008. (Incidentally, that 2008 season was the last time the Sun Belt was more than a “one-bid league” for the NCAA tournament.)
The Jaguars have had two close calls vis-and-vis the postseason in Riley’s six seasons. First was 2020, when USA finished the regular season in second place and was arguably the hottest team in the league heading into the Sun Belt tournament, which was canceled after the quarterfinal round due to the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
Then there was 2023, when South Alabama entered the Sun Belt tournament as the No. 8 seed with a 16-15 overall record (same as this year). The Jaguars won three straight games before losing a closely-contested tournament final to Louisiana, 71-66.
South Alabama has largely stagnated while their fiercest Sun Belt rivals have thrived. In addition to the Ragin’ Cajuns, Southern Miss won the conference regular-season title in 2023, while Troy won 20 regular-season games for the third straight season this year and is the No. 3 seed for the Sun Belt tournament.
Of the 13 other men’s basketball programs in the Sun Belt Conference, only four have gone longer than South Alabama without appearing in the NCAA tournament. Georgia Southern last made the “Big Dance” in 1992, Louisiana-Monroe in 1996, Texas State in 1997 and Arkansas State in 1999.
Georgia Southern and Arkansas State have first-year coaches this season, while Texas State won the Sun Belt regular-season title in 2022. ULM is the outlier, as the Warhawks have had just four winning seasons out of 14 under long-time coach Keith Richard (and none since 2019).
The Jaguars have won 20 regular-season games under Riley only once — that truncated 2020 season. The 2022 team finished with 21 wins, but two of those were in The Basketball Classic, at best a third-tier postseason tournament.
South Alabama has won multiple Sun Belt tournament games twice in Riley’s six years — in 2019 (his first season) and in 2023. The Jaguars lost in the quarterfinals in 2021, but were “one-and-done” in both 2022 and 2024.
So what are the realistic expectations going forward? With so much offseason roster-building yet to come, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to say at this point if the Jaguars will be better next year.
South Alabama loses five seniors this season — starters Tyrell “Turbo” Jones and Samuel Tabe, sixth man Isiah Gaiter (the team’s leading scorer much of the year) and key role players Brown and Marshall Kearing. But what the Jaguars must keep from happening is players with remaining eligibility leaving for either NIL opportunities or larger roles with other teams.
Freshman Marcus “Smurf” Millender might be Riley’s most important “recruiting target” of the offseason. The 5-foot-11 Texas native enjoyed arguably the best season of any South Alabama freshman in the Riley era, playing in all 32 games (with 15 starts) and averaging 9.7 points, 2.9 rebounds and a team-best 3.3 assists per game.
Forwards Thomas Howell, Elijah Ormiston and Julian Margrave are also eligible to return next season, with Margrave — a deadly 3-point shooter at times — the best of that group. Freshman guard Ethan Kiser is also set to return, as is Jacksonville native John Broom, who redshirted this past season.
The Jaguars did not add any high school or junior-college players during the November signing period, and don’t have any such players committed for the spring signing session, which begins April 1. More likely, Riley will have to do what he’s done since he arrived in Mobile — reload his roster through the transfer portal once it opens for 45 days on March 18.
“We’ve got to do a good job getting out there and working (in recruiting) and we’ve got some time to do it,” Riley said. “I think we’ve done a good job of that, but we have to keep finding a way. Nobody’s gonna feel sorry for you; our circ*mstances aren’t going to change overnight. I mean, it is what it is. We’ve got to go get really good players. We’ve got to find a way to coach them up and get them better.”
*** PAUSE AGAIN ***
There are those who might argue that South Alabama should try to build up its program by “recruiting locally,” as football made a concerted effort to do under former coach Kane Wommack. That’s simply not realistic in basketball, in which the Mobile area has never been particularly talent-rich.
Unlike football and baseball, the professional basketball ranks have never been littered with Mobilians who excelled at the highest levels of their sport. Mobile has produced exactly one NBA All-Star in its history — DeMarcus Cousins, who played one year at Kentucky before being a lottery pick.
In general, Mobile produces one or two Division I-caliber men’s basketball prospects per year (and sometimes not even one). The only one in the 2024 class was Baker guard Labaron Philon, who was committed to Auburn before transferring to Link Academy in Missouri, and has since signed with Kansas.
The 2023 class had twin brothers Trent and Tyler Thomas of Cottage Hill Christian Academy, a pair of 6-foot-6 forwards with Division I potential. But both of them instead elected to play football, Trent as a tight end at South Alabama and Tyler as a defensive end at UAB.
The 2022 class featured McGill-Toolen forward Barry Dunning, who signed with Arkansas. The Jaguars recruited him hard out of high school and again when he transferred from Arkansas after his freshman year, but he elected to sign with UAB (he’s played double-digit minutes just twice all season for the Blazers).
For whatever reason, much of the high school basketball talent in the state of Alabama is clustered from Birmingham northward. One of those was Broom, the No. 3 prospect in the state when he signed with the Jaguars last year.
Even in its glory years, South Alabama has never “recruited locally” in basketball. Ed Rains was from Florida. Rory White was from Tuskegee. Terry Catledge was from Mississippi. Jeff Hodge was from Birmingham. Junie Lewis was a Pittsburgh transfer. Augustin Rubit was from Texas.
*** UNPAUSE ***
The transfer recruiting process is totally different than it was when Riley arrived at South Alabama, however. As he noted in his post-game press conference Thursday, players such as Jones (Auburn) and former Jaguars Jay Jay Chandler (Texas A&M), Charles Manning (LSU) and Kory Holden (South Carolina) are no longer signing with Sun Belt schools; they are induced by NIL funds to either stay put or join another, better-funded high-major program.
“This is a different time with NIL,” Riley said. “The best thing I could say is, that’s not our strong suit. We don’t have those resources right now; maybe one of these days we will.
“But in recruiting in 2024, I don’t know if people understand how important that is. (Size of NIL payments is) the first question asked by anybody in 2024. It used to be about style of play. It used to be about facilities. It used to be about relationships, how hard you work to recruit guys. That’s not the case anymore. Things have drastically changed since NIL came into being.”
Thus, Riley has begun targeting transfers from Division II or low-major programs. Some of those — Moore, White and Tabe among them — have been impact players in the Sun Belt, while others have struggled with the transition.
And relying so heavily on transfers who might take a while to adjust to the mid-major level is almost certainly the reason the Jaguars have gotten off to slow starts during the pre-conference and early-conference portions of their schedule in the last two seasons. This year’s team got off to a 3-8 start in the Sun Belt, which it was never able to bounce all the way back from despite ending the year on a 5-2 conference run.
Playing at its February-March pace all year would have given the Jaguars 12 or 13 Sun Belt wins, which would have likely meant a top 4 seed and a double-bye for the conference tournament. In that scenario, South Alabama would be getting ready to play its first game in Pensacola on Saturday, instead of already wondering what might have been.
Riley’s mandate is simple — retain the good players he does have, and sign more to supplement them. It’s easier said than done, but if that does take place, perhaps we won’t having this same conversation a year from now.
Creg Stephenson covers South Alabama athletics and the Sun Belt Conference for AL.com. Email him at cstephenson@al.com or follow him on Twitter/X at @CregStephenson.
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
