Primarily a collection of news links about all 11 Horizon League teams on a daily basis, culled from online newspapers, school athletic websites, the conference website, and school newspapers, plus some other content from time to time.
Wright State players react after the team’s tournament seed and
opponent was announced during an NCAA tournament selection watch
party the athletic department held at the university’s Student Union
on Sunday, March 15, in Fairborn. Wright State is in the Horizon
League conference. BRYANT BILLING / STAFF
Bryant Billing
A regular season that mattersLike Miami, Wright State plays in a
conference where the only path — except in rare instances, like with Miami
this past season — to the NCAA tournament is through the conference
tournament.
The Horizon League last produced two NCAA tournament teams (Butler and
Cleveland State) in 2009. Miami was the first MAC team to receive an
at-large berth since 1999, when Wally Szczerbiak led the RedHawks to a
historic season.
Sargent, who earned his first tournament berth as a head coach this past
season, understands the viewpoint of the fans who think expanding the
tournament lessens the importance of the regular season.
Many fans and national media members pointed to the examples of some of the
first four teams left out of the 2026 tournament — Auburn (17-16) and
Indiana (18-14) — as teams they don’t want to see in the NCAA tournament.
“I think you want it to be as difficult as it possibly can be to make it
in,” Sargent said. “I’m just a big believer in the regular season mattering
as much as it possibly can to drive competitiveness. It gets to the point
where it gets too big, and now people are apathetic towards the regular
season and regular-season championships.”
The regular season will still matter as much as ever in most of the 31
Division I conferences.
“You always want to be able to schedule in a way that can improve your seed
line and put yourself in the best possible position to create a great
resume,” Sargent said, “but, ultimately, we have to be great in our league
to position ourselves to make the tournament. That’s still my focus.”
Purdue Fort Wayne announced a
fifth transfer addition of the offseason in Gary native Ashton
Williamson, who played the last two seasons at Florida International.
Williamson
played in 59 games and started 41 for the Panthers, giving him at least
two seasons of eligibility left. Over his two statistically similar
campaigns at FIU, he averaged 7.5 points, 2.6 assists, 2.4 rebounds and
1.4 steals while shooting 38.9% from the field and 32.2% from 3-point
range. He raised his free-throw percentage from 67.6% as a freshman to 81.8% as a sophomore this past season.
In
a game against Horizon League foe IU Indy in 2024-25, he helped FIU to a
75-69 win with eight points on 3-for-5 shooting (2 for 2 from beyond
the arc), four assists, two steals and a block in 23 minutes.
In
high school, he led Gary 21st Century to back-to-back regional
championships and had 29 points and nine assists in an 88-82 semistate
loss to Blackhawk Christian in the final game of his career.
Williamson
entered the transfer portal after his freshman season at FIU and
originally committed to Iowa, but then returned to the Panthers.
The Mastodons officially announced the signings of their five transfers Thursday.
“I’m
ecstatic about our 2026 spring recruiting class,” PFW coach Jon Coffman
said in a statement. “Our program has been built on gym rats that love
to play and are obsessed with their player development coupled with
versatile skill sets. Our best players over my tenure have been
‘everyday guys’ that obsess with their daily resumes and raising the
level of their teammates, and this class fits this mold!
“All five
are versatile players that are a great fit for how we operate and how
we play the game with pace and space. I am excited about our addition of
size and skill, players that fill up a stat sheet and rebounding
talent.”
Purdue Fort Wayne basketball bolstered
its roster for the upcoming season with the addition of a junior
college star: Guard DeAndre Lewis from East Mississippi Community
College.
The 6-foot-5 Lewis played two seasons at EMCC and was
all-conference in both campaigns. This past season, he averaged 16.1
points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.2 steals while shooting 47.9% from the field
and 40.9% from 3-point range on more than four attempts per game.
The
Canton, Mississippi, native scored at least 19 points in each of his
final five games and had 27 points of his team’s 71 points in a Jan. 27
game that also saw him pull down 11 rebounds.
Lewis helps a
significant need after the Mastodons lost playmaking guards Corey Hadnot
II to Houston and Mikale Stevenson to exhaustion of eligibility. He
will have at least two seasons of eligibility.
PFW has added four
transfers this offseason, all of whom began their careers as standouts
at lower levels of the sport: Division II, NAIA and two from JUCO.
PFW women hire assistants
New PFW women’s
basketball coach Kate Peterson Abiad has begun to fill out her staff
with the hiring of Kevin McManaman and Rachel McLimore as assistants.
McManaman
was most recently an assistant at Division II Roosevelt in Chicago and
has coached at all levels of college basketball over a career that spans
more than three decades.
He spent substantial time in Division I
at Marquette, Illinois-Chicago (his longest stint, from 2002 to 2009),
Northern Illinois and Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
McManaman was an
assistant under Abiad at Cleveland State in her final two years running
the Vikings from 2016 to 2018. In the latter season there, he helped CSU
win 19 games and finish fourth in the Horizon League standings. Vikings
star Ashanti Abshaw led the conference with 2.7 steals per game that
season.
More recently, McManaman was named Junior College
Assistant Coach of the Year in 2023 for his work at Morton College in
Cicero, Illinois.
McLimore was a star player in the Horizon League
in the very recent past, earning all-league honors three times and
all-defense recognition twice at what is now known as IU Indy from 2020
to 2022. The Jaguars won the HL regular-season title all three seasons
she was on campus and went to the NCAA Tournament in 2022. She then
followed IU Indy coach Austin Parkinson to Butler and started there in
her final season of college basketball in 2022-23.
As a coach, the Zionsville native has spent three seasons on staff at NAIA Taylor in the Crossroads League.
Purdue Fort Wayne basketball added two
experienced transfers to its team for next season: NAIA All-American
Tamaje Izuagbe from Oklahoma Wesleyan and former junior-college star
Anthony Isaac from Manhattan.
Izuagbe, a 6-foot-6 wing, was one of
the best players in NAIA last season. He averaged 17.7 points on 54%
shooting in just 22.7 minutes per contest as a sophomore. He hit 36.2%
from 3-point range on almost four attempts per game and added 5.8
rebounds, 1.2 steals and 1.0 blocks per contest.
He earned
first-team All-American honors and helped Wesleyan to a 30-4 record and a
round of 16 appearance in the NAIA National Tournament. He will have at
least two seasons of eligibility.
Isaac is also a 6-6 wing who
played his inaugural season of Division I basketball for the Jaspers of
the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference last season. Isaac appeared in 32
games for Manhattan and started three, averaging 9.5 points and 7.2
rebounds in 23.8 minutes per game. He shot 48.8% from the field.
In
the middle of the season, he had a stretch of seven games out of 11
with double-digit rebounds and he posted five double-doubles in all with
season-highs of 17 points and 16 rebounds. He had 16 points and six
rebounds against Big Ten foe Southern California.
Prior to that,
he was a two-time JUCO All-Region pick at Blinn College and in 2024-25
averaged a double-double with 14.6 points and 11.4 rebounds per contest.
He set the single-season and career rebounding records at Blinn.
The
pair of newcomers for the Mastodons gives coach Jon Coffman’s team
three transfers this offseason, joining Division II riser Edir Ortiz
from Seton Hill. All three are frontcourt players after PFW’s Maximus
Nelson, Deangelo Elisee and Darius Duffy ran out of eligibility.
