DAYTON – Ose Okojie scored 16 of his team-leading 23 points in the first half and Bryce Harris added 19 points and 14 rebounds as Howard held off a furious rally by UMBC 86-83 on Tuesday in an NCAA Tournament First Four contest.
As the shot clock was expiring, Harris hit a clutch turnaround jumper with 12.7 seconds left to give Howard (24-10) a four-point lead. The Bison held on to advance as the No. 16 seed and oppose No. 1 seed Michigan in a Midwest Region first-round game Thursday in Buffalo.
“We talk about how important it is for them to have a chance to get to an NCAA Tournament and win games. It’s a box that we checked,” Howard coach Kenneth Blakeney said of Howard’s first-ever NCAA Tournament win in five tries. “We talked about that before the game. We’ve never won a game. We’ve done a lot of things in our program, but let’s check off the box of winning an NCAA game today.”
Harris gathered the team together on the court after the win and spoke about the history they made.
“Bryce’s speech was just like, we did it,” Okojie said. “We made history with these guys. And it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just the starting five. It was 1 to 16. The energy they gave up is the (credit to the) coaching staff.”
The Bison, who qualified for the 68-team field by capturing the MEAC tournament title, extended their season-best win streak to nine games.
“I think our guys’ resiliency and being battle tested in our tournament and some of our games this year, it was a very familiar place for us,” Blakeney added. “I’m just so happy for our university, our players. We talk about this moment, these moments when we present our university to our young men.”
Jah’Likai King had 19 and DJ Armstrong Jr. added 17 for the Retrievers (24-9), who had their program-record 12-game win streak snapped. The Retrievers, tournament champions of the America East, were making their first NCAA Tournament appearance since their historic 2018 upset of No. 1 seed Virginia.
Caden Diggs added 15 points and eight rebounds off the bench for UMBC. Armstrong’s 30-foot 3-point attempt was off the mark to the right as time expired.
Howard led by double figures for most of the second half, but Diggs converted two free throws with 53.8 seconds left to draw UMBC within 83-78. After the Bison’s Cam Gillus came up short on the front end of a 1-and-1 with 52.9 seconds left, Armstrong drained a long 3-pointer with 43.4 seconds left to cap a 9-0 run, and UMBC was within 83-81.
“In the second half, I think you got to see what UMBC does all the time where we didn’t foul and we really guarded, played good offense, and we made it a game,” Retrievers coach Jim Ferry said. “It was a very exciting game to watch, but I’m so proud of my guys because I saw it in warmups and I don’t really want to say it, I thought those guys were flying around on Howard and we were kind of (passive). But then we fought through it and fought through it which is what we’ve done all year and made it into a fantastic basketball game.”
After UMBC opened with the game’s first four points, Howard scored the next nine points to take an early lead. The Bison used an 8-0 surge to take a 19-11 advantage on a layup by Okojie.
Trailing 21-13, the Retrievers went on a 9-3 spurt to draw within 24-22 on a King layup. UMBC cut the gap to 31-30 before Howard answered with a 12-0 run that gave them their biggest first-half lead after a pair of free throws from Alex Cotton.
Cougar Downing’s layup with two seconds left in the half sent UMBC into halftime down 49-41.
–Mike Petraglia, Field Level Media