For Howard head coach Ty Grace, this season didn’t just end with another NCAA Tournament appearance — it ended with affirmation that the standard she imagined a decade ago has become real.
Despite losing in the first round 75-54 to Ohio State on Saturday, Grace reflected on what the journey has meant to her, her players, and the future of the program.
“Every year you set goals, and one of the main ones is always winning a championship,” Grace said. “This team was special. Every day, I was proud of how we evolved and got to this moment like today. It’s been a phenomenal year — I couldn’t have asked for a better group.”
Howard’s latest NCAA Tournament run established a blueprint
That pride comes from both the growth and the grind. When Grace led Howard to the NCAA Tournament in 2022 as a 16 seed, the Bison were seen as a feel-good underdog story, a program crashing the party. This time, as a 14 seed, the message was different: Howard belongs.
“When I took the job in 2015, my goal was to turn the program around and make it look like what you see today, and continue to do more,” Grace said. “In 2022, nobody expected that first run. Everybody was like, ‘Oh, it’s great, yeah, we made it.’ But from that day, that’s been the print we wanted to put in the sand. We wanted to make sure we’re going to show up here each year, and that’s what we’ve been striving for.”
The gap between “happy to be here” and “expecting to be here” could be felt in the voices of her players, too.
“It meant a lot to me,” guard Ariella Henigan said. “Being at an HBCU and putting them on the map, it’s not common that you see an HBCU at the NCAA Tournament in the first round. Just being here and being able to put my school on the map and just know that Howard is somebody to keep an eye on.”
Forward Zennia Thomas, a senior who played her last game in a Bison uniform, echoed that pride and the urgency that comes with it.
“Yeah, I would agree,” Thomas said. “Coming in as a 14 seed, you don’t see that a lot, especially from an HBCU. But just giving it all that we had in order to show that we can compete at this level, and hopefully everybody carries that into next season so that we can come back and do it again.”
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Lessons learned in tournament experience
Saturday’s game still delivered the kind of harsh lesson March often reserves for rising programs. A disruptive second-quarter press turned a close contest into a decisive run, and Howard never quite recovered. Grace, who has trusted her team to play through pressure all season, stayed true to her philosophy.
Even in the loss, there was an eye on what’s to come. Howard’s roster includes several young, talented players who saw the floor late, not as an afterthought but as an investment.
“I hope it definitely gives them some thought about what it should look like for them, and that they want to be a part of this every year,” Grace said. “That’s why I tried to get some of those younger players in at the end of the game, so they can be on this stage. So they can see what it feels like to be on that floor, to play against that caliber type of talent.
“I think it’s very important that they are a part of this, and that they’re going to be the future of our program. I hope they embrace that experience.”
For Grace, who walked into Howard in 2015 intending to flip the narrative around Bison women’s basketball, this season felt like another step in that vision: conference championships as the goal, the NCAA Tournament as the expectation, and excellence on display in March.
“I go into each season not knowing what to expect, but when I get into the season and things start to happen, I’m just proud every day of how we evolve,” she said. “I just try to embrace every moment that I get a chance to be a part of.
“Yeah, it’s just been really special.”
