- Reggie Theus, a former NBA All-Star, serves as both the athletic director and men’s basketball coach for Bethune-Cookman University.
- Under Theus’s leadership, the Wildcats won the SWAC regular-season title and are seeking their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
- Theus has spearheaded a major turnaround for the program, including facility upgrades and securing significant donations.
In 2021 when Bethune-Cookman University called him, Reggie Theus was semi-retired. The former NBA All-Star and NBA coach was living in Southern California, golfing three to four days a week and doing the occasional basketball broadcast while volunteering as a Division II coach at Cal State LA.
It was a good life. He was content, he thought. Then, opportunity knocked.
Bethune-Cookman, a historically Black private university in Daytona Beach, Florida, wanted Theus to come aboard as athletic director even though he had no experience in the role. Theus was intrigued but countered the offer with a condition – if he took the AD job, he’d hire himself as men’s basketball coach, an unprecedented move. The school agreed.
In Theus’ fifth season at the helm, B-CU is on the brink of history. The Wildcats won the Southwestern Athletic Conference regular-season title and are the top seed in this week’s conference tournament, where they are hoping to clinch the program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
If they do, Bethune-Cookman is primed to become one of the tournament’s Cinderella stories following a gargantuan turnaround that took place on a small palm tree-dotted campus an hour’s drive from Disney World – and under the leadership of Theus, the only person in Division I college sports to hold the dual titles of athletic director and men’s basketball coach.
“It would be a phenomenal thing for the university and for the players, for their careers and their lives,” Theus said. “I always tell the guys, when you dig your ditches, when you go through the battles, when you’re tested, you can look back and say, ‘This is where we came from. This is where we earned it.’”
Why Reggie Theus took the Bethune-Cookman job
Bethune-Cookman is one of 40 eligible Division I men’s basketball teams that has never made it to March Madness. The Wildcats, who have competed in Division I since 1980, are the only SWAC team on the list.
Theus has been to the NCAA Tournament once as a player on UNLV’s 1977 Final Four team and twice as a coach, with New Mexico State in 2007 and as an assistant with Louisville’s Final Four squad in 2005. But most of his Bethune-Cookman players, many of whom previously played at other schools, have never competed on the sport’s biggest stage.
Theus, the former ninth overall pick in the 1978 NBA draft who played 13 seasons in the NBA, enjoyed a brief acting career as the star of the sitcom “Hang Time” after his playing career. Theus followed up coaching stints at Louisville and New Mexico State by jumping back to the pros. He was head coach of the Sacramento Kings and worked for the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Los Angeles Lakers’ D-League affiliate before returning to coach college hoops at Cal State Northridge from 2013 to 2018.
He never envisioned himself here, manning two high-pressure positions at an HBCU with no NCAA Tournament history to speak of. But Theus had already successfully completed one rebuilding project at New Mexico State, turning the Aggies from a six-win team into an NCAA Tournament squad in the span of two years. So the idea of an even larger challenge at B-CU was equally as appealing as it was daunting.
“It was a little bit scary and that got me excited,” Theus said. “I felt like this was something I’ve always asked for was an opportunity to do more. I never knew, what does that look like? I wanted to coach but everybody asks themselves that question at some point in their lives, ‘Is that all there is, or is there more?’”
He had his work cut out for him. Bethune-Cookman was in a state of transition with an interim president and athletics facilities in dire need of upgrades. On Theus’ first visit to campus, university officials didn’t even show him the basketball gym because they thought it would dissuade him from taking the job. Now, Theus boasts that Moore Gymnasium is the best environment in the SWAC because of the energy Wildcat fans bring to games.
Theus started at Bethune-Cookman in July 2021, just after the school moved from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference to the SWAC. Prior to his arrival, the men’s basketball team hadn’t made the postseason since the 2010-11 NIT.
In Theus’ first season, 2021-22, the Wildcats won just nine games. The next season, they won 12. The following two seasons, their record was 17-17 and 15-15. This season, B-CU’s record in the regular season was 17-14 (14-4 in conference play).
Theus said he strives to combat annual roster turnover by being consistent with his coaching style and messaging. He is direct but in a way that lets players know he cares. He hammers home the importance of watching film and preaches about character and humility. He routinely schedules games against high-major opponents to expose and address the Wildcats’ weaknesses.
“He’s very hands-on and he’s not going to let things slide,” said Wildcats graduate forward Ariel Bland. “If he sees one little thing that he needs to tweak on the offense or defensive end, he’ll say it. It’s really cool to see how much knowledge he has of the game.”
The approach paid dividends this season, when the Wildcats led the SWAC in field goal percentage, field goal percentage defense, rebounding margin and blocked shots.
The team’s nonconference schedule was a gauntlet of ranked opponents from power conferences; B-CU played road games at No. 1 Arizona, No. 25 Indiana and No. 20 Auburn, taking the Tigers to overtime in a five-point loss.
“It was a really cool experience,” Bland said. “The environment is probably the biggest thing, just because it’s probably like 14,000, 15,000 people rooting for them. So we don’t really have a lot of people rooting for us, but I feel like it also brought us closer because we knew we only had ourselves in the gym and so we just got to go out and compete.”
How Bethune-Cookman basketball became a SWAC favorite
Like most mid-major schools, B-CU’s roster is a patchwork of transfers and journeymen that reflects the increasingly nomadic nature of college basketball. The Wildcats started the 2025-26 season with 10 newcomers and four players who were on the roster last season.
Senior wing Jakobi Heady played the 2023-24 season at B-CU and, wanting a taste of playing in a bigger conference, transferred to Central Michigan last season, where he averaged 15 points and 6.5 rebounds per game. Heady returned to the Wildcats this fall, a decision he said was motivated by his close relationship with Theus and his desire to win a ring.
“I thought, coming back, we’ll have a great chance of winning it all,” Heady said. “Some days I feel like I shouldn’t have left, but sometimes God has different things for you. So coming back has been a blessing and nothing short of that.”
Theus made team bonding activities a priority early in the season. The Wildcats went paintballing together and even had a group session with a therapist. But Theus knew that time to jell would be the biggest factor in creating chemistry on the court. He’s seen his team grow into one that moves the ball and moves without the ball, an identity predicated on unselfish play.
“The hardest thing about the portal and NIL is that it’s very hard to build a culture,” Theus said. “We’re all getting to know each other very quickly and things happen fast. Probably more than any time in my career I’ve had to have a lot of conversations with my players about life and how we’re going to build this and make it work. … We’re just now starting to play the way that I envision us to be able to play.”
Jakobi Heady is the team’s leading scorer, averaging 18.1 points per game. His younger brother, wing Quentin Heady, is one of five players averaging double-figure scoring. Senior point guard Seneca Willoughby pilots the offense in his third season at B-CU.
Starting forward Daniel Rouzan dominates the paint alongside Bland, who is the team’s best shot blocker even though he comes off the bench. Backup guard Arterio Morris, a former McDonald’s All-American who started his college career at Texas, is so valuable that Theus likes to say his team has six starters.
B-CU’s playing style takes cues from Theus’ time playing for UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian and NBA coaches Mike Fratello and Hubie Brown, as well as coaching under Rick Pitino. The Wildcats utilize their big men in an inside-out offense and push the ball up the court but can play either slow or fast. They take advantage of their athleticism to switch defensive assignments and occasionally break out an aggressive press to suffocate the opposition.
“Everyone’s bought into their roles,” Bland said. “Everyone wants to win and that’s what has been our No. 1 goal. So it’s not, everyone is trying to go ahead and get their 20 (points), get their stats up. With winning and playing the right way, you see people starring in their roles.”
All the while, Theus balances his coaching duties with his athletic director responsibilities. Over the last several years he spearheaded renovations of B-CU’s baseball, softball and football facilities and upgraded locker rooms for the volleyball team and both basketball teams. Theus secured millions in donations for the athletic department, including a six-figure gift from Charles Barkley.
This January, B-CU president Dr. Albert Mosley promoted Theus to the role of Vice President of Athletics on a three-year deal, a testament that this unorthodox arrangement is working.
“He handles it well. Hat off to coach, man,” Heady said. “He’s a pro and that’s also another reason why I came back, because he teaches you how to be a pro on and off the court, and he teaches me specifically to be intent on everything I do. That’s on the court, off the court or on scoring, trying to get my teammates involved. He’s just amazing.”
Will the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats make the NCAA Tournament?
The Wildcats aren’t shy about making it clear that their goal is the NCAA Tournament. They talked about it in their first team meeting last summer. Theus wants to make sure players don’t lose sight of that objective in the pursuit of personal goals.
“You have to be hungry and humble,” he tells them, a phrase that’s become a team mantra. “Do your job.”
Only two current Bethune-Cookman players have been to the NCAA Tournament. Morris was part of Texas’ Elite Eight run in 2023. Bland’s UC Santa Barbara made the tournament in 2023 also, but he was redshirting that season and did not play.
As the wins piled up this season and B-CU’s chances of earning an NCAA Tournament spot crystalized, there was palpable excitement on campus. Jakobi Heady noticed crowds getting bigger at home games, a sign that people outside the program were buying into the team’s goal.
“We definitely do talk about it a lot and it’s a dream for all of us, from the coaches all the way down to the trainers,” Heady said. “It ain’t just the people that’s on the men’s basketball team. It’s the whole school. It’s the whole community that wants to see us get there, and our families, so it’d be a blessing for everybody.”
Heady said the team doesn’t feel pressure to live up to predictions like being picked to win the SWAC in the conference’s preseason poll, which he described as being crowned a “paper champion.”
Even though the Wildcats are the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament and could secure an automatic NCAA Tournament bid if they win, they aren’t looking that far ahead just yet.
“It’s in the back of our minds, but we know that it’s not going to be handed to us in any way,” Bland said. “We got to put our heads down and work and if we get it, we get it. But that mentality (is) that we got to show up every day. The most important game is the next game.”
