Florida got Will Richard, his terrific all-around play and his 18 points in the Gators’ win over Houston in last year’s national championship game, before he moved on to the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
Ole Miss got Malik Dia, the 6-foot-9 mismatch forward who burned Iowa State for 18 a year ago to lead the Rebels to the second Sweet 16 in their history. Maryland got Ja’Kobi Gillespie to run the 2024-25 team — his 14.7 points and 4.8 assists a game were central to a Sweet 16 run. Then Tennessee got him, and his team highs with 18.5 points and 5.3 assists per game give the Vols a chance to again be a factor this March.
North Carolina got Cade Tyson. That didn’t work out last season, so Minnesota got him, and he’s leading the way with 19.4 points a game, fifth in the Big Ten. He’s a sturdy 6-7 shooter with 42 3-pointers. He’d probably be a big help to UNC this season. He’d certainly be a big help to Belmont.
And what does Belmont get for recruiting these players, helping them develop and sending them on to Power 5 paydays? What’s the reward for being the most productively plundered of the mid-majors? A fruit basket? A tweet? This column?
“If they’re giving out trophies for that,” Belmont coach Casey Alexander said, “I’d say we’re in the hunt for the championship.”
Thing is, the Bruins are still actually leading the hunt for the Missouri Valley Conference championship. Even after Monday’s gutting overtime loss at Bradley, tied in the final seconds of regulation by one of the Braves’ 17 3-pointers, Belmont sits at 23-4 overall and 13-3 and alone in first in the MVC.
Through it all, here’s a nasty little would-be No. 12 seed just waiting for a No. 5 seed — like say, Nashville next-door neighbor Vanderbilt or Tennessee, two programs that should schedule the Bruins every year but don’t.
There’s a Belmont consistency, dating to legendary mentor/predecessor Rick Byrd in the 1980s, that Alexander has maintained through many changes. Once Kansas wins one more game this season, it will join Belmont and Gonzaga as the three Division I programs with 20 or more in 16 straight seasons.
Belmont has done this while advancing from independence to the Atlantic Sun to the Ohio Valley Conference to the MVC. Byrd earned eight NCAA Tournament bids and got his first NCAA win over Temple — then nearly another in a classic against Maryland — before retiring in that 2019 offseason. That’s when Belmont got Alexander, a former Bruins guard who took rival Lipscomb to the NCAA Tournament in 2018.
The aesthetically pleasing, efficient offensive basketball is the same. So is the winning, despite the step up to the MVC in 2022. Alexander’s ability to evaluate and develop excellent players has been felt all over basketball. Along with the aforementioned four transfers, he has seen Adam Kunkel and Isaiah Walker head off to Xavier and Even Brauns to Iowa, among others. And he even kept and sent a Bruin to the first round of the NBA draft — Ben Sheppard, in 2023.
Other mid-major programs in the NIL era can claim bigger stars than these former Bruins. Morehead State’s Johni Broome won national player of the year awards at Auburn; Iona’s Walter Clayton Jr. was the catalyst of the Florida team that featured Richard; UAB’s Yaxel Lendeborg might win a national championship for Michigan this season. But Belmont is an unmatched supplier to date.
Which would make an NCAA bid that much more impressive. That’s the one thing that has eluded the 53-year-old Alexander at his alma mater, even though he earned one in his debut season with a backdoor play to beat OVC rival (and now MVC rival) Murray State in the title game. That happened on March 7, 2020, a few days before COVID-19 shut down the world.
Belmont had the dominant team a year later, 26-3 and expected to cruise through the OVC tourney. But Broome, then a freshman, went off with 27 points and 12 rebounds to score a shocker for Morehead State. A year ago, Belmont nearly pulled off an upset of its own over Bennett Stirtz and Drake in the MVC semifinals but ultimately succumbed 57-50.
This team is in position to break the drought because of one of the most important words to the modern college coach: retention. Alexander said Belmont’s payroll situation is “almost the polar opposite” of its place in the standings, but top three scorers Tyler Lundblade, Sam Orme and Drew Scharnowski are returnees from last season. He has one freshman and one transfer who are regularly contributing right now.
“We don’t have to be at the top in revenue sharing, because we have a lot of other things going for us,” Alexander said. “We have a winning tradition, we don’t just have to sell hopes and dreams when it comes to player development. We have great facilities. We have Nashville. At the same time, (money) is almost always a tiebreaker in recruiting. But we were fortunate to return some really good players, and they all left money on the table.”
A key transfer, point guard Nic McClain from Eastern Washington, has been out since early January with a knee injury. His status — Alexander said it is “TBD” — could be the key, though Belmont is 9-2 without him.
If the Bruins get it done in “Arch Madness” (also known as the MVC Tournament in St. Louis), they will finally have something to show for the NIL era other than the nets cut down by other teams that are utilizing their former players. Then March Madness will have a dangerous participant, No. 32 nationally per KenPom in shortest possession time (15.9 seconds) and No. 2 in effective field goal percentage (60.8 percent).
And whether that supplies the tournament with a Cinderella run or not, it will again make “retention” a buzzword around Belmont. In this case, the retention of Alexander.