Rod Strickland and the long climb from a struggling program to March Madness relevance
On a Friday afternoon in San Diego at 1: 35 p. m. ET, rod strickland will lead Long Island University into a tournament moment the program has not touched since 2012, a matchup with No. 2 Arizona that lands like a public test of a private promise: change the culture, then let the wins follow.
The scene is sharp because it is specific: a downtown Brooklyn school, a Northeast Conference automatic bid, and a coach in his first head job who once said he was “not in a rush. ” For LIU, the rush has always been the pressure to matter. Now, the Sharks arrive with a 24-10 record, first in the NEC regular season at 15-3, and a coach who has turned early frustration into a headline that travels.
Why is Rod Strickland on the list of Black coaches to watch in March Madness?
Rod Strickland is being watched because his third season at LIU represents a visible cultural and competitive shift: after two rough years to start, he has delivered back-to-back winning seasons and earned NEC Coach of the Year while taking the Sharks back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2012.
When he was hired in 2022, his stated goal was not framed as a quick turnaround but as a rebuild of standards. “Raise the bar, change the environment and help the culture develop and grow, ” Strickland said at the time. “I’m not in a rush. Our time is coming. This is just the beginning. ”
That line reads differently now, because the program’s recent past is spelled out in results: 10 wins across his first two years, including a 3-26 record in his first season. The NCAA tournament appearance does not erase those numbers; it puts them in sequence, showing what it cost to get here.
How did a first-time head coach get LIU from 3-26 to the NCAA tournament?
The public arc from 3-26 to a conference championship pathway is not described as a single tactical revelation, but as a long accumulation of experience that finally met a head-coaching opportunity. Strickland entered his first head coaching experience in 2022 after a résumé built across different layers of the sport.
Before LIU, he worked four years in the NBA G League as the director of the professional path program. Prior to that, he served as director of basketball operations at the University of Memphis, held an administrative role in the basketball program at Kentucky, and coached as an assistant at the University of South Florida.
Strickland has also pointed to the coaches he learned from along the way—Rick Pitino, Larry Brown, Rick Adelman, Pat Riley and John Calipari, who hired him at Memphis and Kentucky. In his telling, the tournament berth is less a sudden breakout than a product of those lessons applied after a slow start.
That progression matters in a sport where the pathway to the chair is not always linear. Strickland’s coaching résumé is presented as “a tremendous amount of work” before landing that first head job. At LIU, the early losses did not end the project; they defined the baseline the program would have to climb from.
What does this moment say about New York point guards, hometown programs, and March Madness pressure?
The bigger pattern is not only about one school. This year has put two well-known New York point guards—Strickland and Speedy Claxton—into the same national frame: former NBA players in their first college head coaching jobs leading hometown teams to the NCAA tournament.
Claxton was hired to lead Hofstra in 2021 with a different but related aim: lift the Long Island school’s respectability to the levels he helped establish while leading the program to the NCAA tournament as a player in 2000. “I know the incredible history of Hofstra’s men’s basketball program, ” Claxton said. “I have lived it. I have experienced it. I am ready to lead it. ”
Hofstra enters the tournament as the Colonial Athletic Conference automatic bid with a 24-10 record (12-6 in conference, third in the regular season), facing No. 4 Alabama at 1: 35 p. m. ET, also in San Diego. Claxton’s coaching pathway is described as steady and internal: hired as a special assistant to the head coach at Hofstra in 2013, he stayed in an assistant role until becoming head coach in 2021. In five years holding the top job, he has led Hofstra to four seasons of at least 20 wins, including this year’s tournament title.
His playing résumé offers another kind of pressure-management narrative: Claxton played for five NBA teams across seven seasons and won a championship with the Gregg Popovich-coached San Antonio Spurs in 2003. As a player at Hofstra, he was coached by Jay Wright when the school reached the 2000 NCAA tournament.
Together, the two coaches reflect how March Madness spotlights more than brackets. It turns program identity into a public story—downtown Brooklyn and Long Island, automatic bids and underdog matchups, and coaches who are trying to make “respectability” and “relevance” something their players can feel day to day, not just something fans remember.
What happens next for LIU as the Sharks face No. 2 Arizona?
The immediate next chapter is clear: LIU, the NEC automatic qualifier, will meet No. 2 Arizona at 1: 35 p. m. ET Friday in San Diego in the West Region. The tournament stage compresses time, turning multi-year rebuilds into one-game verdicts, even when coaches insist the work is longer than a single afternoon.
For LIU, the game arrives as proof that the climb was real: back-to-back winning seasons after a start that included 3-26, a conference coach-of-the-year award, and the first NCAA tournament trip since 2012. For Strickland, it is also the most visible test yet of his stated mission to raise standards before demanding outcomes.
And when the ball goes up, the story that follows will still be anchored in that earlier promise—patient, program-first, and rooted in the belief that culture is something you build before you can sell it. In that sense, even the bright lights of San Diego do not replace the work back in Brooklyn; they measure it. Win or lose, the Sharks are here again, and so is rod strickland, standing inside the beginning he named years ago.
