Replacing Johnny Jones: Coaches Texas Southern Should Consider

HOUSTON — Johnny Jones has left Third Ward Houston and is heading back to coach Tigers basketball as an assistant at his alma mater. After eight seasons and three NCAA Tournament appearances, he resigned to join Will Wade's staff at LSU, and now Texas Southern has to figure out what comes next.

The timing is rough for TSU. Interim athletic director Dr. Paula Jackson may be tasked with leading a high-stakes coaching search without the institutional backing that usually supports such efforts.

Replacing Johnny Jones | Credit: TSU Athletics

Shyrone Chatman, who has been on Jones' staff since 2017, was named interim head coach while the national search plays out.

A source with knowledge of the Alabama State coaching search told HBCU Legends that Chris Wright and Larry Dixon are considered as potential candidates for the Hornets' vacancy — two names worth cross-referencing against what Texas Southern needs in a new head coach as well.

Below is a look at the coaches from across the HBCU landscape who could step into this job and run with it in our HBCU Legends’ wish list for the Texas Southern search committee.

Shyrone Chatman -- Interim Head Coach, Texas Southern University

Chatman spent a year at Memphis under John Calipari in 2000-01, starting 29 games and recording 165 assists as the Tigers reached the NIT Final Four. He later spent years building recruiting pipelines at UMass -- including the program's highest-rated Atlantic 10 signing class in 2016-17 -- before Jones brought him to Houston in 2017. He has been here ever since.

The case for Chatman is continuity. He has player relationships, recruiting contacts in the Houston market, and a staff that does not need to be rebuilt from scratch. The case against him is the same one that follows every interim: TSU may want a proven head coach, and Chatman has not held that title yet. That conversation belongs to Dr. Jackson and the search committee.

Randy Bolden - Copiah-Lincoln Community College head basketball coach | CLC

Randy Bolden -- Head Coach, Copiah-Lincoln Community College

Bolden played at Texas Southern from 1994 to 1998, won SWAC Player of the Year twice, finished in the national top 10 in scoring twice, and was in the building for one of the program's most memorable moments -- the 1995 NCAA Tournament run that took the 15th-seeded Tigers within one point of knocking off defending national champion Arkansas.

His coaching career has moved through high school and junior college programs in Mississippi. He went 59-31 at Jones College, made the SIAC tournament at Mississippi College, and is currently at Copiah-Lincoln Community College. The Rolodex he built as a SWAC star still opens doors in Mississippi and the Gulf South -- which is a real asset for a TSU program that needs to recruit that corridor.

Langston University head basketball coach Chris Wright | Credit: Langston University Athletics

Chris Wright -- Head Coach, Langston University (NAIA)

Wright took Langston to the NAIA Championship game this season. That is not a small thing. The NAIA field is competitive, and getting a program to the title game requires the same fundamentals any coach needs at any level: recruiting, player development, preparation, and the ability to make in-game adjustments when the margin shrinks.

He is already in the mix for the Alabama State job, per a source familiar with the search. Texas Southern should be paying attention. A coach who builds from nothing and gets to a national championship game is the kind of resume that deserves a Division I conversation.

Trey Johnson -- Associate Head Coach, Jackson State University

People remember the 49-point game against UTEP. They remember the 2007 NCAA Tournament run. What tends to get overlooked is just how good Trey Johnson was at Jackson State -- 27.1 points per game as a senior, SWAC Player of the Year, one of the best scorers in the country that season, regardless of division.

He went on to play parts of three NBA seasons with the Cavaliers, Raptors, Lakers, and Hornets, was on the 2011 Lakers' playoff team, and spent a decade playing internationally, including representing Qatar at the 2012 Asian Cup. He has been coaching in the SWAC since 2018, first as an assistant at Jackson State, then as associate head coach at Alabama State under Mo Williams, and back at JSU since 2022. He has never been a college head coach. That is the one question mark. Everything else in his file says he is ready.

Kevin Johnson -- Head Coach, Southern University

In two seasons at Southern, Johnson has gone from 18 wins in year one to 20 wins and a 15-3 SWAC record in year two -- the program's best regular season since 2012-13 -- and was voted SWAC Coach of the Year. The last time Southern won 20 regular-season games, the Jaguars reached the NCAA Tournament.

He is a Morgan City native who has spent more than three decades coaching in Louisiana. His brother Dave was a first-round pick of the Portland Trail Blazers in 1992. Kevin spent years on staff at Tulane and Louisiana-Lafayette before getting the Southern job in 2023, and the Jaguars' improvement under him has been steep and sustained. Pulling him away from Baton Rouge would take real money and a real pitch. But he is the most accomplished active SWAC head coach on this list, and Texas Southern would be a program upgrade over Southern in terms of resources and historical footprint.

Larry Dixon, Morehouse College Head Basketball Coach | Credit: Morehouse Athletics

Larry Dixon -- Head Coach, Morehouse College

Dixon took over Morehouse in May 2025 as the program's 14th head coach -- the first in 60 years to come from outside the Arthur McAfee coaching tree -- and won the 2026 SIAC Tournament championship in his first season. Morehouse had not won the tournament since 2003. The team finished 19-9 overall and 19-5 in conference play.

Before Morehouse, he spent two years on the NC State staff that won the 2023-24 ACC Tournament and reached the Final Four. Before that, South Florida, Georgia Southern, Winthrop, East Carolina, and South Carolina State. He is a Johnson C. Smith graduate, so he has lived the HBCU experience as a student-athlete. He has also coached on a staff that won a Power 4 championship. That combination of backgrounds is not common. TSU should make a call.

Alfred Jordan -- Head Coach, Clark Atlanta University

Jordan played at Clark Atlanta, spent eight years as an assistant there, followed former CAU coach Darrell Walker to Arkansas-Little Rock -- where he recruited four-star guard Markquis Nowell -- spent a year as associate head coach at Morehouse, and then came home to take over his alma mater in 2022. In his second season, Clark Atlanta went 25-5, won the SIAC Tournament for the first time since 2017, and reached the NCAA Division II Tournament for the first time since 2018.

He was named SIAC Coach of the Year, BOXTOROW HBCU National Coach of the Year, and received the Clarence 'Big House' Gaines Award from the National Sports Media Association. The transfer recruiting ability he showed at the Division II level -- bringing in Division I transfers and building around them -- is exactly the kind of roster management a SWAC program needs.

Dr. Dubois Bowman, PH.D and Coach Benjy Taylor | Credit: Morehouse College, Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

Benjy Taylor -- Head Coach, Tuskegee University

Before Tuskegee, Taylor was the head coach at Chicago State, where he led the program to its first winning season in more than 23 years and was named Independent Division I Coach of the Year. He also went 22-13 as interim head coach at Hawaii and took the Rainbow Warriors to the Big West Tournament final. Pepperdine, Tulane, CSU Bakersfield, Southeast Missouri State -- his career has touched a lot of different programs at a lot of different levels, and he has produced at each stop.

At Tuskegee, his 2025-26 squad finished 20-7 and earned the top seed in the SIAC West, winning him SIAC Coach of the Year honors. That run came after a jarring January moment when Taylor was briefly handcuffed by a security officer at Morehouse during a postgame handshake dispute. No charges were filed, Tuskegee fully backed him, and the SIAC fined Morehouse for failing to meet required security standards. Taylor never broke stride. His team kept winning. That kind of steadiness under pressure is worth noting in a coaching search.

Kenneth Blakeney -- Head Coach, Howard University

Blakeney won back-to-back national championships at Duke under Coach K in 1991 and 1992. He then spent 12 years as a Division I assistant -- James Madison, La Salle, Delaware, St. Bonaventure, Marshall, Harvard, Columbia -- before Howard gave him his first head coaching job in 2019. He went 4-29 that first season. Four years later, he had the Bison in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1992.

The Howard turnaround produced back-to-back MEAC regular season titles, back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances, and three straight winning conference seasons -- the first time Howard had done that since the 1980s. He was named MEAC Coach of the Year, ECAC Coach of the Year, the John McLendon National Coach of the Year, and the BOXTOROW HBCU Coach of the Year. At Harvard, he also helped develop Jeremy Lin. The Duke championship background, combined with a demonstrated ability to rebuild an HBCU program from the bottom up, is a rare combination. Texas Southern should have his number.

Byron Smith -- Head Coach, Prairie View A&M University

This past season, Byron Smith took a team that went 5-27 the year before, was picked ninth in the SWAC preseason poll, and won the conference tournament as an 8 seed. Prairie View went on to beat Lehigh in the NCAA Tournament's First Four -- the program's first tournament win since Smith guided them to the SWAC title in 2019. That is a coaching story worth telling twice.

Smith played at Houston, earned two All-Southwest Conference honors, and went on to coach at Texas A&M under Mark Turgeon, lead the Harlem Globetrotters, and spend time as an assistant at -- relevant to this search -- Texas Southern. He knows the program. He knows Houston. He has won two SWAC regular-season titles, two tournament titles, three conference Coach of the Year awards, and the 2021 Hugh Durham Award for best mid-major coach in the country. The difficult seasons between 2021 and 2025 are on his record too, and that is a fair thing to weigh. But what he did this year argues that the reset is complete.

Robert Jones -- Head Coach, Norfolk State University

Jones has been at Norfolk State for 13 seasons. In that time, more than 240 wins, five MEAC regular season championships, three tournament titles, three MEAC Coach of the Year awards, and three NCAA Tournament appearances. The Spartans have finished with a winning conference record every single season he has coached there. He just signed a contract extension through 2031-32.

Getting him to Houston would require a serious offer and a compelling conversation about what Texas Southern can build. It is a long shot. But if TSU is serious about returning to the NCAA Tournament and staying there, the standard Jones has set at Norfolk State is the target. Any candidate worth hiring should be held to it.

LeVelle Moton -- Head Coach, North Carolina Central University

Moton has been at North Carolina Central since 2009 and is the program's all-time winningest coach with more than 270 victories. Four MEAC Tournament titles. Four regular-season championships. Multiple NCAA Tournament appearances. He played at NCCU in the 1990s, was named CIAA Player of the Year in 1996, and has spent the majority of his adult life building something real in Durham.

He is not leaving. But the reason his name belongs in this conversation is the same reason Jones' does -- because the standard of sustained winning he has produced is what Texas Southern's next administration should be hiring toward, not away from. The VelleCares Foundation's work in the Durham community is also the kind of off-court footprint that a program rooted in Houston's Third Ward should want from its next head coach.

Devin Hoehn -- Head Coach, Fayetteville State University

Hoehn took Bluefield State to the CIAA championship game—the program's first ever—then left for Fayetteville State in April 2025. He has not yet coached at a school with a nationally recognized program. What he has done is build. Twice. At two different programs. That track record matters when an athletic director is trying to figure out whether a candidate can handle starting over.

Luke D'Alessio -- Head Coach, Bluefield State University

D'Alessio took over at Bluefield State when Hoehn left for Fayetteville State. His career record sits at 279-139. He won the 2003 CIAA Championship at Bowie State with a 30-5 team that reached the NCAA Division II Final Four, then won another CIAA title at Fayetteville State. Two programs, two championships. The only thing holding him back from a bigger conversation is the level he has coached at. The results say the level has not held him back at all.

Where This Leaves Texas Southern

Jones built the Texas Southern basketball program into something. Three straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 2021 to 2023, wins over Power 4 programs, and a national profile that most SWAC programs never touch.

TSU must now find someone who can either sustain, rebuild, or create a new winning program. Those are two massive objectives for the job, and the next hire will tell you which one the administration places value on for the future.

The coaches on this list come from different levels, backgrounds, and career stages. Some are ready right now. Some would require TSU to make a real financial commitment. A few are long shots, especially Moton, Jones, Smith, and Blakeney. Nonetheless, all of them have earned the right to be part of the conversation.