FARMVILLE, Va. — The Houston Cougars are the No. 1 seed in the South region of the NCAA Tournament, going up against No. 16 Longwood in the opening round on Friday in Memphis.
UH (30-4) earned their way into the big dance by topping the AP rankings in the last three weeks of the regular season.
The Longwood Lancers (21-13) topped UNC Ashville in the Big South tournament championship to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament, their second appearance in the last three years.
So what are the ties to Houston? According to their roster, Longwood has three players from the Houston area – senior DA Houston who played his high school basketball at Episcopal, Jonathan Massie, who went to Legacy School of Sports and Science, and Jaylen Benard, who is a product of Cypress Ranch.
And another big tie to Houston – the Lancers’ head coach, Griff Aldrich. Back in 2022 when they made the NCAA tournament for the first time, KHOU 11’s Jason Bristol profiled Longwood and Aldrich.
Here is Jason Bristol's story from 2022, when Longwood made the NCAA Tournament for the first time.
His path to coaching college basketball is an unusual one. Aldrich was a partner at Vinson & Elkin in both Houston and London. That was before he started his own oil and gas company and later was CFO of a billion-dollar private equity firm.
RELATED: March Madness is here. UConn, Purdue, Houston and North Carolina get top seeding in NCAA Tournament
Aldrich, who played at Division III Sydney College in Virginia, developed a basketball ministry program in Houston’s Third Ward, serving underprivileged kids.
In Bristol’s 2022 story, Aldrich said it was his wife who turned him to college coaching. He eventually left his high-paying job and started coaching at Longwood.
Where in Longwood University?
Longwood University sits in the rural Virginia town of Farmville, Virginia. In 2021, the population was just over 7,200.
