Johnson C. Smith misses NCAA Division II playoffs. ‘Nothing but fuel and motivation’
Johnson C. Smith will not compete for an NCAA championship following its unprecedented football season.
The Golden Bulls put together their best football season on record, winning eight consecutive games to open the year, which marks the 132-year-old program’s longest win streak.
J.C. Smith, which also missed out of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship despite having beaten both conference finalists in their head-to-head regular season meetings, didn’t make the NCAA Division II playoffs.
Virginia Union, the school in Richmond that upended top-seeded Virginia State in the CIAA title game, is the conference’s lone representative in the 28-team bracket released Sunday night.
“It’s disappointing,” Golden Bulls head coach Maurice Flowers, recently named the conference’s coach of the year, said Sunday evening. “But at the same time, it’s a time of reflection to see all the things that we did this season that were firsts for Johnson C Smith University. To win eight straight, tying the most wins in school history, being ranked in the Top 25 and getting as high as No. 16 — never been done at Johnson C. Smith.
“We had a number of guys who were chosen for the All-CIAA teams. Those are individual accolades, but they’re team accomplishments. Credit to our staff and our team. For me to be named CIAA coach of the year, something you don’t set out for as a coach. You don’t set out for individual awards as a coach, because those truly are team and program awards. And I’m just so proud of my coaching staff for the work that they did this entire year, in the offseason and in the summer.”
J.C. Smith’s conference valued point differential over head-to-head
Virginia Union is set to play No. 2 seed Wingate University — the Union County school went 9-1 and won the South Atlantic Conference championship — at 1 p.m. Saturday from Irwin Belk Stadium in Wingate. Lenoir-Rhyne will travel from Hickory to West Alabama for a postseason game at 2 p.m. Saturday.
While J.C. Smith finished 8-2 after dropping its final two games — against Fayetteville State in its home finale and Livingstone College on the Blue Bears’ blue turf in Salisbury — it still entered Saturday evening’s selection show confident, especially considering its strength of schedule throughout the season.
The Golden Bulls defeated Virginia Union, in addition to Virginia State, which fell in a 17-13 CIAA championship game loss to the Panthers on Saturday.
There are normally eight conference games during CIAA competition, but tiebreaker criteria changed once St. Augustine’s was officially suspended for the year, and schools were only required to play in seven games that counted toward their conference record. J.C. Smith’s 56-3 drubbing of CIAA opponent Lincoln (Pa.) on Sept. 14 was not considered a conference game, as the Lions had been slotted into the Golden Bulls’ schedule in place of Saint Augustine’s.
The CIAA championship selection committee decided to value point differential against common opponents with more weight than head-to-head records against opponents from the conference.
“It’s (the committee’s) prerogative, and, hey, it’s going to be nothing but fuel and motivation,” Flowers said. “Because when I first came to J.C. Smith in 2022, playoffs weren’t even a thing that was thought of. To know that we’re building the program, and we want to build the program to where the going to the playoffs is a normal fault. It’s a regular thing that we do.
“It was great practice (Sunday). It was great practice this season, to see that this is what we want the standard to be: That Johnson C. Smith makes plans and preparation throughout the season to go to the playoffs every year.”
This story was originally published November 17, 2024 at 8:28 PM.
