In need of a program resurrection, Evansville basketball turned to David Ragland. He has the Aces 6-0 for the first time since 1964-65.
Few people understand the meaning of basketball to the Evansville community quite like David Ragland. The 42-year-old grew up in the Crescent Valley, attended Evansville basketball games with his family in his childhood, and emulated the moments created in the Roberts Stadium en route to his own college basketball career before joining the coaching ranks.
After 11 years as a Division I assistant, he returned home last offseason as the 16th head coach in Evansville basketball history. To say it meant the world to him might be an understatement:
“It is really surreal to think about being back home and running the program that is so dear to my heart,” Ragland told Heat Check CBB. “It all feels right. I feel comfortable being back home, and it’s easy to make decisions that are best for the program because of my connection to the program and my love for it. I grew up on Aces’ basketball, understanding and appreciating the style of play, how hard the teams played, and how connected they were. The city, community, and people mean a ton to me and helped me mature into a man.”
Evansville is a storied program with layers of history — heartwarming and tragic — woven into its purple and orange fabric. However, the Aces have not won more than nine games in a season since 2019, including a 5-27 record in Ragland’s first season, and have not reached the NCAA Tournament since 1999.
In just the opening month of Ragland’s second season, though, Evansville took down Southeast Missouri State to record its first 6-0 start since 1964-65 — its first-ever such start at the Division I level.
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History of Evansville Basketball
Arad McCutchan took over the head coaching job at the University of Evansville in 1946, and he did not take long to bring the program to national prominence. The Aces made three NAIA Tournament appearances under his leadership before joining the Division II ranks. Evansville spent 22 seasons in D2 and emerged as a national powerhouse; the Aces won five championships between 1959 and 1971, once posting an undefeated 29-0 season.
Tragedy struck just four games into Evansville’s first D1 season; the team’s charter plane crashed en route to Middle Tennessee State, killing every player and staff member on board. The Aces did not play for the remainder of the season.
Ragland was born a few years later but recognizes the long-lasting impact on Evansville. “A lot of people don’t understand or know how close this program was to tragedy, even to the point where the program had shut down because of the plane crash,” he said. “That really rocked our community. The program was rebuilt because of the compassion of the individuals in the community to be there for the families of the individuals that we tragically lost. It’s important never to forget that time. We just celebrated an anniversary last year, but every day you are on campus, there’s a remembrance of that team and that flight. It’s something that is etched in our program, our campus community, and our city’s community.”
The tragedy extended — and extends — beyond basketball and impacted the entire city. The city responded with an outpouring of support and brought the program back the following year. The Aces made five NCAA Tournament appearances between 1982 and 1999, once reaching the second round behind a deep Reed Crafton 3-pointer in the closing seconds of the 1989 first round.
However, the Aces stumbled from that point forward. Their last NCAA Tournament appearance came in 1999, and by the time Ragland was hired, Evansville had gone just 35-84 over the prior four seasons. For a first-time D1 head coach, Ragland was not walking into an easy situation. In 2019, an anonymous coaches poll conducted by Stadium’s Jeff Goodman concluded that Evansville was the worst job in the Missouri Valley. The results cited poor ratings across all polled categories except facilities:
And therein lies why there is more to Evansville’s 6-0 start this season than just the 1.000 in the win percentage column. Evansville will not go undefeated this season — it might not even be an upper-half team in the MVC — but there is a glimmer of hope for the first time in years. The UE administration is committed to Ragland, there is tremendous community support, and the Aces are starting to win — even if just in a small sample size.
What does 6-0 mean, really?
Evansville isn’t just 6-0; it has also made significant strides on analytics-based sites for the way it has won games. Nobody in the country has improved their adjusted efficiency margin (+11.65) more on KenPom than the Aces through the season’s first three weeks. Evansville has climbed all the way to No. 201 on the nation’s preeminent college basketball analytics site (+131 from preseason), its highest placement this late in a season since 2019-20.
Bart Torvik’s rankings (which eliminate preseason baselines, unlike KenPom) place Evansville at No. 114. The Aces haven’t played the most challenging schedule in the country, but they have three wins over programs that have made the NCAA Tournament within the last two years.
It might only be a six-game sample size, but it means more than that to this program and community. Evansville needed a home-run hire last offseason to save the once-proud program from falling completely into obscurity. It turned to Ragland with hopes that his deep-rooted ties to the area would slowly reinvigorate the fanbase and return the Aces to MVC contention.
In many ways — especially being hired on only May 24, 2022 — Ragland’s first season at the helm can be considered Year 0. He arrived so late in the recruiting cycle and at a program that just went 6-24 (No. 321 on KenPom) the year prior that it was nearly impossible to succeed. But now, with a 6-0 start for the first time since 1964-65 in his second season at the helm, the resurgence might be coming faster than anyone anticipated.
“I told our group that in the midst of us running to the challenge of reviving this program, we have opportunities to create or recreate history,” Ragland noted. “Our goal is to be the best version of ourselves and be process-driven, but as a result of that, we can build special things. There will be moments when we can seize the day and create our own history while we’re on the journey to reviving this storied program.”
A big part of Evansville’s history has been monumental home wins. The Aces are 8-10 all-time at home against AP top 25 teams, including victories over No. 7 Purdue in 1983, No. 10 Creighton in 2003, and No. 20 Xavier in 1990. Evansville does not have a signature win like those to its name yet this year, but the atmosphere in the Ford Center is growing with each passing victory.
“Our crowd against Ball State was electric,” Ragland praised. “You could hear and feel the energy, and people had fun. They had so much fun that we had 85-100 people show up at Chattanooga over Thanksgiving week. That speaks volumes of our fanbase but also of how our guys play. They play hard, are unselfish, and celebrate one another. Once we return to the Ford Center, I think the place will be bonkers. You add in the winning that we’ve done, and I think we’re reviving a program but also recreating what Roberts Stadium used to look like in the ’90s. “
This is a storied program, albeit one that hasn’t added many pages this century. Ragland is attempting to write new chapters, and that starts with bringing the community together.
Evansville basketball is its community
One step at a time, Ragland is bringing the community back into Evansville basketball. It starts with him as a River City native leading the program, but he also filled out his staff with local legends. Craig Snow, a vital member of the 1999 Evansville team that made the NCAA Tournament, was Ragland’s first addition to his staff as an assistant coach. DJ Balentine, Evansville’s all-time leading scorer, is the Director of Player Development. The roster also features six Indiana natives, including Cam Haffner, the son of UE Hall of Famer Scott Haffner.
Building meaningful relationships in and around the community is at the core of Ragland’s vision for rebuilding the program. He has also used those connections and mutual trust to construct his current roster.
“The people that want to see you do well are those who root for you no matter what, even if you aren’t coaching,” Ragland said. “Those are the people that trust and respect you. We started recruiting our contacts and conversing with individuals we had really strong relationships with. It expedites the trust when you recruit to your contacts because you are recruiting players who are connected to people who know you, trust you, like you, and believe in you.”
Ragland specifically noted Craig Snow’s relationship with Huntington as a critical reason for landing Ben Humrichous, who leads the team in scoring. The staff also had strong ties to Antonio Thomas’ family friends, while West Coast connections helped add Tanner Cuff to the roster. OVC Freshman of the Year Cam Heffner being the son of an Evansville legend worked out. Those are four of the team’s top six players by minutes played.
Evansville’s roster consists of 12 new players this season, but its intra-roster connectivity is a big reason for the strong start:
“Once we got here, it was organic how guys would get together to eat or go fishing or whatever,” Ragland said. “When we were driving to Chattanooga, these guys brought a mini-television into the back of the bus and hooked it up, and they were having video game tournaments. They are really connected, and that really helps. The relationships are not transactional; they know each other on a personal level. We have really deep relationships and I believe this group loves each other and plays for each other.”
There is a long way to go in Evansville’s rebuilding process, but Ragland’s understanding of the Aces and what they mean to the community might be the accelerant that the program needed. At the very least, the 6-0 start will have fans piling into the Ford Center to see if new pages will be written in the UE history book.
“I want to revive a storied program,” Ragland expressed. “I understand what has been done here in the past and what that means to the community. I also know how it was done; we want to do the same thing. We want to take those memories people had in Roberts Stadium and create those in the Ford Center. We have a ways to go to do that, but if we do it with a pure heart, for the right reasons, and for one another by putting others first and connecting with our community, we can recreate it.”
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