Coach Steven Howes Resigns as Men’s Basketball Team Head Coach
By Jared Prenda
After serving 15 years as the head coach for the Catholic University of America men’s basketball team, Steven Howes announced his resignation on Tuesday, March 19. Over those 15 seasons, Coach Howes brought constant success, bringing the Cardinals to a winning record in 13 seasons, and had an overall record of 276-138. Howes also won five conference championships and made 6 NCAA tournament as the head coach.
Howes first became involved in the Catholic program in 1994 when he played for two years under coach Mike Lonergan. Howes served 5 years as an assistant under Lonergan, before being appointed to be the 20th head coach in program history in of July 1994. His overall record at Catholic is 397-164 with 11 NCAA tournament bids, with 6 conference titles, and 9 regular season title.
Beyond winning on the court, Howes has placed a high emphasis on developing players. The D.C. native has coached 4 All-Americans, as well as 28 all-conference players, three players of the year, and 4 rookies of the year. Most recently Howes coached forward Jay Howard, who graduated with the class of 2018. Howard posted a career average of 19.6 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game, and was only the third player to score more than 2,000 career points in program history. Jay had the distinct honor of winning all the prior accolades mentioned while playing under Howes.
The Catholic alum won the Capital Athletic Conference (CAC) championship the last two season Catholic was a member of the conference in 2006 and 2007. 2007 was also the first year Howes won a NCAA tournament game when the Cardinals defeated Messiah 58-37 at home. His best season in the Landmark Conference came in 2012-13 when the Cardinals went 25-4. The team went on to win both the regular season and tournament titles in the conference and went to the second round of the national tournament. The Cardinals were ranked number 12 in d3hoops.com’s final national rankings of the season that year.
Howes also had the rare distinction of being a part of history when on November 15th, 2014 in a game against Division I Davidson Howes started five African-American players for the first time in Catholic history. In his time at the school, Howes recorded seven seasons with 20+ wins and was named d3hoops.com Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year in 2013 as well as was nominated for the Glenn Robinson National Coach of the Year award twice.
According to the athletics
