• Texas Southern has its home opener against Samford tonight at 7 p.m. inside the H&PE Arena.
• TSU will face Samford for the fourth straight year and has lost three straight to them. Samford leads the all-time series 3-1 as the series began in 1996 and makes its return to Houston for the fist time since 2023. Samford is led by new head coach Lennie Acuff as former head coach Bucky McMillan departed for Texas A&M as TSU faced him last week.
• Texas Southern fell in the first round of the 2025 SWAC Tournament to Alabama State.
• TSU returns two starters from last season and 10 letterwinners as they lost five lettermen. The Tigers added seven newcomers to its roster in the offseason as five were added via the transfer portal. Senior guard Zaire Hayes was named to the 2025-26 Preseason All-SWAC basketball team after a career junior campaign which saw him finish second on the team with 10.3 points per game while finishing second on the team with 47 three-pointers made. He also shot 46 percent from the field and 84 percent from the free throw line.
• Even though TSU head coach Johnny Jones has spent 24 years as a head coach, he has only faced one team from the Southern Conference and that was Samford as he's 0-3 all-time against the league.
• TSU had two impressive performances from a pair of newcomers last Thursday in Troy Hupstead and Cameron Patterson. Patterson led TSU with a career-high 18 points while Hupstead had 15. Hupstead finished one rebound short of a double-double with a team-high nine rebounds while Patterson grabbed eight.
• TSU, which is led by eighth-year head coach Johnny Jones, enters the 2025-26 season looking to earn its eighth NCAA Tournament bid over the past 13 years. TSU finished fourth in the SWAC last season and picked to finish fifth this year.
• TSU made its fifth consecutive postseason under Jones in 2024 and participated in three straight NCAA Tournaments from 2021-23. Head coach Johnny Jones went 24-14 in his inaugural year as head coach with three Power 5 conference wins. TSU fell in the finals of the 2019 SWAC Tournament and advanced to the semifinals of the CIT in 2019. In 2019-20, the Tigers made it back to the semifinals of the SWAC Tournament after a third-place regular season finish but saw the season end abruptly due to COVID-19. TSU won the SWAC Tournament and First Four contest in 2021 and was the first SWAC team to beat a ranked opponent from the SEC in 2021 at Florida. TSU claimed another Power 5 non-conference win against Arizona State in 2022.
• Jones is 61-68 all-time in the month of November and 8-38 at TSU.
