Corey Lowery is Texas Southern’s new head basketball coach. But he’s inheriting a locker room that spent the day before his approval marching across campus to keep someone else in the job. The Texas Southern Board of Regents approved Corey Lowery’s hire Wednesday morning by a 6-1 vote during a special session. It capped one of the messiest coaching searches in recent SWAC history.
The board also approved new athletic director Ashley Robinson in the same session. University president James W. Crawford III recommended both hires. He praised Lowery’s track record, calling him “a maker of men off the court” in a statement sent to local media.
How the Texas Southern coaching search got here
Interim coach Shyrone Chatman has led the Tigers since April. That’s when longtime head coach Johnny Jones left Texas Southern to become an assistant under Will Wade at LSU. Chatman, a longtime member of the Texas Southern staff, stepped in immediately. He kept the program running while the university launched a national search for Jones’ permanent replacement. That search stretched more than four months. Texas Southern even brought in DHR Global in June to help identify candidates.
Seton Hall assistant Corey Lowery emerged as the frontrunner earlier this month. Multiple reports indicated the university was preparing to finalize his hire, pending Board of Regents approval. That approval process turned messy fast. Lowery reportedly failed to clear two Board of Regents committees before his name advanced to the full board. Meanwhile, questions mounted around his communication with current Texas Southern players before he had even been approved for the job.
Players rally behind Chatman before the vote
With the board set to weigh in Wednesday, Texas Southern players, students and alumni gathered on campus Tuesday. They demonstrated in support of keeping Chatman in charge. Video from the demonstration, first shared by Defender Network college sports editor Terrance Harris, showed the group marching across campus carrying handmade signs. Some read messages as direct as “Keep Coach Chatman He’s Our Coach.”
The demonstration eventually made its way to President Crawford’s office. According to a source in the room, Crawford invited the student-athletes inside and opened the floor for them to speak. Players reportedly asked Crawford to give Chatman a real shot at the job. They pointed to his years inside the program and the relationships he’d built with the current roster.
The show of support mattered because of what was already on the line. In an era when the transfer portal gives athletes far more control over where they play, a coaching change can shake an entire roster loose overnight. Texas Southern wasn’t just picking a coach. It was picking one while the players he’d inherit were publicly pulling for someone else. HBCU Gameday described it as an unusual wrinkle in an already complicated hire.
Corey Lowery’s path to Texas Southern
Lowery isn’t unfamiliar with HBCU basketball. He previously served as head coach at Lincoln University in the CIAA. There, he earned Coach of the Year honors following the 2021-22 season, before moving on to a four-year run as an assistant at Seton Hall. That resume gave Texas Southern’s administration confidence in his ability to develop players. It also reassured them he could run a high-major-style program at the HBCU level.
Still, the road to Houston wasn’t smooth for Corey Lowery. Beyond the failed committee votes, reports surfaced around communication between Lowery and Texas Southern players ahead of his hire. That reportedly included a recording involving a player’s parent. No NCAA violation involving Lowery has been publicly established. But the reports added another layer of scrutiny to an already unusual process, and they fueled some of the frustration players carried into Tuesday’s demonstration.
Where Chatman’s tenure stands now
Chatman’s future with the program wasn’t directly addressed in the university’s hiring announcement. He steadied a Tigers team that could have easily unraveled after a midseason coaching change. The loyalty he built during that stretch was on full display this week. Whether he stays on Lowery’s staff, lands elsewhere, or simply steps back once the new coach settles in remains one of the bigger unanswered questions to come out of this search.
What’s next for the Tigers
With Lowery and Robinson both approved, Texas Southern now turns to building a roster and staff for the 2026-27 season. That process is complicated by one big fact: the new head coach didn’t recruit the players currently on the team. How Lowery handles that transition will shape the Tigers’ season before a single game tips off. So will whether the players who marched for Chatman decide to stick around.
Texas Southern isn’t the first HBCU program to navigate a coaching transition under pressure from its own locker room, and it likely won’t be the last. But few searches have played out this publicly, with players confronting a university president directly and a Board of Regents vote splitting 6-1 just hours after a campus demonstration. For a program that has made 11 NCAA tournament appearances and won conference titles across four different decades, the stakes of getting this hire right go beyond a single season. Corey Lowery now has to prove, quickly, that he’s the right voice to lead a group that didn’t choose him first.
The board made its choice on Corey Lowery. The players made theirs known too, just one day earlier. Now it’s on the new coach to bring both sides together before practice even starts.
