The Bryant Bulldogs are Rhode Island's rising program — a former Division II power that bet on Division I and is winning the bet. The Smithfield school's rise has been one of the Northeast's best program-building stories: from DII contender to conference champion in a decade and a half.
The breakthrough came in 2022, when the Bulldogs won the NEC tournament behind Peter Kiss — the nation's leading scorer that season, a fearless gunner who became a cult hero. Kiss's scoring explosions carried Bryant to its first Division I NCAA tournament, and the celebration in Smithfield was euphoric.
Jared Grasso built the machine: up-tempo, aggressive, and utterly unafraid. The Bulldogs played with a swagger rare for a program so new to the level, and the 2022 title was the validation of everything Grasso had constructed.
The move to America East put Bryant in a stronger league with new rivals and bigger stages. The Chace Athletic Center — intimate, loud, and packed with believers — remains one of the Northeast's toughest small-gym trips.
The program's DII heritage — national contention, winning culture — traveled with the Bulldogs to Division I. That institutional memory of winning is the program's secret weapon: Bryant expects to win, because winning is what Bryant does.
The 2022 tournament team's legacy is the foundation: Kiss's scoring title, the NEC nets, and the proof of concept. In Smithfield, that March is already legend — and the America East wars are the next frontier.
What defines Bryant is the rise: a program that climbed from DII to the Dance in fifteen years and isn't done climbing. The Bulldogs' story is still being written, and the next chapters look bright. The 2022 team's fearless style — pressing, running, and shooting with total confidence — became the program's trademark, and Smithfield still talks about Kiss's 30-point explosions like they happened yesterday.
The America East move was Bryant's declaration: the Bulldogs weren't just happy to be in Division I, they intended to win it. The league's wars with Vermont — the conference's gold standard — are the measuring stick, and Bryant's early years in the league showed the program belonged. Smithfield's embrace has been total: the Chace Athletic Center's crowds keep growing, the student section keeps getting louder, and the 2022 nets hang as both memory and promise. The Bulldogs' DII championship pedigree means the program knows what winning feels like — and wants more.
The 2025–26 season was the cost of a championship exodus — 9–22 overall, 5–11 in the America East, tied for seventh. A year earlier, Phil Martelli Jr.'s Bulldogs went 23–12 and 14–2 in the league, swept the America East regular season and tournament, and reached the NCAA Round of 64. When Martelli Jr. departed after going 43–25 in two seasons, Bryant hired for a builder who has won at every level.
That builder is Jamion Christian, hired in April 2025. Christian's signature is “Mount Mayhem” — the pressing, chaotic style that carried Mount St. Mary's to NEC titles in 2014 and 2017, including a First Four win over New Orleans. He spent one season at Siena (17–16), where he recruited and coached Jalen Pickett, now a Denver Nugget; three rebuilding years at George Washington; and two seasons in Italy with Pallacanestro Trieste, going 41–24 and winning the 2023–24 Serie A2 championship to earn promotion to Italy's top flight.
The rebuild is roster-wide: 13 new players, the most turnover in program history. The cornerstones are returners Ty Tabales — among the America East's best freshmen a year ago — and Keegan Harvey, who finished second on the roster in both scoring and rebounding. Around them, Christian went to the portal for grown men: Duane Thompson (St. Bonaventure), Eric Chatfield Jr. (Georgia Tech), Onyx Nnani (South Florida) and Andre Pasha (New Haven). Both Tabales and Harvey are changing positions — Tabales sliding to shooting guard, Harvey to power forward — and the entire fall has been about what Christian calls the most important thing: camaraderie.
The recent standard is no secret: 20 or more wins in three of the last four seasons, the 2021–22 NEC championship team that reached the NCAA First Four at 22–10, and the 2024–25 America East double. Bryant was ineligible for the postseason entirely from 2008–12 during the Division I transition, and the program has never lacked for ambition since — from Jared Grasso's NEC breakthrough to Martelli Jr.'s America East takeover. Chace Athletic Center has seen the whole arc. Now the Mayhem era begins in Smithfield.
The climb was methodical. Jared Grasso (2018–23, 79–67) took the Bulldogs from NEC afterthought to the 2021–22 NEC championship and the program's first NCAA Tournament; when Bryant moved to the America East in 2022, Grasso's 2022–23 team went 17–13 and held its own immediately. Martelli Jr. then raised the ceiling — 20 wins, then 23, then the 2024–25 double — before departing. Three coaches, three eras, one trajectory: up. The Division I transition years (2008–12), when Bryant couldn't even play for a postseason bid, feel like another lifetime in Smithfield.