In the modern Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, nobody is asking for patience — except that patience is exactly what the Coppin State Eagles are building with. Out of Baltimore’s Physical Education Complex, one of the smallest and loudest arenas in Division I, head coach Larry Stewart has spent three seasons dragging a proud HBCU program back toward relevance one win at a time: 2–27, then 6–24, then 7–24. The record doesn’t pop. The trajectory does. And as Stewart enters his fourth season in 2026–27, the Eagles are done apologizing for where they started. The question is whether the slow build finally produces a leap.
Stewart is the right man for this particular job in a way few coaches could be. He played at Coppin State, scored 2,000-plus points as an Eagle, survived a 1994 shooting and stabbing during a Baltimore burglary, and still made the NBA’s All-Rookie First Team with the Washington Bullets in 1995. When he was hired in May 2023 and told the Baltimore Banner, “This is home for me,” it wasn’t coach-speak. He knows what this program was — and what the standard looks like, because he lived it as a player under the legendary Fang Mitchell.
That history is why the current rebuild feels like restoration rather than construction. Mitchell built Coppin State into an HBCU powerhouse over 28 seasons (1986–2014), a run that produced four NCAA Tournament trips and the most famous upset in program lore: the 1997 Eagles, a 15 seed, stunning 2-seed South Carolina 78–65 in the first round — only the third 15-over-2 upset in tournament history — before falling 81–82 to Texas in the round of 32. The 1990 and 1993 teams danced too, and the 2008 team remains a trivia answer forever: the first 20-loss team ever to make the NCAA field. Eleven regular-season conference titles, the 1976 NAIA national championship, and a program all-time mark of 829–902 tell the story of a school that has always punched above its size. The program hasn’t won more than nine games in a season since 2019–20. Stewart’s job is to make that sentence history.
Year three was the clearest step yet. The 2025–26 Eagles finished 7–24 and 5–9 in the MEAC, tied for sixth — modest on paper, meaningful in context. The nonconference slate was as demanding as any in the league: the season opened in the Hall of Fame Series against Maryland at CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore, then took the Eagles on the road to La Salle, James Madison, South Florida, VCU, Rider, West Virginia, Liberty, Saint Joseph’s, Radford, Navy and Georgetown, with home dates against Central Penn, local rival Loyola Maryland and UMBC. It’s a buy-game-heavy gauntlet that pays the bills and hardens a young roster; the Eagles took their lumps in November and December and played their best basketball when the MEAC slate arrived in January.
The core Stewart is building around has real identity. Forward Khali Horton, who averaged 7.9 points per game as a junior, and guard Cam Sparrow (4.9 per game) are the returners with starting experience — roommates who came in together as freshmen and have now spent two full seasons in the wars side by side. Sparrow calls Horton “my dog” and the bond shows on the floor: these are Stewart’s culture carriers, the players who will teach the next wave of newcomers what the standard is. In a program this young, that continuity matters more than any single stat line.
The MEAC around them is no one’s idea of easy. Norfolk State remains the league’s gold standard under Robert Jones, Howard and North Carolina Central own recent tournament titles, and every road trip in this league is a grind. But the Eagles don’t need to win the league this year to keep climbing — they need a winning February, a home record that makes the PEC a real fortress, and a MEAC Tournament run in Norfolk that reminds everyone what Coppin State used to do in March. The gap between sixth place and the semifinals in the MEAC is almost never talent. It’s guard play, poise, and one weekend where the shots fall.
Zoom out and the story is bigger than one season. HBCU basketball is having a renaissance moment nationally — bigger audiences, better resources, real cultural momentum — and programs like Coppin State, with a 4,100-seat bandbox that shakes when it’s full and a coach who is literally part of the school’s mythology, are positioned to ride it. The 1976 NAIA title banner, the 1997 upset, the Fang Mitchell decades: that’s not nostalgia, it’s the sales pitch. Stewart can point at the rafters and tell a recruit, “We’ve been here before. I was here.”
So the 2026–27 season is about one thing: turning the slow build into a real team. Three years of adding a win here, a conference victory there, a young core growing up together — at some point the curve has to bend. Stewart has the building blocks, the hometown credibility, and a locker room that has bought in completely. Baltimore has always loved a fighter. The Eagles just need to give the city something to fight for in March.