The Northeastern Huskies' basketball history is headlined by one of the great talents the game has ever known — and defined, right now, by a program in transition. Reggie Lewis, the smooth, elegant scorer who became a Boston Celtics All-Star before his tragic passing in 1993 at age 27, starred at Northeastern in the 1980s. His No. 35 hangs in the rafters — retired by the Huskies and by the Celtics in the Boston Garden — a reminder of the program's brightest star and its deepest loss.
Matthews Arena itself was a landmark: opened in 1910, the oldest multi-purpose athletic building still in use in the world, a brick-and-steel cathedral on St. Botolph Street that hosted a century of Boston sports. Playing basketball in a building that old, with that much history in the walls, was an experience no modern arena could replicate. That era ended in late 2025, when Matthews closed and was demolished. The Huskies now play at the 1,500-seat Cabot Center — smaller, newer, and the site of the program's next chapter. The Doghouse, the student section, has a new home, and the echoes of the old barn are the standard the new one has to live up to.
The modern March moments still shine. In 2015, Northeastern won the CAA tournament and earned a trip to the Dance, pushing third-seeded Notre Dame to the wire in a 69-65 thriller — the program's first tournament appearance in decades and a reminder that the Huskies could still play with anyone. The 2019 encore proved it was no fluke: another CAA tournament title, another Dance ticket, this time a date with Kansas. Two tournament trips in five years — Northeastern was a program, not a moment.
Bill Coen has been the constant. The head coach since 2006 and the program's all-time winningest men's basketball coach, Coen built Northeastern into a tough, smart, defensive outfit that travels — a CAA contender year after year, with regular-season titles in 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2021 stacked alongside the tournament crowns. His teams played a grown-man's game: disciplined, physical, and utterly unafraid of the moment. The America East glory years — seven tournament titles between 1981 and 1991 — are the program's foundation; the Coen era is its modern identity.
The 2025-26 season, Coen's twentieth, was the hard kind: 7-24 overall, 2-16 in the Coastal Athletic Association. It was a rebuild in the truest sense — eight newcomers, three of them transfers (Xander Alarie from Miami, Haris Elezovic from West Virginia, Mike Loughnane from Davidson) and five freshmen headlined by Xavier Abreu, who averaged 26.4 points at Phillips Academy Andover and arrived with the title of best shooter in Massachusetts. Growing pains were the price; the investment is the point.
And now the cavalry is coming home. In September 2026, Coen announced that Rashad King — the best Husky of the decade — will return for his final season of eligibility. King played three seasons on Huntington Avenue from 2022 to 2025, appearing in 92 games, and his junior year was one of the great individual seasons in recent program history: 18.5 points per game, 106 assists, 46 steals, All-CAA First Team — the 14th player in team history and the first since Tyson Walker in 2021 to earn it. He scored 20 or more fourteen times, dropped a career-high 32 on Hampton, and became the first Husky since Jordan Roland in 2019-20 to score 500 points in a season. "He brings instant credibility to our locker room, knows our systems, and will be an excellent mentor for our younger players," Coen said. A proven star, a young core, a new building — the 2026-27 Huskies have a story to tell.
The supporting cast for the new season blends the returners with the now-sophomore newcomers: Miles Newton, Petar Pinter and Liam Koelsch have a year in the system, and the roster adds pieces like Josh Goodwin, Damian Jung, Ryan Williams, Dorian Grosber, Danny Houlihan and Louis Bond. It's Coen's kind of group — long, tough, and coached hard. The CAA is a coach's league, full of tacticians and tight games, and nobody in it wants to see a Bill Coen team with a first-team all-conference guard coming off a bad year. That's when his teams are most dangerous.
The history runs deeper than most realize: an all-time record of 1,308-1,223, conference tournament championships in the America East (1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1991) and the CAA (2015, 2019), and a lineage of pros who embody the program's tough, smart identity. In Boston — a city with no shortage of basketball history — Northeastern has always been the program that punches above its weight.
What defines the Huskies is Reggie Lewis's legacy, the old barn on St. Botolph Street, and the rebuild now underway. A century-old arena gone but not forgotten, a beloved star gone too soon, a Hall of Fame-worthy coach in his third decade, and a returning star who chose to finish what he started. In Boston, Northeastern basketball is history you can still touch — and the next chapter starts at Cabot Center.