ATLANTA — Grambling State women’s basketball coach Courtney Simmons apologized for her behavior in GSU’s 57-47 loss to Jackson State on Thursday in the HBCU WBB quarterfinals of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) tournament in Atlanta.
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Simmons picked up her second technical foul with less than a minute to play in the fourth quarter. After Tigers guard Kahia Warmsley missed a solid opportunity from beyond the arc. Jackson State claimed the defensive rebound with 15 seconds left in regulation. Immediately after JSU secured the ball, Simmons tossed her Expo dry-erase marker in the air, resulting in the second infraction and being removed from the game. Simmons notched her first technical foul in reference to a call made by an official on the court with 2:56 to play in the second quarter.
Simmons takes accountability
“It doesn’t matter how big the moment is,” Simmons said after the Tigers’ loss. “It doesn’t matter what the situation is. …I was wrong, and I take full responsibility. I embarrassed myself, I embarrassed my team, I embarrassed my AD [Dr. Trayvean Scott] and for that I am extremely sorry. But … I am a competitor, and that dog in me, you know, wanted that victory real bad. … But I tell my team all the time … your feelings can’t matter inside those four lines, and I allowed my feelings to dictate my actions. I take full responsibility.”
Simmons, who is in her second season at GSU (15-15, 12-6), guided the Tigers to the No. 5 seed in this year’s SWAC tournament. With the loss to Jackson State, Grambling was eliminated from the tournament. Last season, Alcorn eliminated Grambling 61-59 in the semifinals of the league’s tournament.
Grambling entered the 2024-25 season as the top team in the SWAC’s preseason poll. However, GSU overcame a rocky start to the season in non-conference play. Losing to teams like California, Arizona, Oregon State, Tulsa, LSU, and Louisville all on the road. Before dropping six league contests. Including three at home against Bethune Cookman, JSU, and Southern — to claw its way to the quarterfinal round of the tournament.
Where does Grambling go from here?
With the transfer portal and NIL dominating HBCU hoops and the college athletics landscape as a whole, Simmons also found herself navigating 10 new players to the program, repeating the process of what she did in her first season leading the program. But to the Tigers’ coach, the transfer portal has become a normal practice that will not be removed anytime soon.
“I’m tired,” Simmons said. “I’d rather not have to sign 10 kids, potentially may have to sign eight or nine in this offseason. That’s the beauty of the transfer portal, right? … I’d like to have kids for more than one year, but in this league when so many of the kids are older and mature. You got to get those mature and seasoned kids to try to compete with the top half of the league. …That’s my goal, to always finish in the top half of the league. I finished fifth this year. … I take full responsibility for that. …I got to get some kids with a little bit more grit. We got to be able to grind those wins out. The SWAC is tough.”
While Grambling’s HBCU basketball season is over, Simmons plans to get back to the drawing board immediately in preparing her team to bounce back stronger in the 2025-26 campaign.
