These Guys Can Play
The “Red Mambas” plus the Trojans’ much-improved returning vipers have made Troy a basketball team that’s tough to beat.
Snow (see photo below) is on the ground as I sit in front of my computer screen and reflect on another Troy men’s basketball season that could present the equivalent of a white Christmas for Trojan sports fans.
After winning the Sun Belt Conference regular season and tournament titles last season and securing its third-ever berth to the NCAA Big Dance, four key Troy starters used the lucrative transfer portal to head for greener basketball arenas.
However, through 19 games this season, it seems that Troy might be better than the sterling 2024-2025 team. The new (and apparently improved) team also plays one of the more enjoyable brands of basketball I’ve observed in four decades of covering men’s hoops.
These guys - the hold-overs who decided to stay in little Troy, Alabama - can flat-out shoot the rock. They play unselfish, poised team basketball, displaying tremendous team chemistry. I also think they might be playing with collective chips on their shoulders as they might be put-out that many pundits thought they were going to significantly regress as a team this season.
As Coach Scott Cross told me last night after the game, “This is the most fun I’ve ever had coaching a basketball team.” (Coach Cross has been coaching for more than 20 years.)
“These are good kids and are so much fun to be around,” he said, adding that he stays on the fannies of his players because he doesn’t want them to become complacent, but even he loves the way they play the game.
Answering a question I asked about the team’s ability to score from beyond the 3-point arc (but also in other ways), Coach Cross added these “are very-skilled guys.” When Troy is on its game, the top 7 or 8 players are “almost impossible to defend,” he said.
It’s rare for any basketball team to feature a starting line-up where coaches and fans don’t know which of the five starters is going to light up the scoreboard that night - because they all can.
As yesterday’s 99-74 blow-out victory over Arkansas State proved, even a player coming off the bench (Jerrell Bellamy) can explode and put up huge numbers (22 points on just 11 shots attempted and four monstrous, highlight-reel dunks).
Troy is now 13-6 overall and in sole possession of first place in the Sun Belt (6-1).
The Dothan Antelope, Thomas Dowd
The key that might best explain Troy’s impressive season was probably the decision of Dothan native, Thomas Dowd, to NOT enter the transfer portal.
For two years, Coach Cross has been saying Dowd would be a future star and that future is … now.
Dowd, a 6-8 forward who can shoot the three and also take it to the hoop, is 8th in the country in “double-doubles,” averaging approximately 16 points a game and 10.2 rebounds.
The emotion with which Dowd plays the game is easily-seen in his exuberant facial expressions, an enthusiasm for the game that seems to be contagious among teammates, all of whom seem to genuinely like one another.
Victor Valdez, who Coach Cross keeps comparing to a mid-Major version of NBA star Luka Dončić, actually leads Troy in scoring (also 16 ppg).
The 6-7 Valdez (originally from Mexico City) is beginning to remind me of last year’s team star, Tayton Conerway (now a standout at Indiana), in that, when needed, Valdez can dribble the ball into the paint and get off shots from all angles - unorthodox shots that, half the time, either go into the bucket or draw a foul and get him to the charity stripe.
Yesterday, Valdez started the game ice cold from three-point range. However, he adjusted his game plan and ended up scoring 17 points and recorded 14 (!) assists, the second most assists in one game for a Trojan player in decades.
Theo Seng - another tall (6-9) forward who can also shoot the 3, had played at three other schools before transferring to Troy three years ago. In his third year in the program, the California native (who jokes he now has a Southern accent) is averaging 13.2 points and he’s just as likely to lead the team in scoring as anyone else in the lineup.
Destiny really took a hand when Coach Cross accidentally discovered a hoops-junkie gem when he watched an AAU tournament game in Las Vegas and kept noticing a fair-skinned red-headed kid from Arizona/Washington who was outplaying the Birmingham athlete Cross had come to Vegas to recruit.
(Aside: I am partial to fair-skinned, red-headed athletes since I am one myself - or used to be back when I could shoot a basketball.)
The kid’s name was (and still is) Cooper Campbell. At the tournament, Cross also met Cooper’s father, Scott, a long-time boys and girls high school coach who told Cross if he recruited his son, his son might say “Yes” and travel all the way to south Alabama to “take the stairs” for Coach Cross.
As Coach Cross soon discovered, Cooper’s older brother, Cobi, (who put up impressive numbers for community college North Idaho College) could also shoot the lights out, handle the ball and take it to the hoop just as well as his younger brother … so Cross offered Cobi a scholarship as well. (Cobi missed all of last season and redshirted due to an injury).
This season the “Red Mamba’s” are being coached by their father, Scott, who Coach Cross astutely recruited to be an assistant coach. (As all film buffs should know, The Red Mamba nickname is a variation of the lethal snake, The Black Mamba, made famous in the Quentin Tarantino classic “Kill Bill Vol. 2.”)
Apparently Coach Campbell is a guru in teaching correct shooting form or … somebody taught the Campbell boys how to shoot a basketball this well. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that several Troy players, including Dowd, have significantly improved their long-distance shooting percentages this season).
Both Campbell brothers are shooting more than 43 percent from long-distance range. Against USC, Cooper scored 32 points. In a recent Troy blow-out victory over Southern Miss, Cobi scored 30 points, making six of nine three point attempts).
While I’m no analytics basketball nerd, I have calculated that a team that can hit, say, 40 percent of its 3-point shots will - every game - score more points than a team that shoots 50 percent from inside the arc.
For the first time since I moved back to Troy eight years ago, I can see that Troy now has a team that can shoot the long shots as well (or better) than just about any other team in the country.
What this means to you and me is that if Troy’s shooters are “on,” Troy is almost certainly going to beat any team in the Sun Belt and can hang with or, perhaps upset, any Power 4 team.
Prediction: If and when Troy wins its first-ever game in the Big Dance, it will be because three or so Troy players were all stroking it from beyond the 3-point line.
Two quick asides …
My coverage of Troy basketball goes back to the run-and-gun era of Coaches Maestri an Felix. For example, I was the sports editor at The Troy Messenger when Troy shocked the sports world by scoring 258 points in one game against Devry Institute in January 1992. Just about every player on that Division II team could shoot - and hit - 3-pointers … If Cooper and Cobi Campbell had been on that team, Troy would would have scored 300 points against DeVry.)
Baby sister is already a blue-chip college prospect …
At yesterday’s game, I also met the mother of the Campbell brothers (Brie) and baby sister (Caia) for the first time.
As local sports fans know (or should know), the entire Campbell family moved to Troy in August and baby sister Caia enrolled at CHHS, where she’s a junior. (Jon Johnson wrote an excellent story on the basketball Campbells - See link here.)
As a big CHHS sports fan educated me the other night at the check-out line at Dollar General, Caia Campbell has quickly become a sensation in state high school basketball.
CHHS, which had been a girls powerhouse for many years, fell on hard times last year, finishing the year 7-19 (according to my source).
This year, with the third “Red Mamba” triggering the offense, CHHS has yet to lose a game and is ranked No. 3 in the state in 5A. According to my source, Caia Campbell is averaging 30 points a game. (She scored 40 points in a tournament game in Dothan in December, hitting seven three-pointers). Also, Brie Campbell, the matriarch of the Red Mamba basketball vipers, is serving as an assistant coach for the CHHS Lady Trojans. (Brie Campbell played college basketball at Oregon).
Needless to say, Trojans one and all are grateful Coach Cross booked that recruiting trip to Las Vegas … and we now all cross our fingers that, 18 months from now, Caia will dribble across the street and play her college basketball for Coach Chanda Rigby’s Troy Trojans, who are also enjoying another special season and are also in first place in the SBC).
Of course, teams that “live by the 3” can also die by the three …
Sometimes the long-range shots are going to rim-out or opponents’ defenders are going to do a good job of getting in the personal space of your team’s 3-point assassins.
That might have happened when Troy lost (by 12) to Arkansas state a couple of weeks ago. (Troy hit only 32 percent from beyond the arc and 42 percent for all shots.)
To show the difference when the shots fall, on Saturday afternoon - tip-off at 3:33 - Troy shot 66 percent from the field in the second half (56 percent for the game) and converted 12 thee-point shots and won by 25. (Troy hit 17 trifectas in another recent game).
The biggest roar in Saturday’s game came in the final minutes after Arkansas State missed its 8th free throw of the game, a miss that qualified all ticket-holders for a free entree at Baumhower’s. After Troy rebounded the lucky missed free throw, the Trojans pushed the ball up the court and Cobi Campbell then stroked his third long-range three of the game (“The Red Mamba strikes again” ) … and the crowd of 3,330 went wild.
Looking at the rest of the season …
I hope writing this column doesn’t jinx the Trojans, who still have 11 conference games left to play - seven (gulp) on the road. While seven games into the conference season Troy has, again, been the class of the Sun Belt, the Sun Belt is always a very balanced league, meaning any team can beat any other team on a given Wednesday or Saturday.
Still, if Troy can win seven of those games (the Trojans also have one out-of-conference home game on their schedule), Coach Cross’s Trojans will have won at least 20 games for five consecutive seasons (and at least 10 conference victories).
This would be a very impressive accomplishment, especially in the world of the Transfer Portal.
At least right now, Troy would seem to be a lock to make the Sun Belt Tournament field, hopefully as the No. 1 seed. Troy would then need to win three consecutive games to earn another bid to the Big Dance.
That is, a lot of basketball’s left to play but, as of this snow day, big and exciting things seem very possible.
The pre-season pollsters didn’t do their due diligence …
After the game, Thomas Dowd told me the returning players felt disrespected when in the pre-season polls, Troy was picked to finish fourth or fifth in the 14-team conference.
My guess is that whoever voted in the pre-season polls was simply looking at all the key starters Troy lost from last year’s team (and hadn’t picked up on all the momentum Coach Cross has built for his Troy program.)
The voters clearly didn’t know the Trojans who chose to come back were going to be much better than they were the previous season. They definitely didn’t know how lethal the Red Mambas could be.
No disrespect to the great Tayton Conerway or the super-athletic Myles Rigsby (now at Tulsa), but, to me, this version of the Trojans looks like a more formidable all-around basketball team.
If readers of my articles haven’t seen them play yet, do yourself a favor, take the stairs, travel to Trojan Arena and enjoy some good, clean basketball entertainment.
These guys can play.
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For posterity or the Substack record - here’s a photo documenting the snow of January 18, 2026
Our first-ever White Christmas
Since I haven’t been “mentally ready” to take down the Christmas tree and put up the Christmas decorations yet, our Christmas tree is still up. (Don’t laugh, I see many other Christmas trees that are still up around Troy). I’m glad I didn’t because now I could fake some photo evidence to show our family’s first-ever “white Christmas.”
Snow? Climate change in action.