Ravon Justice named 10th women’s head basketball coach in SHSU history
Ravon Justice has officially been named the new women’s head basketball coach at Sam Houston State University.
“We are very excited that Coach Justice is going to lead our program,” Director of Athletics Bobby Williams said. “Going through this process, the overwhelming support and positive comments about her as a person and a coach were extremely high-level. We look forward to her elevating [our] women’s basketball program to the level that we all know it can reach.”
Justice has spent the last two seasons at the helm for Prairie View A&M University. According to a press release by SHSU Athletics on Thursday, Justice “helped resurrect and refocus the once prominent women’s basketball program” during her time at PVAMU.
She inherited a struggling Panthers program in 2016 similar to the team she will be introduced to at SHSU, but the numbers in her two years at PVAMU were not exactly eye-opening. The Panthers were coming off a 13-15 season in 2015—playing .500 ball (9-9) against the rest of the Southwest Athletic Conference (SWAC). In her first year at the helm, Justice posted a 13-18 record (8-10 in conference) but was an impressive 11-2 at home. 2017 saw a slight improvement as PVAMU finished 15-16 going 10-3 at home and 12-6 in SWAC matchups.
Perhaps the ability to win conference games and finish off teams on her home court is the appeal on Justice’s resume, but she will have her hands full with an SHSU squad that finished last season 4-23 with a single victory in conference. SHSU was 3-12 at Bernard G. Johnson Coliseum last year, a glaring figure that Justice and the Bearkats will be looking to improve.
“I’m really excited about the opportunity to coach at a prestigious university [like] Sam Houston State,” Justice said. “Being from Texas, I love recruiting Texas kids and being at Sam gives a great opportunity to do that, and to take a Texas team somewhere like I’ve had the opportunity to do at Prairie View.”
Justice’s recruiting garnered national recognition when she took over those duties as an assistant coach at the University of Houston. Her six-player class that was recruited following the 2010 season was ranked in the top-40 nationally by Dan Olson’s Collegiate Girls Basketball Report and ESPN HoopGurlz.
She has also had a brief look at the Bearkats before. PVAMU and SHSU actually met each other in a non-conference contest in December 2017 where the Panthers picked up a double-digit victory 75-65 over the Kats. Turning around the scuffling SHSU program might be a long and winding road, but it’s a journey Justice vows she is well-prepared for.
“I’m loyal to trusting the process of doing things the right way,” Justice said. “You have to be patient with that process, one that also involves learning how to wake up and win every single day itself.”