Few programs in the country have climbed the ladder as fast as the California Baptist Lancers. When CBU announced in January 2017 that it was leaving the Division II ranks for the Western Athletic Conference, the conventional wisdom said the Lancers would spend a half-decade learning the ropes. Instead, they went 16-15 in their first Division I season — an NCAA record for wins by a program in its transition year — and they have been winning ever since. Eight years later, the Lancers finally cut down the nets that mattered: the 2026 WAC tournament title, the program's first trip to the NCAA Tournament, and a 25-9 record that announced CBU as a real mid-major power.
The story starts long before Division I. California Baptist fielded a basketball program at the NAIA level beginning in 1969, competing in the Golden State Athletic Conference, and the move to NCAA Division II in 2010 brought the Lancers into the Pacific West Conference, where they were immediately a contender. Regular-season PacWest titles in 2014 and 2016, a tournament crown in 2016, and a string of deep Division II tournament runs — including an Elite Eight in 2018 — built an institutional memory of winning. When the Division I jump came on July 1, 2018, CBU didn't arrive as a wide-eyed newcomer. It arrived as a program that expected to win, because winning is what it had always done.
The architect of the Division I rise was Rick Croy, who coached the Lancers from the NAIA-to-DII transition all the way through the 2025-26 breakthrough. Croy's teams played with pace, spacing, and a confidence that refused to accept the usual transition timeline. Guard Milan Acquaah set the tone early, earning 2019 WAC Newcomer of the Year honors while the Lancers stacked a transition-record 16 Division I wins and a CBI berth. The 2019-20 team went 21-10 and finished second in the WAC, and though the COVID-19 pandemic robbed that group of a postseason, the message was clear: Riverside wasn't waiting its turn.
Through the early 2020s, CBU kept knocking. The Lancers finished third in the WAC in 2024-25 at 17-15, and then everything clicked in 2025-26. A 25-9 record. Fifteen wins at home without a loss. A 13-5 WAC mark. And then a WAC tournament title that sent the Lancers dancing for the first time in program history. Senior guard Dominique Daniels Jr. of Compton became the face of the run — the kind of scoring, shot-making leader that carries a team through March. For a program that began Division I play under a four-year postseason ban, cutting down the nets in the program's first eligible decade was vindication on every level.
Now comes the second act, and it's a big one. On July 1, 2026, California Baptist officially moved to the Big West Conference, joining fellow WAC emigrants Utah Valley and Sacramento State as the league reshaped itself after Hawaii and UC Davis departed for the Mountain West. It's a natural fit: a California school playing a California-centric schedule, with bus-trip rivalries replacing the WAC's sprawling footprint. And it turns the crosstown rivalry with UC Riverside into a conference game — two programs five miles apart, now fighting over the same standings.
The other big change is on the bench. After 12 seasons building CBU into a winner, Rick Croy moved on, and the Lancers handed the program to first-year head coach Kyle Getter, who arrived from Notre Dame, where he served as an associate head coach. Getter inherits a roster that turns over significantly but retains the program's identity: seniors like Monty Bowser, Jayden Jackson, Devon Malcolm, Chase Mayo Harmon, Martel Williams, and Miles Daniels give the Lancers a veteran backcourt core, while the frontcourt leans on size with Bradey Henige, Jonathan Griman, Thomas Ndong, and Nate Garcia. Freshmen such as OJ Blankson, Rene D'Amelio, and Jordan Muller round out a group that will be asked to uphold the standard quickly.
What won't change is the building. The Fowler Events Center, opened in 2017 as the program's Division I-era home, seats 5,050 and has become one of the West's best mid-major atmospheres. The CRAZIES student section packs the lower bowl, Lancer Madness opens every season with a bang, and the 2025-26 team defended its home floor without a single loss. In a league where road trips are wars, an unbeaten home record is currency — and the Lancers have turned Riverside into one of the toughest outs on the West Coast.
The program's identity runs deeper than basketball. California Baptist is a faith-based institution, and that mission has shaped the culture: high-character players, a tight-knit locker room, and a Riverside community that has embraced the Lancers as its own. CBU is the rare athletic department where the rise of the basketball program has mirrored the rise of the university itself — enrollment, facilities, and national profile all climbing together.
The 2026-27 season is about proving the breakthrough wasn't a peak but a plateau. The WAC title banner is in the rafters; now the Lancers have to defend a new conference with a new coach and a rebuilt roster. The Big West is no soft landing — UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Barbara have all been NCAA-tournament programs in recent years, and the league's top is as tough as anything the WAC offered. But nobody at CBU is thinking about a step back. The program skipped the transition struggle once before. The expectation in Riverside is that the first NCAA trip becomes a habit, not a memory.
What defines California Baptist is the velocity of the rise: from NAIA to Division II contention to Division I record-setters to conference champions, all in about a decade. The Lancers checked the last box in 2026. The next one — a Big West title, a second dance, a March win — is already on the wall. In Riverside, the belief is that the best chapters are still being written.