The Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks carry one of the prouder mid-major résumés in the South — seven NCAA tournament appearances, a 400-game winner on the sideline for a quarter-century, and a building named for a legend. They also carry the weight of how long it's been. ULM hasn't danced since 1996, and the last few seasons have been the hardest in program history. The 2026-27 campaign, under new head coach Ryan Cross, is about the long climb back — and about remembering what this program used to be.
The glory years are real and worth telling. Under Mike Vining (1981-2005) — 402 wins, the program's all-time leader — the Warhawks were a March regular. Seven NCAA trips between 1982 and 1996, including the 1982 debut as an 11-seed against Iowa (a 63-70 loss that showed they belonged), the 1986 and 1993 runs, and the 1991 date with Duke. They never won a tournament game — 0-7 in the Big Dance — but in an era before the portal and the power-conference money gap, ULM was the kind of program that made power teams nervous in March. The Southland Conference titles piled up; Fant-Ewing Coliseum, named for legendary coach Lenny Fant (326 wins from 1957-1979), was one of the toughest road trips in the region.
The modern era has been a search for that feeling. Orlando Early's tenure (2006-2010) bridged the Southland-to-Sun-Belt move, and Keith Richard — a Monroe native and former player — took over in 2010 for a 15-year run that had genuine highs: the 2014-15 team went 24-14 and reached the CBI championship game; the 2015-16 squad went 20-14; the 2018-19 team won 19 and made a CIT run. But the back half of the Richard era was a slow slide, and the bottom fell out completely: 7-25 in 2024-25, Richard's retirement, and then the 2025-26 season under Phil Cunningham — 4-28 overall, 1-17 in the Sun Belt, 14th place, an eight-game losing streak to close it.
There's no spinning 4-28. The Warhawks were the worst team in the Sun Belt by every measure — 3-10 at home, 1-15 on the road, and a roster whose top two returning scorers had averaged 5.8 and 3.4 points the year before. In a league that's gotten dramatically better — with programs investing real money and the Sun Belt sending multiple teams to postseason play — ULM was playing a different sport. Cunningham lasted one season.
Enter Ryan Cross, hired in 2026 to lead the rebuild. The job is a total restoration: new roster, new culture, new expectations, all of it. The Sun Belt doesn't wait — Arkansas State, James Madison, Troy, Marshall and the Ragin' Cajuns down I-20 all believe they're contenders — so the Warhawks' climb starts from the league's basement with nowhere to go but up. That's the sales pitch and the challenge in one: a proud program, a real arena, a fan base that remembers March, and a blank slate.
The 2026-27 roster is, by necessity, almost entirely new — the portal era means a rebuild like this happens in months, not years. The staff's job is to find toughness first and talent second: players who'll defend Fant-Ewing like it matters, because it does. The Warhawks' history says the building can be an advantage; the last decade says it hasn't been. Changing that is Cross's first and most important task.
The conference road is unforgiving but familiar. ULM's Sun Belt history (2006-present) includes an 18-season ledger of 118-210 — the program has never quite found its footing since leaving the Southland, where it went 235-145 over 24 seasons. The rivalries are real, though: the Ragin' Cajuns series is genuine Louisiana bad blood, and the league's geographic footprint means bus trips and hostile gyms every week. In the Sun Belt, you earn everything.
What the program has — and what Cross is selling — is history with substance. Lenny Fant's 326 wins. Vining's 402. Seven NCAA banners (even without a win, the appearances are the point). The 2015 CBI finals run that showed Monroe still cares when the team gives it a reason. This isn't a startup or a football school dabbling in basketball; it's a basketball program that lost its way and is trying to find the road back.
The honest version of the story is that the climb will be slow. The Sun Belt's middle class is strong, the roster is brand-new, and 4-28 doesn't wash off in one offseason. But college basketball is the sport of the sudden turnaround — a good portal class, a couple of home upsets, a February winning streak, and suddenly Fant-Ewing is loud again. The Warhawks don't need to be great in year one. They need to be competitive, to defend home court, and to give Monroe a reason to believe the wilderness years are ending.
What defines ULM is the distance between the banners and the present — and the belief that the distance can be closed. Seven NCAA tournaments. Two legendary coaches. A building named for one of them. The Warhawks have been here before, in the big sense: they know what a winning program looks like because they were one. Ryan Cross's job is to make Monroe remember. The climb starts now.