Southeastern CC hires former Baylor assistant Steve Henson as head coach

Steve Henson gives Southeastern Community College a head coach with Division I, NBA and high-major recruiting mileage, and that is exactly why this hire landed as one of the most notable in recent NJCAA basketball. SCC announced Henson as its next men’s coach on June 26, with the veteran set to start July 1 and take over a Blackhawks program that has been one of Iowa’s steadier winners.

Henson arrived from Baylor, where he had been an assistant since being hired on May 3, 2024, and helped the Bears reach the 2026 College Basketball Crown semifinals, extending Baylor’s run to 14 straight postseason appearances. Before Waco, Texas, he spent eight seasons as head coach at UTSA in San Antonio, where his teams produced the program’s best seasons in its Conference USA years. In 2018, he was named Conference USA Coach of the Year after leading the Roadrunners to a 20-win season and a postseason berth.

That background matters at the junior-college level because SCC is not hiring a retread trying to find his footing. Henson has coached at Oklahoma, UNLV, South Florida and Illinois, and he also spent time with the Atlanta Hawks. Put simply, he has lived in the recruiting lanes SCC now wants to attack: high school gyms, transfer portals, player-development circles and staff rooms where systems are built, not improvised. His playing résumé carries the same weight. He was a four-year starter at Kansas State, earned First Team All-Big Eight honors, remains one of the Wildcats’ all-time assists leaders and was selected 44th overall in the 1990 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks.

The timing gives SCC a clean program reset. Lorenzo Watkins resigned on June 12 after 18 years in the program, including nine as head coach, and left with a 195-72 record. His final SCC team went 17-13 in 2025-26. Henson inherits a roster-planning window that is already open, along with an athletic department in transition: John McVey became athletic director effective June 1, and Joe O’Brien is retiring July 1 after nearly three years leading SCC athletics.

For Blackhawks basketball, the hire also raises the ceiling in a way that should matter immediately on the recruiting trail. SCC’s 2023 NJCAA Division I tournament run, a 75-49 first-round win over Snead State followed by a 62-56 loss to Odessa, showed the program can play in the bracket. Henson gives Southeastern a coach with the background to turn that kind of run into a regular expectation, not a one-off.