CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In just his second season, Johnson C. Smith coach Maurice Flowers has the Golden Bulls in a bowl game for the first time in over a decade.
The team will play Fort Valley State in the Florida Beach Bowl on Wednesday.
"We've said the whole time that we weren't rebuilding a program, we were building a program," Flowers said. "And so to go through the turnaround as quickly as it's happened, we're not surprised."
But it's a surprise to just about everyone else.
Before Flowers stepped in, the Golden Bulls rarely had a winning season, the last one coming in 2012. In the last 30 years, JCSU has averaged about two wins per season.
And Flowers had just two wins in year one. But this year the Golden Bulls finished the regular season 7-3 and nearly went to the CIAA championship game.
"We knew where we were starting," Flowers said. "And we stuck to our plan."
Flowers, a Charlotte native and former Golden Bulls football and basketball star, doesn't just want to change the culture of the team, but the narrative around it locally.
"It used to be a running joke that hey, Independence can probably beat Smith," he said. "Those are things that were said, well, we want to be known as one of the top programs in the CIAA and in Division II."
Flowers, a former All-American quarterback knows the offensive side and the Golden Bulls have built a tremendous defense.
But the key ingredient to the turnaround?
It's because he cares.
"I care about Johnson C. Smith, because we were the first. We the first school to play an HBCU football game. And that means a lot," he said. "We want to win in the city of Charlotte, to have the city of Charlotte embrace us the way that Charlotte embraces winners. Butt we have to give them something to embrace. That's for sure."