By Sophia Oppedisano
Sports Editor
It’s a routine evening in the Framingham State gymnasium Jan. 29. The stage is set for a conference matchup between the Rams’ men’s basketball program and the Fitchburg State Falcons.
The warm-up clock winds down, the shoot-around wraps up, and the Rams huddle up on the court as Head Coach Donald Morris Jr. takes his place by the home bench, the picture of composure, as he shakes hands with the Falcons’ head coach.
Morris is leading the program to its most successful season in 15 years and has boasted marked improvements over the past four seasons since he became coach in 2021.
His lengthy career is brimming with accomplishments that make him fit for the job - one of which is his Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) program, Basketball 2 the Limit (B2L).
Morris is the only head coach in the country who is coaching at the collegiate level and owns an AAU program.
Morris said the program is built on the principle of teaching kids “the right way to play” and, when the time comes, helping those players select a college that is “the right place for them.”
The AAU program was established in 2009 and boasts sponsorship from Puma and a robust coaching squad. B2L emphasizes bringing up its players to be prepared for college and life beyond the academic setting.
Basketball was a focal point of Morris’ childhood, beginning around the fifth grade. He played up to the high school level, where he started for four years. A coach took Morris under his wing, aiding him through prep school and up to the college level.
Morris spent time at Notre Dame Preparatory School before heading to Dean College for his associate’s degree. He then went to play for Southern New Hampshire University’s Division II program before the passing of his father.
“I came home to finish my degree at Lesley [University] because I wanted to be close to my mom. It was a tough decision … but I knew that my family had to come first at that time,” Morris said.
In the process of completing his last few classes, Morris was asked to coach at Lesley after completing his degree and subsequently became “one of the youngest minority coaches in New England at that time,” he said.
Since then, he has done coaching stints at Emerson College, Daniel Webster College, Newbury College, and MassBay Community College before coming to Framingham State.
Throughout his career, B2L has been a constant, driving force.
Morris said the program started with 10 girls who wanted to start their own team while he was also coaching at the college level.
“Ten [girls] turned into 20, and then my assistant coach and I would go to recruit at AAU tournaments,” said Morris.
He added when he went out to recruit, he often found young players were not being taught correctly. Morris and his assistant coaches hoped to expand the program to give players the proper tutelage to play the game at the college level and even up to the professional level.
With these ideas in mind, 20 players eventually grew to 300, all of whom receive rigorous instruction that not only prepares them for basketball but for life beyond.
Morris’ coaching philosophy revolves around how basketball and the lessons players learn on the court correlate to real life.
He noted how easy it is to think of basketball in wins and losses, but helping his players grow means more to him than the tally in the win column.
“My big thing is, how can we teach life lessons through the game?” Morris asked. “Lessons you learn on the court are ones you take every day with you. I've had kids that came to me that were first-generation college students, and they came from single-parent homes, and they would say ‘Coach Morris, we may have not won the championship, but you showed me how to be a good man.’”
A big part of his job as a coach at the University is to help his players become better adults by building connections with players that are not dependent on game analytics.
Morris said he has attended former players' weddings and baptisms for their children, something he noted with pride.
“In that sense, that's winning,” he said.
Morris said his goals here at Framingham include improving on a team culture that has suffered under previous head coaches.
Morris is using his experience starting B2L from the ground up to inform the rebuilding of the men’s basketball team.
He noted the time it took to grow those first 10 girls into a 300-player program.
“I built [B2L] pretty much myself, with some great coaches around me. I tell people you can start at one place, and you may not have everyone else see the destination, or everyone else believe in where you're trying to get to, but as long as you believe and you're determined to get there, you'll find a way to do that,” Morris said.
The same is true for this Framingham team where the goal is to get the players to share in a collective vision of the important effect their team will have on the program in the long term.
“This is not a quick fix - you have to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I tell some kids, ‘OK, when you come here, you may not reap the benefits of us winning the championship, but you may be the person that comes and helps turn the stone that helps get us in the right direction,’” he said.
The focus for Morris is to get his players focused on “small wins” as they work on rebuilding.
Since Morris arrived in 2021, the team has steadily added more wins to their record which has improved from 3-22 that 2021-22 season to 9-10 so far this 2024-25 season with six games remaining before the playoffs. He credits much of the teams’ recent successes to the support of the University and the resources that aid student-athletes in thriving on campus. “The more we can show support, not just to men’s basketball but to all the athletes, and really try to show them what we're trying to do is try to show you the correlation between hard work and success,” he said. To top off his recent success, Morris was named an AAU Coach of the Year by the AAU Northeastern Conference (NEAAU). Morris said this was a great honor and he is grateful to NEAAU for supporting his mission for players to use basketball as a tool for life. “It’s been great to have them support student athletes and myself,” he added.