MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - Long before he heard his name called by Adam Silver during the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft, Cedric Coward’s journey to the league had much more humble beginnings.
“If you would’ve told me at any point in my coaching career until Cedric that you could go D-III and be a lottery pick, I would’ve laughed in your face.”
Kip Ioane was the head coach at Willamette University, a Division-III school in Salem, Oregon for over 20 years.
He’ll never forget the day his recruiting coordinator showed him the tape of an unknown high school player from Fresno, California.
“I was like ‘Why are you showing me this? This kid’s too good for us,” Ioane recalls. “And he goes ‘No, no coach, nobody’s on him.’ And I said ‘Shut up’, I just didn’t believe him.”
That kid was Coward, who quit AAU ball, didn’t have any D-I looks, and committed to Willamette shortly after.
It didn’t take long for Ioane to realize he was different.
“We didn’t even get to practice,” Ioane says. “My leading scorers and my captains came back from the first open gym and said ‘Coach who the hell is this kid? Because he’s too good.’”
Coward was dominant, but that doesn’t mean he was treated differently.
Ioane recalls: “I’m the idiot that didn’t start him.”
That was temporary, and for good reason at a school as academically prestigious as Willamette.
“He turned a paper in late,” Ioane explains. “So that professor was like ‘Yeah, I know you are not this student, but you can’t make that grade up for a while until we get to the next thing.’
“To Ced’s credit, he knew full well he should’ve been starting. He didn’t complain once, he knew the rule. He just would come off the bench and dominate.”
After that freshman season, Coward jumped to Division-I and committed to Eastern Washington.
He made a prophetic statement to Ioane before he left.
“He said ‘Coach I just see a path for me to the NBA,’” Ioane says. “And I was like ‘Woah big fella, let’s worry about being impactful in the Big Sky Conference.’
“I was trying to temper it, but Ced knew.”
The rest is history in the making. Coward spent two years at Eastern Washington, an injury shortened year at Washington State, and now is the #11 pick in the draft to Memphis.
“I said crazy over and over, and it just doesn’t do it justice for this, because I don’t know if anyone else has done this,” Ioane explains. “I know there’s been D-III players that have gone (to the NBA) obviously, and Duncan Robinson is someone that all D-III players look up to.
“But lottery pick from this position is once in a lifetime.”
Ioane believes Coward will be a perfect fit in Memphis because his story is grit n’ grind through and through.
“I don’t think there’s a better example of somebody that’s had to display those characteristics to get there,” Ioane says. “Somebody that was unrecruited, no scholarship offers. This is a guy that literally built his path.
“Ced had to build a stage and the marketing plan to get anybody to see him on that stage.”
Now, the world will be watching Coward on his new stage at FedexForum.
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