Christopher Lewis was officially named the Head coach for the women's basketball team on May 29, 2023. Lewis comes with more than 20 years of collegiate coaching experience and enters his first season with 53 head coaching victories in addition to three postseason in 3 years.
Each of Coach Lewis’s trips to the postseason as a head coach included some type of historic feat achieved in the process. His first feat was when he took a Harris-Stowe State University team that won just one game the previous season to the 2007 American Midwest Conference Tournament Championship, beating two nationally-ranked teams in the process. The following year, he became only the second coach in NAIA history to have their team upset a #1 seed in the first round of the national tournament. More recently, his last historic feat came as head men’s basketball coach in which his team became the third #8 seed to upset the #1 seed in the first round of the regional tournament.
Coach Lewis is an experienced and seasoned professional who has worked at many levels of collegiate coaching, which includes stops at Division I programs University of Maryland-Baltimore County, East Tennessee State, George Mason, Missouri State, and Morgan State universities. Lewis's teams have appeared in two WNIT, two NAIA, and three Division II National tournaments. In addition to team accomplishments, Lewis has also recruited and assisted in the tremendous individual development of his athletes, highlighted by: the six league Players of the Year, three league Defensive Players of the Year, two league Freshman of the Year, two New Comer of the Years, one 6th Man of the Year and six All-Americans.
"I am super excited to have the opportunity to lead BCCC to new heights,” Lewis said. "As a leader I am family-oriented, a proven winner, and committed to the development of young women through sport. I am honored and excited to get to work with the students and administrators at BCCC, to help our program compete at the highest level in all aspects.”
Lewis's most recent head coaching experience at the NJCAA level came as the head men’s coach at Frederick Community College in Frederick, Maryland, where he took over a roster two weeks before the first day of practice with 11 freshmen. Under Lewis's guidance, Frederick was ranked in NJCAA in points per game (86.0), along with steals per game (12.2), while also finishing Top 15 in assists per game (20.4). They then made history as his team advanced to the Regional Semi-Final game after upsetting ninth-ranked Beaver College, becoming only the third coach in Maryland Junior College history to beat a #1 seed to advance in the first round of the Regional tournament. The team finished fifth in Maryland Junior College state standings after being voted 14th in the preseason poll. Lewis coached two All-Region performers and one All-State performer as well. More importantly, he saw five of his players move on to four-year schools to continue their playing careers. Two of the players earned opportunities to continue their careers at NCAA Division I institutions; becoming the first two to do so in the program’s history.
Prior to his lone season at NJCAA Division II Frederick, Lewis had a plethora of Division I stops, including two seasons at East Tennessee State University & UMBC as an assistant coach and the program’s travel coordinator. In his first season at ETSU, Lewis helped the Buccaneers win their most conference games since the 2004-05 season. In that same year, Lewis helped guide Erica Haynes-Overtone to SOCON Freshman of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors.
During those two seasons, ETSU played a non-conference slate that was ranked 29th in the country, had consecutive top-three finishes in league play, made their first appearance in the WNIT since 2014-15, swept Tennessee-Chattanooga for the first time since the 1997-98 season, and successfully helped their First-Team All-Conference point guard Tianna Tarter to a professional contract overseas. The 2017-18 season saw the team earn a 20-13 overall record and finished second in the Southern Conference in both the regular season and postseason conference championship.
Before ETSU, Lewis spent four years at George Mason during which he coached three All-Atlantic 10 performers, including three-time All-Conference selection Taylor Brown. Brown won three consecutive all-conference honors from 2014-16 en route to becoming the first player in program history to record at least 1,500 points, 400 rebounds, and 300 assists in a career. His last season in the program, Lewis coached Kara Wright, who was selected Third-Team All-Conference, and Jacy Bolton who was voted to the Atlantic 10 All-Rookie team. Lewis saw Wright reach the 1,000-point club as she totaled 1,239 in her career, while Bolton became the first freshman player to score over 250 points since the 2009-10 campaign. In his first season at George Mason, Lewis helped direct an offense that averaged 54.5 points per game in 2012-13 to 69 points per game in 2013-14.
In June of 2015, Coach Lewis was one of just 14 assistant coaches from around the country chosen to participate in Advocates for Athletic Equity’s (AAE) annual “Achieving Coaching Excellence” (ACE) Professional Development Program for basketball coaches. The program is recognized as helping to boost the careers of some of the top minority coaches in the college game.
Prior to George Mason, Lewis spent time as an assistant coach at Missouri State, Morgan State, Missouri Baptist University, and Emporia State. Lewis, a native of St. Louis, Mo., was the head coach at Harris-Stowe State University from 2007-10. In his one season at Missouri State, Lewis coached a pair of All-Missouri Valley Conference performers, while the Lady Bears ranked in the top-30 in the country in scoring offense. Missouri State averaged 70.2 points per game in 2012-13, while Whitney Edie ranked fifth in the MVC in scoring (14.5) and rebounding (8.1). Tyonna Snow earned All-Freshman honors after notching 8.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 2.4 steals per game.
Lewis was the recruiting coordinator at Morgan State where he helped guide the Bears to a pair of second-place finishes in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, along with a WNIT berth in 2011. In the 2010-11 season, Morgan State was one of the top-scoring defenses in the country as they allowed 59 points per game, along with holding opponents to 28 percent shooting from beyond the arc, which ranked 29th nationally.
Prior to his four-year stint at Morgan State, Lewis coached three seasons at Harris-Stowe State University as the head coach. Lewis turned a program that had lost 72-consecutive conference games into a two-time NAIA National Tournament participant by his second season. That team finished the season with a 23-10 overall record in 2007-08, a No. 20 national ranking, and an appearance in the NAIA Round of 16 in his final year, upsetting No. 4 Oklahoma City University in the process.
Lewis spent the 2004-05 season as the recruiting coordinator at Missouri Baptist University, where he recruited two players who earned NAIA All-America status during their careers. Lewis earned his coaching start at his alma mater, Emporia State where he served as a student assistant coach in both the men’s and women’s programs. While at Emporia State, the women’s program compiled a 93-27 mark in four seasons and earned a Division II national ranking as high as No. 2 in both the 2001-02 and 2003-04 seasons. Additionally, the women’s program won two Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association championships and made three trips to the national tournament.
A native of St. Louis, Mo., Lewis received his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Emporia State in 2003. Lewis is the father of two daughters Aspen, born in August 2017, and Addison, born in June 2018.
