Delaware
Delaware hoops loss worst in decades but Ingelsby has faith in future
Delaware closes basketball season with lopsided Conference USA loss
Ingelsby determined to return Blue Hens to success after 10-21, injury-marred season
Historical calamities notwithstanding, what occurred inside the Carpenter Center in the early afternoon of March 7 should not be the total measure of the Blue Hens.
Certainly, an unsightly 81-38 basketball loss to Louisiana Tech was in some ways emblematic of Delaware’s 2025-26 basketball season, during which it endured unprecedented misfortune.
But the Blue Hens also frequently rose above their hardships, and even periodically excelled despite them.
First-year Conference USA member Delaware needed to win its game against Louisiana Tech, plus have Florida International and New Mexico State lose theirs later to make the CUSA Tournament, which includes just the top 10 of the 12 league schools.
As that final score hints, it turned into a failure of epic proportion for Delaware, which finishes the season in last place.
The 38 points Delaware scored were its fewest in a game in more than 61 years, since a 77-34 setback against Penn at the Palestra Dec. 9, 1964.
Delaware had scored fewer than 40 points just twice since, in a 46-39 defeat at Rider Feb. 19, 1983, and a 60-39 loss at VCU Jan. 16, 2008.
Ingelsby determined to improve situation
The Blue Hens played their fifth straight game with just six of the 13 scholarship players with whom they began the season, including two freshmen. They’d played the nine games before that with seven.
It caught up with them.
So they’re stuck with their 10-21 record, making these Delaware’s first back-to-back 20-loss seasons since it went 10-20 in 2014-15 and 7-23 in 2015-16 under former coach Monte Ross and 13-20 in Martin Ingelsby’s first UD season in 2016-17.
But the final showing was not representative of who’d they recently been. Delaware was coming off an 83-80 victory over Sam Houston State, which will be the league tournament’s second seed.
They’d also won four of eight before Saturday, which followed a near home upset of regular-season champion Liberty and included an excruciating overtime home loss to Western Kentucky in which the Hens trailed only in the opening seconds of the game and the final moments of OT.
“We’ve dealt with a lot this year,” Ingelsby said. “Obviously, the injuries, adversity, clarity on our roster.
“I’m a competitive dude. So it doesn’t sit well with me. You’re not happy with how overall this season went, obviously going into the league and trying to figure it out.”
Critical offseason looms
In the end, too many players playing too many minutes was part of those struggles. Christian Bliss was first nationally, Justyn Fernandez was fifth and Macon Emory eighth in minutes per game entering Saturday
But those three, in particular, showed how good they are, which is why Delaware won as much as it did. Same with Tyler Houser, though the knee injury he sustained in that WKU game could sideline him all next year.
So Delaware has several very good players. It just needs to retain those it has, such as the aforementioned group, and get more.
That is, of course, easier said than done. But it will be up to Ingelsby, whose contract extends through the 2028-29 season, and his staff to ensure it does, when the transfer portal opens after the Final Four.
“I’m optimistic,” Ingelsby said. “I think we were damn close this year with being dealt a tough hand with all the injuries. We put a good team together but never got a sense to see that team kind of play and grow and learn through the ups and downs of the season.
“But I’m confident that the right players, the right coaching staff, the right support, which we’re getting, that we can be very good in this league.”
“I’ll thank them forever”
Houston Emory, feted in Senior Day ceremonies Saturday, is the only one of Delaware’s remaining 12 scholarship players after Nnanna Njoku’s departure who has completed his eligibility. What a modern-day oddity he is, having spent his entire career at one school.
Delaware has signed one incoming freshman, Jafet Valencia, a 6-7, 200-pound guard from Leesburg, Virginia, and Evergreen Christian School. Ingelsby said he’ll likely be the only one.
“Today was not a semblance of what this team was able to do and how they competed for Delaware men’s basketball,” Ingelsby said, “the University of Delaware, with as tough of a hand as I’ve experienced in my 20-plus years in college basketball.
“We got six scholarship guys out there, two freshmen. Those guys that were there every day, I’ll thank them forever for everything that they gave this program.”
Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.
3-minute read
What’s still left to do after state legislature spring recess ends
Lawmakers will be out of the office come March 31. What awaits them when they get back?
Delaware looks prosperous on paper. Our GDP per capita ranks near the top nationally. But from 2000 to 2024, Delaware’s real GDP per capita grew just 1% — dead last in America. The national average was 37%. North Dakota grew 104%. Virginia grew 33%. North Carolina grew 26%.
That gap is the story. Delaware has been living off an economy it inherited while failing to build the workforce it needs for the future.
This is not just a school problem. It is an economic problem, a taxpayer problem and a leadership problem.
Delaware’s 2024 labor-force participation rate was 59.6%, the lowest since recordkeeping began in 1976. The state says it has more open jobs than jobseekers. In a state where government is the largest employer, headline numbers can disguise a weaker private-sector engine. In plain English: Delaware does not have enough workers with the skills employers need.
Delaware is failing our students
That failure starts early.
Only 26% of Delaware fourth graders read proficiently. As many as 45% score below basic. Eighth-grade reading scores hit a 27-year low in 2024. Only 34% of students in grades 3 through 8 are proficient in math.
When children do not learn to read, the bill does not disappear — it compounds. Delaware now has 54,000 prime-age adults who have left the labor force. State research estimates that costs us roughly $450 million a year in lost earnings, productivity and tax revenue. Every Delawarean pays twice: once when schools under-deliver, again when the consequences show up in corrections, homelessness, emergency healthcare, thinner tax base — and the dignity of a job.
Delaware spends about $20,577 per public school student — more than Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Let us stop pretending this is mainly a funding problem. It is a performance problem. Performance problems do not get fixed by writing larger checks to systems that are not held accountable.
To his credit, Gov. Matt Meyer has acknowledged the crisis. He declared a literacy emergency, launched the Delaware Early Literacy Plan, and backed new reading funding. Those are real steps. But Delaware has seen plans before, and the state’s own education leadership concedes that scores remain essentially flat. A one-point bump is not a turnaround. It is a rounding error.
Delaware does not lack plans. It lacks consequences.
Mississippi and Louisiana have shown the country what serious reform looks like. Mississippi climbed from 49th in fourth-grade reading in 2013 to the top 10 by 2024 — while spending less per student than Delaware. Louisiana went from last in 2019 to 16th in five years, and is the only state to fully recover from pandemic learning loss and surpass pre-pandemic scores. They aligned teacher training to the science of reading, adopted strong instructional materials, built transparent accountability and stopped pretending it was compassion to promote children who could not read.
The lesson is not about better messaging. It is about better systems, better measurement, the political will to keep going when resistance starts and more engaged business leaders.
Delaware’s stated goal is to raise third-grade reading proficiency from 38% to 53% by 2028. Fine. Who owns that number? Who is responsible for hitting it? What happens if they miss?
A target without a consequence is not accountability. It is public relations.
Will Delaware leaders commit to helping our children?
So here is a direct question for every governor, every legislator and every elected official whose name appears on a ballot: Will you stake your career on this? Will you commit, publicly and on the record, to being judged by whether Delaware’s children are measurably better off in eight years?
If that sounds like too much, consider what eight years means for a child. A third grader today who cannot read on grade level will be entering eleventh grade in 2033 — carrying the same deficit, the same narrowed future the data already predicts. Eight years is not an abstraction. It is the entire arc of a young person’s formative education.
Real accountability means public goals, quarterly reporting, named decision-makers and consequences for failure. It means a governor and legislature willing to say: here is the number, here is who owns it, here is how we will report it, here is what happens if we fail.
Mississippi was the poorest state in America. It decided that was not an excuse. Delaware is wealthier, smaller and easier to govern. We have even less excuse.
The excuses are exhausted. Delaware deserves better.
Ben duPont is a longtime Delawarean, a venture capitalist and a philanthropist. State Sen. Darius Brown represents the Second Senate District, which includes New Castle, Wilmington and Edgemoor.
A massive crane at a construction site along I-295 in New Castle County, Delaware, tipped backward.
SkyForce10 was over the scene on Wednesday, April 29, where a massive crane could be seen leaning backward with all its wheels in the air:
It is unclear at this time if anyone was injured and how the crane tipped backward.
FOLCROFT, Pa. (WPVI) — The FBI is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the disappearance of a Delaware County, Pennsylvania man.
Isiah Jenifer, 29, has been missing since last summer.
Jenifer’s sister reported him missing to police on Aug. 28 after she said she had been unable to reach him and learned that no one else had heard from him.
“It’s not like my brother not to be at my house, and we received a few phone calls that nobody had heard or talked to him, and I checked his location – his location wouldn’t update,” Kayla Jenifer said.
Police said Isiah Jenifer was last seen on the 1500 block of Chester Pike in Folcroft. His family said that location was a Wawa.
According to Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse, investigators were able to track Jenifer’s phone after he disappeared.
“We were able to track his phone down to the city of Chester. That’s the last time his whereabouts were known,” Rouse said.
Sources said a car Jenifer was believed to have been in was later found in Chester, with blood matching his DNA discovered under one of the seats.
Authorities said the investigation stalled after that discovery, and no arrests have been made in the case.
Rouse said the FBI’s involvement and reward offer reflect the urgency of the investigation.
“It’s all hands on deck when someone is missing, and I appreciate our federal partners offering us this reward. We want help,” he said.
Jenifer’s family said the past eight months have been filled with uncertainty as they wait for answers. They also noted that Jenifer was on parole for a drug-related crime in 2019 and said it was unlike him to miss reporting to his parole officer.
His sister, Rhea Jenifer, emphasized that regardless of his past, he remains deeply loved.
“No matter what he was then, he was someone that we loved. He was a little brother. He was a big brother. He was an uncle, he was a son, he was a nephew,” she said.
Rouse said investigators are hoping someone with information will come forward, whether to help reunite Jenifer with his family or to provide them with closure.
“We’re hoping for a happy ending to this. And obviously if the happy ending isn’t available, we’re hoping to bring justice to his family,” he said.
The FBI said Jenifer has ties to multiple communities. In addition to Folcroft and Chester, he has connections in Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware.
Investigators said they are hopeful someone, somewhere, can help bring him home.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office at (215) 418-4000 or at tips.fbi.gov.
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