Troy University Athletics
Johnson's Journal - Thomas Dowd, Overlooked No More
3/3/2026 9:44:00 AM | Basketball (M)
By: Jon Johnson
One of 11 children - eight of them being boys - Troy University star basketball player Thomas Dowd became competitive at a young age.
"Most of my siblings are one or two years apart and I'm a four-year gap, so I would get left out of some stuff, which used to really bug me," Dowd said. "Even when I was able to play with them, it was always going to be super competitive.Â
"One, because it's brothers and sisters like a sibling rivalry. We all took sports super seriously. You're not going to get any sympathy from anyone around the household."
From playing team sports to simply running, it wasn't unusual to see the brothers and sisters emptying out of the family van at a park in their hometown of Dothan to get some fresh air and exercise.
"During the whole Covid stuff, my dad was like, 'We're not just going to sit around the house,'" Dowd recalled. "When people weren't really going out and doing things, my dad would make us get up at 7 every morning and run the Westgate Trail."
Perhaps the constant training as a youth is among the reasons Dowd rarely looks fatigued despite averaging a team-high 35.9 minutes per 40-minute game for the Trojans.
"Maybe it's just how my body is," Dowd said. "Even in high school during my senior year (Dothan High), we would press and I would play the whole game pretty much. I think even that season was preparing my body for the wear and tear of college basketball."
Owning the boards
While Dowd, a 6-foot-8, 225-pound junior forward, has a strong overall game, it's his penchant for pulling down rebounds that has set him apart.
He set Troy's Division I record for most rebounds in a season by reaching the 278 mark during a win at ULM on Feb. 18. The junior leads the team and Sun Belt Conference with an average of 10.1 rebounds per game - having pulled down 313 total (215 defensive rebounds and 98 offensive) - while starting 30 of 31 games.
"We definitely have put an emphasis this year on practicing rebounding more … like our box outs and a lot more defensive rebounding drills … because I know I'm getting a lot more defensive rebounds this year," Dowd said.
"As far as the offensive rebounds, I think I have a knack of knowing where the ball might go off of the rim. Also, just trying to play hard when I'm out there. I've always thought rebounding is more of an effort thing than anything."
While Dowd is also a prolific scorer in averaging 14.6 per outing, which ranks second on the team behind Victor Valdes (15.0), he gets just as much satisfaction if not more out of a good rebounding game as compared to putting points on the scoreboard.
"Against Georgia State, I had like 15 (rebounds) in that game and that's just as satisfying as scoring 15 points for sure," Dowd said.
He's also become much better at blocking shots this season. His best effort was four in a game against Louisiana-Lafayette on Feb. 24 and has a team-high 42 for the season.
"This is like the most blocks I've ever gotten," Dowd said. "I don't even think I got that many blocks in high school.Â
"The way our defense is, there's a lot of rotations. So if I see someone is driving on like Cooper (Campbell), Cobi (Campbell) or Victor (Valdes) … they don't necessarily need to stop them, but if they can get them to adjust their shot, it makes it a lot easier to read where the block is going to be."
Â
Coming to Troy
Basketball wasn't always Dowd's go-to sport.
"I played travel soccer growing up," Dowd said. "In middle school, I really started to enjoy basketball a little more. I didn't have a huge growth spurt, but I just steadily grew … like I was always bigger than the other kids, so that was always a huge advantage in basketball.
"The more I played basketball, it kind of shifted (from soccer) that I would have a better chance in basketball."
There weren't a lot of college basketball coaches recruiting Dowd during his first couple of years at Dothan High School, but he caught the attention of the Troy staff and was offered a scholarship after attending a camp at the university the summer before his junior season.Â
"No one else had really looked at me at that point," Dowd said. "I was surprised I even got offered here at that point … I didn't think I was that good.
"Coach (Janasky) Fleming … my coach at the time at Dothan … I guess he knew Coach (Troy head coach Scott) Cross a little bit and had told him about me.Â
"Also, one of the guys on (Troy's) staff was Trent Patterson, who was really good friends with my brother, Buddy, in high school, so he kind of knew my family and me a little bit. I know he was whispering in Coach's (Cross) ear about me, because he liked my game. So after that I got the offer from Troy."
Dowd averaged 17 points and 16 rebounds per game as a senior at Dothan High and totaled more than 1,000 career points and rebounds at the school. He committed to the Trojans the summer before his senior season.
"To be honest, I didn't really get a ton of looks recruitment-wise," Dowd said. "I knew a couple of other guys that got offers at Troy, and I liked Troy a lot. They were my first offer and believed in me. So, I was like, 'I don't want to wait and Troy runs out of scholarships.'"
Dowd also believed Troy's basketball culture was a good match with how he played the game. He referenced his development while playing on an AAU travel team as a good example.Â
"Going into my junior year, I joined that team kind of late, so everyone had already established positions," Dowd said. "I was frustrated because I wasn't playing a ton, but I thought I was just as good as anyone else out there.Â
"My dad was like, 'If you want to get out there, you've got to do something to separate yourself.' Rebounding became that big separator … defense and hustle and all the intangibles. All of those things that I kind of really emphasized in who I wanted to be as a basketball player, it just turns out that's exactly what Troy (basketball) is as well."
One of Dowd's best friends on the team is senior forward Theo Seng, who also is one of his roommates.
They arrived at Troy at the same time - Dowd as a freshman and Seng as a junior college transfer from California. They also competed for playing time at the same forward position.
"We were great friends, but every day at practice, we were going head-to-head and there was a lot of competition there," Dowd said of the first two years together.
This season, Dowd and Seng have both been regulars in the starting lineup, though a leg injury kept Seng out of action the last few weeks of the regular season.
"It's been nice this year that we're playing different (forward) positions and getting to play together," Dowd said. "Especially those first two years, we pushed each other to continue to improve and get better. Ultimately that helps the team."
Postseason play
Troy (20-11 overall, 12-6 SBC) enters the Sun Belt Conference Tournament this week in Pensacola, Fla., as the No.1 seed, earning an automatic bye into the semifinals after clinching the regular-season title with a 80-65 win over Louisiana-Monroe last Friday night.
The Trojans are scheduled to play on Sunday at 5 p.m. in the Pensacola Bay Center. A win puts Troy in the championship game the following night at 6 p.m.
A year ago, Troy was the third-seed in the tourney after finishing in a four-way tie for first place with South Alabama, James Madison and Arkansas State during the regular season. The Trojans marched through to win the championship, beating Arkansas State 94-81 in the finals.
Troy earned an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament by winning the SBC tourney and played Kentucky in the first round of the Midwest Region in Milwaukee, falling 76-57.
Getting a taste of March Madness has made Dowd and his teammates eager to return.
"That was a great experience, but I wasn't happy with how it ended," Dowd said. "I don't think we played great … I thought we could have played a lot better.Â
"It turns into you either get back, or you're going to be disappointed if you don't. That was the expectation going into this year. When we play our best games, we have the potential and upside to win a game, or multiple games, in the tournament."
While the statistics and leadership qualities reflect Dowd as being perhaps the top player for the Trojans this season, he's not satisfied by a long shot.
"There have been some stretches over the season for sure where I thought I was at the top of my game, but the past couple of weeks, I've felt like I could be doing a lot more," Dowd said. "I haven't been scoring super efficiently, haven't been hitting a ton of threes; missing some easy buckets.
"No matter how good of a game I have, I'm always going to look at it as if I could have done something better. I always want to get better."
Which is why Dowd and Troy have been such a terrific fit.
