Seth Emmanuel Towns (born November 5, 1997) is an American

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

player for the

Howard Bison The Howard Bison and Lady Bison are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Howard University, located in Washington, D.C. The Bison compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s and Division I Footba ...

of the

Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) is a collegiate athletic conference whose full members are historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the Southeastern and the Mid-Atlantic United States. It participates in the National C ...

. He entered the

2023–24 NCAA Division I men's basketball season The 2023–24 NCAA Division I men's basketball season will begin on November 6, 2023. The regular season will end on March 17, 2024, with the 2024 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament beginning with the First Four on March 19 and ending ...

as an extremely rare eighth-year

senior Senior (shortened as Sr.) means "the elder" in Latin and is often used as a suffix for the elder of two or more people in the same family with the same given name, usually a parent or grandparent. It may also refer to: * Senior (name), a surname ...

, but having only played in three seasons. Between injuries, a voluntary year away from the sport, and an NCAA blanket waiver granted to players active during the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

pandemic, Towns entered 2023–24 with up to two years of collegiate eligibility remaining. He previously played for the

Harvard Crimson The Harvard Crimson are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Harvard College. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2013, there were 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at ...

where he was the 2018 Ivy League Player of the Year as a

sophomore In the United States, a sophomore ( or ) is a person in the second year at an educational institution; usually at a secondary school or at the college and university level, but also in other forms of post-secondary educational institutions. In ...

, and then the

Ohio State Buckeyes The Ohio State Buckeyes are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio. The athletic programs are named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tree ...

which saw him compete in just the 2020–21 season.

Early life and high school career

Towns is from

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

and attended

Northland High School Northland High School (NHS) is a public high school in Columbus, Ohio, United States, NHS is a part of the Columbus City Schools system and opened in 1965. The current principal is Jason Johnson and athletic teams are known as the Vikings with scho ...

. He was recruited to Harvard by coach

Tommy Amaker Harold Tommy Amaker Jr. (; born June 6, 1965) is an American college basketball coach and the head coach of the Harvard University men's basketball team. He has also coached for the University of Michigan and Seton Hall University. He played po ...

, who told him a Harvard degree would give him a platform that went beyond basketball and that he would be crazy not to come to Harvard. On June 15, 2015, Towns committed to play college basketball for

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

over

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

and

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

College career

Towns led the Crimson in scoring with 15.8 points per game as a sophomore while also contributing 5.4 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game. He shot 49.3 percent of his 3-point attempts in

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

play and led Harvard to a share of the regular season championship. At the conclusion of the regular season Towns was named Ivy League Player of the Year, becoming the third sophomore to receive the honor. He scored 24 points and 12 rebounds in the Ivy League semifinal versus

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

. On November 3, 2018, it was announced that Towns was out indefinitely with a knee injury. Towns would miss his junior season. On December 23, 2019, it was announced that Towns would undergo a season ending surgery, ending his tenure at Harvard. On March 21, 2020, he decided to transfer to

, choosing the Buckeyes over

Duke Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ran ...

. Towns was detained by police at a protest on May 29. He was involved in a car accident on November 25, and missed the game against

Illinois State Illinois State University (ISU) is a Public university, public university in Normal, Illinois. Founded in 1857 as Illinois State Normal University, it is the oldest public university in Illinois. The university emphasizes teaching and is reco ...

. Towns averaged 3.8 points and 2.2 rebounds per game during the 2020–21 season. He underwent back surgery in September 2021 and was expected to miss several months. On September 4, 2022, Towns announced that he was stepping away from basketball. He took the 2022–23 season off before announcing on May 15, 2023 that he was returning and intending to transfer out of Ohio State. The announcement would make him an eighth-year

redshirt Redshirt, Red Shirt, or Redshirts may refer to: Entertainment * ''Red Shirts'' (film), a 1952 film about Anita Garibaldi by Franco Rossi * Redshirt (stock character), originally derived from ''Star Trek'', a stock character who dies soon after b ...

senior in 2023–24. On May 21, he committed to

Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commissi ...

Career statistics

College

, - , style="text-align:left;", 2016–17 , style="text-align:left;",

, 28 , , 20 , , 24.6 , , .428 , , .388 , , .821 , , 4.4 , , 1.3 , , 1.0 , , .5 , , 12.3 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2017–18 , style="text-align:left;",

, 30 , , 24 , , 27.9 , , .419 , , .441 , , .805 , , 5.7 , , 1.8 , , .8 , , .6 , , 16.0 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2018–19 , style="text-align:left;",

, style="text-align:center;" colspan="11", Cruz Roja

Injured , - , - , style="text-align:left;", 2019–20 , style="text-align:left;",

, style="text-align:center;" colspan="11", Cruz Roja

Injured , - , style="text-align:left;",

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

, style="text-align:left;",

, 25 , , 0 , , 10.8 , , .421 , , .341 , , .800 , , 2.2 , , .3 , , .2 , , .2 , , 3.8 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2021–22 , style="text-align:left;",

, style="text-align:center;" colspan="11", Cruz Roja

Injured , - , - class="sortbottom" , style="text-align:left;",

2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

, style="text-align:center;" colspan="12", Sat out , - , - class="sortbottom" , style="text-align:center;" colspan="2", Career , 83 , , 44 , , 21.7 , , .423 , , .407 , , .811 , , 4.2 , , 1.2 , , .7 , , .5 , , 11.1

References

External links

Ohio State Buckeyes bioHarvard Crimson bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Towns, Seth 1997 births Living people 21st-century African-American sportspeople American men's basketball players Basketball players from Columbus, Ohio Harvard Crimson men's basketball players Howard Bison men's basketball players Ohio State Buckeyes men's basketball players Small forwards