Howard White will be a busy man once basketball season starts.

White has served as an assistant men’s basketball coach at Concordia College Alabama for the last three years, but will also serve as the head coach of the Hornets’ women’s basketball team this year.

This will be White’s second year coaching women’s basketball. His first year coaching in 1998 was spent as a women’s basketball coach at Florida Community College at Jacksonville.

“The fundamentals are the same, but you don’t get the athletic ability — the dunks and that type of thing — but as far as understanding the game, I think they do a great job at understanding the game and playing the game the right way,” White said of differences between the men and women’s games.

Since Concordia’s men and women’s teams play a lot of doubleheaders, White should be able to make the majority of the men’s games this season. When he’s on the road with the men, assistant coach Katasha Turner will run the women’s practices, White said.

“We tried to put together doubleheaders, as many as we possibly can, at home,” White said. “Some of the games I will miss, it won’t be many, but a lot of the road games we don’t have games on the same night, so I will be able to make those games.”

White is taking over one of the most successful programs in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association. Concordia’s women’s basketball program has won four USCAA national titles, with the last coming in 2013.

Last year the Hornets were the No. 1 ranked team in the USCAA coaches poll and were the favorites to win it all, but lost in the semifinal of the USCAA national championship tournament.

With the departure of All-Americans LaShay Lettingham and Tykeria Johnson off that team, White knows how important recruiting will be in keeping the program at the elite level.

“We are winning here, the dormitories are pretty nice and the great thing about us is we aren’t NCAA,” White said. “We are USCAA so our rules are a little different. I’ve coached Division I or Division II and it’s tough getting kids in.”

White has coached at Bethune-Cookman and North Florida in the past, so he understands how a program at the NCAA level operates. He said the rules are different at the USCAA level, which allows him to recruit players he might not be able to if the Hornets’ were a NCAA program.

He said unlike Division I schools, the Hornets do not require transfer students to have a certain amount of hours toward graduation in order to qualify.

Like men’s coach Fredrick Summers, White said he likes for his team to score in bunches, but he’s also going to put a lot of focus on the defensive end of the floor.

“I like to put up the points too because you have to put points on the board to win the game,” White said. “But also I focus a lot on defense because you can energize your team and you can take confidence away from another team if you make stops when you come down. Most teams that can’t score the ball, they lose a little confidence.”

White said he’s also planning to help prepare the women on his team for life “when the ball stops bouncing” by bringing in speakers, visiting real-life working environments and getting involved in the community.