SHREVEPORT – Pure shooter.

That’s the first thing that pops about Red River High product Emareyon McDonald.

The college basketball senior has made at home at LSU Shreveport, where he’s a starter and helped the Pilots to a regular season and conference tournament title in the Red River Athletics Conference.

McDonald will take aim at the postseason one more time in his college career as the No. 2 seed Pilots (26-5) host the first two rounds of the NAIA National Tournament, starting Friday at 7 p.m. against No. 15 seed Tougaloo (Miss.).

McDonald has brought his sharp-shooting skills to Shreveport, where he’s second on the team in scoring with more than 16 points per game and 103 made 3-pointers.

Those totals include two games of a career-high 31 points and 20 games with double-digit scoring. In one weekend in January, McDonald made seven and nine 3-pointers in consecutive games, both wins.
He’s shooting 44 percent from deep, something he’s achieved in each collegiate season he’s played.
LSUS head coach Kyle Blankenship, who has guided the Pilots to both of the program’s two Fab Four appearances and an Elite Eight, wanted McDonald out of high school.

But McDonald’s college journey started at Northwestern State as the top-ranked point guard prospect in Louisiana took his talent to Natchitoches.

He made an impact off the bench under both Mike McConathy and Corey Gipson, making 82 3-pointers combined in his two seasons.

Gipson left after his one and only season in which NSU won 22 games.

That prompted McDonald to hit the transfer portal, where he didn’t play in 2023-24 with his 2024-25 season at Grambling impacted by an ankle injury.

He averaged three points in eight minutes over 11 games.

Another coaching change (Donte Jackson left for conference foe Alabama State) put McDonald into the portal again, where he reconnected with LSUS’s Blankenship and came to Shreveport.

It’s not a completely unfamiliar situation to McDonald, who played his first two seasons at Red River High before finishing his career at Scotlandville in Baton Rouge.

He helped the Bulldogs to the Class 2A semifinals in 2018 and the 2019 quarterfinals before finishing his high school career at Scotlandville in a trip to the Division I state title game in 2021.

Now McDonald has one more shot at the postseason, and perhaps his basketball career entirely, over the next few weeks.

The Pilots finished the regular season ranked No. 13 in the NAIA, and winning two games in Shreveport means LSUS punched their tickets to the Sweet 16 in Kansas City, Mo.

A win Friday pushes LSUS to a second-round game on Saturday at LSUS against the winner of No. 7 seed Morningside and No. 10 seed Texas Wesleyan.

LSUS has never won an NAIA national championship in men’s basketball, but McDonald will give opposing coaches headaches as they pop in the film to prepare for LSUS in a rapid-fire tournament environment.

Matt Vines
Communications Specialist, LSUS Public Relations