By Braedan Shea
Michael McClendon slumps his shoulders, drops his head back and raises his arms in defeat. Just five minutes into the second half, the Springfield College men’s basketball team looks lost—nothing like the unit that had held Babson College to just 23 points in the first. The Pride have mustered just five points since halftime, and following his team’s 11th turnover—a bounce pass thrown directly to a Beavers defender—the third-year head coach is fed up.
McClendon trudges down the sideline, and stops just short of the end of the coach’s box. As he watches Babson’s Nate Amado snag an offensive rebound and go back up, getting fouled in the process, he half turns, and scowls down the line of his extended bench.
He shouts, loudly enough to be heard at the end of the sideline seats.
“Rashard!”
Without hesitation, Rashard Samuels pops up off the bench, springing down the sideline toward McClendon.
“Get John,” McClendon says.
With 13:59 remaining, as a momentum-less Springfield clings to a 39-32 lead, Rashard checks in for starting guard John Paulino.
Immediately, Rashard finds himself open at the top of the key and fires a three that rolls around the entire rim—only to slide off into the awaiting arms of Amado.
Moving quickly, Amado finds teammate Alex Stoddard, who launches his own three-point attempt from the left wing. Babson’s bench erupts as the ball hits pure nylon, cutting the deficit to just four.
Rashard, unfazed by the triple, pushes the pace for the Pride off the inbound pass. For a player competing in just his second career game at the collegiate level, the sophomore carries himself with a poise and comfortableness of a seasoned vet, moving the ball around Babson’s 2-1-2 press with ease.
Following a dribble fake, Rashard frees up Cedric Rodriguez for his own shot from behind the arc. Nearly as soon as the ball leaves his fingers, Rashard bounces on his toes, knowing what is coming next.
Swish.
On the defensive end, Rashard continues to play with confidence, nearly jumping an arrant pass, deflecting it out of bounds. And after he’s switched onto the 6-foot-3, 210-pound Amado off the inbound pass, the 6-foot, 180-pound guard stands his ground, drawing a charge as Amado opts to go through him for a bucket.
Once again, Rashard moves the ball around Babson, lulling the Beavers to sleep before striking—dropping a perfect jump pass from the free-throw line down low to Josh Hartley for an easy finish at the rack. As the ball drops in, the energy returns to Blake Arena.
Two possessions later, after a stoppage in play, Reece Samuels, Rashard’s twin brother, checks into the game. Amado once again finds himself with a favorable matchup on Samuels, forcing a switch and posting up on the smaller guard. Only this time, Amado is guarded by Reece.
Much like Rashard, the 6-foot-1, 160-pound Reece gets the best of Amado, forcing the big into taking an unfavorable shot. The ball falls out of bounds. Possession, Springfield.
Reece inbounds the ball to Rashard, who resettles the Springfield offense, once again controlling the pace of the game. When he feels ready, Rashard powers to his left, forcing the Babson defender into a two-on-one situation: either guard himself, or cut to the corner to prevent Reece from getting the ball. He chooses to stop the ball, leaving Reece all alone.
Big mistake.
Rashard is the first person to reach Reece as his three hits nothing but net, more excited for the make than his brother.
After yet another defensive stand, the Springfield offense finally appears to fall stagnant, using up most of the 35-second shot clock. But Rashard has other plans. With Amando guarding him on the left wing, Rashard uses his speed and tightrope handles to freeze Amado, blazing past him and once again dropping a dime to Hartley, pushing the Pride run to 11-0. The usually calm and collected Rashard explodes, flashing an imaginary pair of goggles over his eyes at the erupting Springfield bench.
Although it’s the last action Rashard—who is subbed out at 10:03—sees in the game, Reece is just getting started.
Following more passionate defense from the Pride, a long rebound bounces out to Xoren Livingston, who grabs the ball in one motion and turns up court. He stops near the three-point line, cut off by a defending Beaver. Livingston looks behind, and underhand scoops a pass to a trailing Reece.
Reece collects the ball, gathers himself, and looks for an open cutter.
Quickly, Reece finds that there is someone open—himself. Babson was so focused on trying to stop anything inside, no one bothered to get out on Reece. He takes one dribble, and launches a 28-foot rainbow, holding his form the whole way.
Nothing but net.
The deafening sound in Blake Arena makes it seem as if Reece has connected on a national championship game winner.
The three extends Springfield’s lead to 54-35. In just over four minutes, the Pride have gone on a 15-0 run, with Rashard and Reece scoring or assisting on all but one basket.
Reece isn’t done yet; he also sets up Hartley for a flush and snags an athletic, no-look steal on the defensive end before calling it a night himself.
To some, this may have looked like the Samuels’ coming-out party. But to their parents, who were watching the game stream back home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, it was the culmination of a brotherly bond that had been building since they got their first basketball hoop.
“[When Rashard and Reece play together] it’s like you get three times the production,” says Rodney Samuels, the twins’ father. “You get two players, but you triple the production.”
“When they’re out there together,” says Roz Samuels, the twins’ mother, “it’s like magic.”
‘Who are those two?’
At least one a day a week, Ronnell Peters makes the trip to the Columbia, Maryland, location of Life Time—a fitness chain with a projected 168 locations across the country by 2026.
A self-proclaimed basketball junkie, Peters helps run the Ultimate Hoops Columbia men’s league. He chips in however he can, whether it is facilitating referees or setting up jerseys. And because he loves the game, he typically sticks around to watch the action unfold.
In June of 2023, early in the summer league’s eight-game season, Peters decided to sit back and watch the NBA division, where the court dimensions mirror that of the Association, including the 23-foot-9-inch three-point arc.
Not long after the first game got underway, Peters became infatuated with two players. Although they were two of the youngest players on the court, in a league full of “grown men,” the duo looked right at home.
“There’s a level of high school strength and grown-men strength when it comes to basketball,” Peters said. “And they weren’t rattled. They played with great composure. Sometimes, [older players] can look at kids like ‘They’re young men, I can take advantage of it.’ These guys just weren’t fake—neither one of them.”
Beyond the way they carried themselves, the two clearly had game. Even with the extended three-point line, both could shoot from behind the arc with ease. When the game was over, Peters had to know who they were. He walked up to one of their teammates, Logan Samuels, and pulled him aside.
“Who are those two?” Peters asked, pointing at the duo.
“Those are my cousins,” Samuels responded. “Reece and Rashard. They just graduated high school.”
Peters was surprised, especially after he found out that the two weren’t planning on playing at the next level.
How are these two not playing college ball? Peters thought.
He texted one of his closest friends, who had just finished his first season coaching Springfield College: McClendon.
Peters and McClendon have known each other since their days in the early 2000s at Wesley College, where they were teammates on the basketball team. And because McClendon was already in Maryland, recruiting at an event, Peters sent McClendon a message.
Hey, I got these two kids. They’re working out today. Can you come see them?
Although he was intrigued, McClendon was an hour-and-a-half away, and already tied up with trying to land players, didn’t want to make the trip.
After going back and forth, McClendon asked for game film and their information.
Blazing Trails, Together
For as long as they can remember, Reece and Rashard have been in love with basketball. They started playing as toddlers. When the twins were 5, Roz and Rodney got them a Little Tikes play hoop as a way to keep them entertained.
It was clear that the twins were special. Even without any instruction about dribbling or shooting, the game came naturally to them.
“They started when they were toddlers, just playing basketball with each other,” Roz said. “Rodney and I would sit back and say, ‘How do they even know how to do that? What are they doing?’ It was just an amazement to watch, because we weren’t teaching them how to play basketball at the time.”
“I always tell people they hit the table playing basketball,” Rodney added.
For a few years, Roz and Rodney left the two on their own athletically, letting Reece and Rashard figure things out themselves. Even when the twins tried their hands at football for three years, the parents stayed away from training them.
“I didn’t really start pushing them to get better and skilled until they were probably 10 or 11 years old,” Rodney said. “That’s when I really start kicking their butt I said ‘If this is what you want to do, then you have to work your back.’”
Especially if they wanted to compete in the DMV.
The District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, or the DMV, has some of the country’s richest basketball history, and has produced elite NBA talent such as Kevin Durant, Elgin Baylor and David Robinson. The area is densely populated, and its residents care deeply about basketball.
“Around this area, you got to be ready, you got to be tough,” Rodney said, “and you got to be pretty skilled to be able to compete.”.
Roz and Rodney knew that their natural ability would only take their boys so far. They signed the twins up for a local AAU basketball team, hoping that the structured setting could help them grow.
While the team was solid, and the players built a strong core together, the coach had off-the-court issues.
Rodney, and Orville Bailey, the father of another player, had become close, decided to start their own team.While neither ever aspired to be a coach, Rodney and Bailey were no strangers to basketball. Rodney fell in love with basketball after watching his brother play in the Urban Coalition League, a summer basketball league founded in Washington, D.C., in 1970. It featured high school, college and professional players, such as Albert and Bernard King, and Adrian Dantley. Bailey, a native of Springfield, Massachusetts, starred at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, leaving the college in 1985 as its all-time leading scorer, with 1,757 points.
It took some time, as well as recruiting a few other parents to help pull it off, but with Rodney and Bailey coaching, Roz as a team mom and a name picked by the players, the Maryland Trailblazers were born.
Over the nearly six years the Trailblazers competed, the team was dominant, highlighted by winning the Division III National AAU Championship when the players were 12.
Rodney’s and Bailey’s coaching philosophy was simple, enforcing two basic rules:
If you had a wide open shot on offense and you didn’t take it, you’re coming out of the game. If you didn’t play defense, once again, you’re coming out.
It created a team culture that didn’t rely on just one player, but rather everyone working together. Everyone had the ability to score. Defensively, they played man-to-man, picking up full court, running teams out of the gym. Their playstyle, and ensuing victories, garnered the team a reputation in the DMV.
“They beat up on everybody,” Roz said. “[Rodney and Bailey] did a great job, and they earned a lot of respect from teams in the area that were supposed to be the best teams. Still today, if we go to games in the area, people walk up to Rodney…”
“… like I’m the man or something,” Rodney finished.
By the time the program reached the Division I AAU level, the team proved that even if it was started by two parents, and made up of a core of friends, it could compete with anyone, including national powerhouses.
One of those teams was under the Boo Williams tree, a program that has multiple teams across the nation and has won nine DI AAU titles. Despite falling to the eventual champions Boo Williams, the Trailblazers gave the team its toughest game of the tournament.
The Trailblazers competed until the core members, such as Reece, Rashard and Bailey’s son, Blake, reached their junior year of high school in 2023. Both coaches felt it was time everyone moved on. While the team may have disbanded, its dominance wouldn’t be forgotten.
“We probably won 80-to-85 percent of our games and tournaments,” Bailey said. “In the DMV area, that’s tough to do.”
As a deeply religious family, Reece and Rashard attended From the Heart Christian School in Camp Springs, Maryland, from fifth grade through high school. The twins competed for the school’s basketball team, leading the program to a championship as freshmen.
After the pandemic, however, From the Heart was forced to shut down its athletic programs when they were sophomores. Reece and Rashard were not out of luck, as they were still able to compete at private schools, as long as they were classified as “homeschooled.” That following summer, Rodney went to work.
“My dad was reaching out to high school coaches to see if we could play anywhere,” Rashard said. “We had a couple friends that went to [Riverdale Baptist School] and they put in a good word for us.”
By the end of the 2021-22 basketball season, Reece and Rashard were key members of the Maryland Independent School Athletic League Champions (MISAL), Riverdale Baptist Crusaders. Rashard earned All-Conference second-team honors as the league’s leading scorer.
The following year, , looking for a bigger challenge, Reece and Rashard played for Shabach Christian Academy, now known as Prince George’s Christian Academy.
Shabach had two teams: a B team that stayed local, and an A team that competed in tournaments across the country. The twins started on the B team. It wasn’t long until head coach Taj Hawkins realized that Reece and Rashard deserved a call-up.
“They were just killing everybody,” Rodney said. “And the coach needed some players on the A team, so he called them up and they started traveling.”
Both excelled under Hawkins, with Roz and Rodney attributing some of their success to Hawkins’ coaching style.
“[Hawkins] utilized them, he understood how to utilize them, and he got the most out of them,” Rodney said. “I wish they could have played with him sooner, but it just never materialized that way.”
When looking back to their time at Shabach, Rodney had one more wish: that he had done more to facilitate Reece’s and Rashard’s recruiting process.
“I thought they would play basketball their whole life, go through high school and play and then just go to college and play basketball,” he said. “But it’s a lot more work involved, and I didn’t act sooner or soon enough to help the process.”
Reece and Rashard had both made names for themselves on the Zero Gravity Basketball Championship team in 2022 and the BigShots/Prep Hoops National Championship Team in 2023—where Rashard was named to the tournament’s second team. Rashard was also the tournament MVP in the 2023 Mid-Atlantic Basketball Classic. Reece also acquired hardware, being named to the Hoops National Championship team in 2023 and a DMV HoopGroup Exposure Tour Top 20 Player in 2023.
The twins were not complete unknowns in the college basketball world, getting recruited by Division III Shenandoah University and Randolph-Macon College, and Division II Millersville University.
The only issue was that they were being recruited separately—a deal breaker for the twins and their parents.
On the court, the two feed off each other. They seem to know exactly what the other is doing and where they are on the floor without having to say anything. While some of that can be attributed to Reece and Rashard playing together for so long, a bigger reason is their connection off the court. The two are each other’s best friends.
“They were always together,” Bailey said. “Even if we went to a cookout, they were together. I’ve never seen one without the other.”
“One thing that sticks in my mind is when they were playing football,” Rodney said. “They couldn’t have been no more than eight-years-old, maybe nine, and Reese threw a bomb pass to Rashard for a touchdown. That’s one play that really stands out to me, because that’s them. They stick with each other. They got each other’s back.”
And they were not about to attend separate colleges, even if that meant leaving their competitive basketball careers behind.
Another factor for the Samuels family was getting a good education, specifically something in the field of science. Rashard wanted to find a program where he could become a basketball team physician and stay close to the sport as long as he could. Reece, who watched Bones and CSI with his parents as a kid, was looking to become a crime scene investigator.
In the summer of 2023, Reece and Rashard decided that they were going to stick close to home, and enrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University. They would get a good education, and had an opportunity to become team managers for the basketball program.
“We had almost given up on [playing] college basketball,” Rashard said. “And then that’s when our cousin asked to play in that league.”
Complete Assassins
With under six minutes remaining in Springfield College’s matchup against Salve Regina University on Feb. 5, 2025, and following a triple from Seahawks guard Sean Seymour, the Pride were down 60-46. McClendon was, to put it bluntly, unhappy with how his starting unit was performing. Looking for any form of a spark, he turned to the end of the bench.
For the first time in his collegiate career, Rashard entered into a game. And checking in alongside him was none other than Reece for another first—the twins sharing the floor together on the college level.
A year and a half ago, in mid-August of 2023, Reece and Rashard traveled to Springfield College’s campus for the first time. Although they were enrolled at VCU and had already attended freshman orientation there, an opportunity had presented itself in Massachusetts.
To play college basketball. Together.
They had been in contact with McClendon, who—after watching game film and talking with the Samuels family over Zoom—had invited the family to a campus tour. Along with a few assistant coaches, they met in Blake Arena.
“I didn’t know if it was going to work,” McClendon said about bringing in the twins. “But they were two young, great kids—talking to them, talking to their family—they come from good stock. And if my buddy, who I trust, is telling me ‘Aye, you got to take these two kids,’ then I trust him too.”
Not long after McClendon started walking the family around campus, Reece and Rashard began to fall in love with the school.
“I was like, ‘I want to come here,’” Rashard said. “‘I want to play basketball here.’”
“Yeah, I want to come here and play basketball too,” Reece added. “It was almost an instant decision that we made.”
There was one catch, however. Since they were being recruited so late—just two weeks before classes were to start—they were going to have to work for their spot in the preseason and the early-season practices with the other recruits. After his first offseason, McClendon already had a roster of over 23 players. Only 18 dressed for games.
On their seven-hour ride home, Rodney asked the twins, just once, if they would be okay traveling to Massachusetts. He and Roz had liked the school as well, especially for its academics. But he wanted to see how Reece and Rashard really felt.
“Without hesitation, they said, ‘Yeah,’” Rodney said. “I said, ‘Okay, well, Springfield it is.’ If they said anything different, or hesitated, they’d be at VCU.”
In their first few months at Springfield, Reece and Rashard fit in well. They made friends with their teammates and started becoming comfortable. But, right before the season started,
McClendon told the twins he was opting to keep them as practice players. They’d be at every practice, lift and team activity. They would do everything but suit up for games.
Reece and Rashard were disappointed. While they handled the situation maturely, they knew that at every opportunity they were going to prove to McClendon they belonged.
“[They are] complete assassins,” McClendon said. “The kids could score, and they proved that each and every practice. They had a chip on their shoulder. When they were put on the practice squad, a lot of times, I would have to tone them down, because they wanted to compete so much to show ‘Hey, I’m better than him, better than him.’”
Reece and Rashard finished the season on the practice squad. McClendon left both with things they could work on in the offseason to improve their games and make their way up to the full roster. So they got to work.
After an offseason of working out with their trainer, Clinton Crouch, who was a men’s basketball assistant coach at Georgetown University under Patrick Ewing, the twins came back better. They were bigger, stronger and improved on both sides of the ball. Enough, to McClendon, to make the full roster.
An ankle injury kept Rashard from making his collegiate debut for the first two months. Reece, on the other hand, had appeared in just three games for a combined 18 minutes. McClendon received a text from Rashard.
Coach, can we talk to you together?
As soon as he read the message, McClendon thought he knew what the conversation was going to be. He assumed the twins had enough and were going to step away from the team. He met with Reece and Rashard in his office soon after the text.
Rashard opened the conversation, completely shocking McClendon.
“Reece and I, we don’t have any issues here,” he said. “We just want to know, what do you need from us? We want to make sure that we are doing the right things to move forward.”
McClendon was shocked.
“That was extremely mature for them to do that, to be like, ‘Look, it ain’t about us and the minutes, it’s about us making sure we’re doing everything that you want us to do in this program,’” McClendon said.
McClendon explained that he was looking for more consistency. He wanted to build trust with them, knowing that when he put them in he could get the results he was looking for.
A month later, McClendon put his trust in Reece and Rashard against Salve. And in those final six minutes, the twins did more than show McClendon that he could rely on them.
Despite falling to the Seahawks, 69-64, Reece and Rashard helped Springfield mount a monumental comeback. The Pride went on a 16-3 run to cut the deficit to just four, 66-62, with 0:53 seconds left.
Five days later, before an amazed Blake Arena crowd, Reece and Rashard led Springfield to yet another momentum-shifting run, this time at the hands of Coast Guard. In a span of just over three minutes, Reece and Rashard paced the Pride to yet another 15-0 run, blowing the game open.
Rashard did a bit of everything, scoring 13 points and dishing out a team-high six assists to go along with a block and a steal. Reece chipped in 10 points, along with four rebounds.
Reece and Rashard are individually talented. Put them together and the sky’s the limit.
“They are going to come back different,” Roz said about next season. “They will be better.”