The HBCU men’s basketball standings remain tight entering the stretch run
No team has separated itself in their respective conference play in the men’s HBCU basketball standings. The MEAC, SWAC and SIAC are all open as multiple teams are still contending for regular season titles with roughly six weeks before conference tournaments begin.
Norfolk State’s 92-75 home win over Howard last Saturday, televised nationally on ESPN, put them on top of MEAC at 4-1. It was the Bison’s first loss in conference play and they are 3-1 heading into their next conference game against South Carolina State on Monday at home. Before that match up, Howard will play fellow HBCU Hampton in Washington, D.C., in a non-conference pairing.
As an aside, Hampton left the MEAC in 2018 to join the Big South Conference, then departed the Big South and became a member of the Colonial Athletic Conference, where they are now near the bottom of the conference at 3-6 and 10-11 overall. The tale of North Carolina A&T is similar, which also left the MEAC in 2019 for the Big South, and then jumped to the CAA. They haven’t found much success there and are last in the conference at 0-9 and 4-18 in 22 games played this season.
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Back to the current MEAC teams: North Carolina Central, Morgan State and South Carolina State are bunched up at 3-2. Delaware State is 2-3, Coppin State 1-4 and Maryland Eastern-Shore 0-4. Norfolk State looks like they may be the team to beat, led by Harlem, New York native Brian Moore Jr.
Moore, a graduate student who matriculated to Kingston High School in Ulster County, New York as a sophomore and became a star for Kingston, leading them to the state Class AA final four as a senior in 2019 and being named the Section 9 player of the year. The 6-2 guard attended Northeastern Oklahoma A&M college, a junior college, then played two seasons at Division I Murray State before transferring to Norfolk State this season for his final collegiate campaign.
He is leading the Spartans in scoring at 19 points per game under head coach Robert Jones, a native of South Jamaica, Queens who is in his 12th season leading the program. Moore torched Howard for a game-high 30 points on 11-18 shooting.
In the SWAC, Southern University 7-0 (12-8 overall) is a game ahead of 6-1 Texas Southern (9-11 overall) with Jackson State third at 5-2. The 5-15 Tigers have yet to win a game out of conference. Albany State is pacing SIAC East division at 10-3 (13-7) with Edward Waters (14-6) and Clark (12-7) both posting 9-3 conference records. In the West, Miles is the dominant team at 12-1 and 15-3 overall. Tuskegee is their closest competitor at 7-5 (9-9).
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