Bluefield State, the 2024 CIAA Tournament Cinderella, didn’t quite make it to midnight on Friday. Its blue slippers disappeared before 11 PM in a cold, crisp night in Baltimore, less than two hours short of the magical month of March.
BSU gave Virginia Union a tough game on in Thursday night’s quarterfinal matchup but it was not enough as VUU came away with a 61-55 win. It was a matchup of the most recent addition to the conference and one of its founding members, and Virginia Union ultimately prevailed.
“I told these guys in the locker room, put their heads up,” Bluefield State head coach Devin Hoehn said after the game. “No one expected us to be here in this situation anyway. And what these guys did – they just made history for Bluefield State. So, nothing to hang your heads on. You’re not going to be able to win them all and you just learn from this, and you grow from it.”
It was a heady couple of days for the CIAA’s newest addition as it came into the tournament with just seven wins but picked up two in three days. It started with beating St. Augustine’s in the tournament opener on Monday and climaxed by knocking off defending-CIAA champion Winston-Salem State in overtime on Wednesday morning.
Before Wednesday morning, many people didn’t know who Bluefield State was. Or that it was an HBCU. Or that it had previously been a member of the league in the 30s and 40s before departing in the 1950s. But
“We were happy to be here for sure. Like these guys said, it’s our first year in it. My first year in it as a head coach as well,” Hoehn said. “This tournament is special. I’ve been in tournaments similar to this –as a player, but this, this is the real deal. The CIAA Tournament is the real deal.”
Bluefield State women left their mark, too
Bluefield State came away from its first CIAA Tournament since the 1950s with not just one but three wins – two from its men’s program and one from its women’s program.
The BSU women finished the season 15-13 overall under Paul Davis. The 6’9 head coach played his college basketball at Winston-Salem State, including a trip to the CIAA Tournament in his school’s return. He spent time as an assistant at WSSU and with the Livingstone College women before taking the helm at BSU. He said as someone who knows what the tournament is all about, he wanted to make sure that his players got a good taste of it.
“My biggest thing is to make sure that my players, they were prepared to play in the CIAA,’ Davis said following Wednesday’s loss to Elizabeth City State. “Allowing them to experience this was amazing. I’ve been here for this – but I wanted it t for them most importantly.”
CIAA has been put on notice
The CIAA Tournament has been – at least for the last quarter century – as much about pomp and circumstance as it is about basketball. Local entertainment and national celebrities compete with pep bands and cheerleaders for the spotlight. Bluefield State, largely a commuter school on the West Virginia border, has neither of those.
But it does have two young, energetic coaches who played basketball at a high level. Hoehn played his college ball at Division II Power West Liberty. His team finished the season 9-22. It was led by Jordan Hines, the leading scorer in the CIAA at 19 points per game.
“It’s our first year, and I just want to say it was a great experience,” Hines said. “We’re going to be back next year.”
One thing is for sure – a lot of people got a lesson about who Bluefield State is and it definitely has the rest of the league’s attention.
“These guys didn’t freeze up one bit. And they stayed resilient – that’s all I can ask for,” Hoehn said. “We played hard to the very end, and sometimes – it sucks – but it’s just it’s not enough. But that’s all a head coach can ask for is that his guys just play hard for 40, and these guys did that. And like I said, they made history.”
Maybe next year BSU will come down the mountain with some cheerleaders and a band and join the pomp and circumstance. Then again, it worked out pretty well without it for a few days.