EAST GREENSBORO, NC — One of the fiercest HBCU basketball rivalries got the spotlight on Saturday afternoon as North Carolina A&T hosted North Carolina Central on CBS. NC A&T took the lead late in the first half and never looked back, beating its in-state rival 85-72 thanks to some prolific scoring from its guards and a big lift from its Greek import.
Ryan Forest scored a game-high 30 points on 12-for-18 shooting while Landon Glasper added 25, including five 3-pointers.
“It’s funny because — we were talking about this — that they hadn’t played well together all year long,” NC A&T coach Monte Ross said after the game of Forest and Glasper’s performance. “To see them do it — and both of them do it in different fashions — it was really good, and it just shows, what we can do… what we can be as we move forward.”
Those numbers were eye-popping — but they weren’t the only ones that made you look twice.
North Carolina A&T sophomore forward Nikolaos Chitikoudis stuffed the stat sheet with a game-high 22 rebounds — eight of them on offense — to go along with eight points, four assists and four blocks. His coach beamed with pride as he discussed his play against the HBCU rival.
“The selflessness that Chitikoudisis plays with is the key — will be the key for us as we move forward and to be able to win,” Ross said. We have guys that really like to score, and he’s just the glue and probably the most important guy that we have. Because he doesn’t care about scoring, he cares about winning. All he cares about is winning and what it takes and what it’s going to take for us to win and to. He had a performance like that off of, one day of practice because he was in concussion protocol.”
The win was a bit of the redemption for the Aggies, who were pummeled by their HBCU rivals from Durham during football season. Ross recalled a story of being in church shortly after the win and the pastor remarked that it was a great day to be an Eagle.
“Somebody from the back of the church — and we’re in church now — somebody from the back of the church yelled ‘it ain’t going to happen when basketball rolls around. And I’m like, oh my gosh,’ Ross said with a look of incredulousness on his face. “Like so it’s serious. It’s a serious rivalry.”
On this day, it was North Carolina’s CAA HBCU getting a win over North Carolina’s MEAC team.