RALEIGH, NC — When the buzzer sounded on the floor of the Lenovo Center, the final score showed a 26-point loss for Norfolk State, the HBCU squad from the MEAC, against the mighty SEC program of Florida in the NCAA Tournament.
Though the greeting that Norfolk State got from its fans after the game didn’t suggest as much, the scoreboard of the 95-69 loss to the University of Florida was what you expect when a 16-seed takes on a number one. Florida was bigger and stronger than Norfolk State and the final result was pretty much sealed by the time the SEC squad went up 32 points with under five minutes left in the first half.
It was the classic David vs. Goliath matchup — and there was no magic slingshot for Norfolk State. But NSU head coach Robert Jones was adamant that his team shouldn’t have been seeded as low.
“I stand by what I said, the initial conference,” Jones said. “I don’t think that we should even played Florida, to be honest with you.”
Jones acknowledged the healthy margin of victory — slightly below but not far the 28.5 underdog status his team held prior to the game.
“I mean, most 16s have lost about 26. So that could have been anybody in the country that lost by 26. But we shouldn’t have been on that line. If you look at it like — I said once again, and maybe it’ll stick home this time — is that out of all the 15/16 teams, we were the only one with a top 100 win.”
That win came against High Point, who won the Big South Conference and got a no. 13 seed. It also beat SWAC champion Alabama State, which won its First Four game. And it beat James Madison, the regular season winner of the Sun Belt Conference.
The elephant in the room, however, is not so much Norfolk State as it is its conference — the MEAC.
The HBCU league was once feared in March when it came to 15-seeds knocking off no. 2 seeds. Three times over 15 years, MEAC programs knocked off highly ranked NCAA Tournament teams — Coppin State beating South Carolina in 1997, Hampton beating Iowa State in 2001 and Norfolk State beating Missouri in 2012.
Jones was an assistant coach on that NSU squad which was one of the premiere upsets in college basketball history before Virginia messed around and lost as a no. 1 seed a few years back.
Since then, however, the MEAC has struggled to get out of the bottom of the barrel. Only one HBCU team from the MEAC has avoided the 16-seed. North Carolina Central got a no. 14 seed in 2014 with a 28-5 overall record, but it couldn’t pull off the MEAC magic against Iowa State.
Over the past decade, the MEAC champions have been stuck in 16-seed purgatory one way or another. Six times the MEAC winner has gone to the First Four, where they have faced teams with similar resumes. It has two wins over that span, with former member Hampton (2015) and Norfolk State (2021) getting wins before repeating and landing at a traditional no. 1 seed the following year. Both games resulted in predictable losses, as did Howard’s 2023 matchup against Kansas.
There are several reasons for this decline, but one key indicator is the conference’s NET ranking. Two MEAC HBCU programs — Coppin State and Maryland Eastern Shore — ranked in the bottom six of the entire NCAA Division I. Add in the loss of programs (the league has gone from 13 members a decade ago to just eight now) and those numbers are an albatross around the neck of the entire conference. Delaware State, North Carolina Central and Morgan State were all below the 300 mark in the 364-team Division I ranks.
The only other conference with multiple teams in the bottom ten is its Southern HBCU counterpart — the SWAC. Seven of the SWAC’s 12 teams fall below the 300 mark. Alabama State’s NET was 274.
Norfolk State finished with a NET ranking of 183. That number is 101 slots lower than High Point, which came in at 82. James Madison finished with a NET of 158 and failed to make the NCAA Tournament. Conference losses to NCCU (319) and Morgan State (332) likely kept Norfolk State from ending the MEAC’s decade-long streak of 16-seed appearances.
(Go to Page Two to see what an HBCU can do to avoid a no. 16 seed)
