Cougars Play Second of Back-to-Back Games in the Twin Cities
The Chicago State women's basketball team will play the second of back-to-back games in the Twin Cities on Wednesday, December 14 at 7 p.m. against the University of St. Thomas at Schoenecker Arena in St. Paul. The Cougars made their way to Minneapolis for a Monday date with the University of Minnesota at Wiliams Arena and will travel across the river from Minneapolis into St. Paul to face the Tommies.
St. Thomas enters the week with a 4-5 record following a 72-64 loss at Wisconsin last Sunday. The Tommies are 3-0 at home this season and 1-5 on the road. St. Thomas moved up to Division I last year and the two teams played last December 4, a 62-57 Tommie victory in Chicago in the only previous meeting between the two schools.
Last Time Out...
The Cougars dropped to 0-12 following a 105-54 setback at the University of Minnesota Monday at Williams Arena in Minneapolis. Two Cougars scored in doubled figures in the loss as Jacia Cunningham tallied 14 points and Tae'lor Willard added 11. Janiah Newell and Laura Segues each had eight. The Gophers had five players in double figures and shot 42 percent from beyond the three-point arc (8-of-19), hitting four of their first six to jump out to a big lead early.
Independent Status
Chicago State and Hartford are the only two Division I programs playing an independent schedule during the  2022–23 season. CSU left the Western Athletic Conference following the 2021–22 season while Hartford began a transition to Division III in the 2021–22 school year, and left the America East Conference in July 2022. Hartford has announced it will join the D-III Commonwealth Coast Conference in July 2023.
Before 2022, the last D-I independent school had been NJIT, which was forced to go independent when its then-current home of the Great West Conference collapsed in 2013 due to conference realignment. NJIT would eventually find a home in the ASUN Conference in 2015, and is now in the America East.
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About Chicago State
Chicago State University Athletics is comprised of 15 intercollegiate teams involving over 150 student-athletes that compete in basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and volleyball. CSU held memberships in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and NCAA Division II before transitioning to NCAA Division I in 1994. Melvin Bland was the first CSU student-athlete to gain NAIA All-American status in 1974 as a wrestler. Fred Evans became the first black swimmer ever to win a national championship in 1975. In 1991, the Chicago State women's tennis team became the first all-black college team to amass an unbeaten season at the NCAA level. CSU's women's basketball team earned a spot in the 2011 Women's Basketball Invitational and CSU's men's basketball team won the 2013 Great West Conference Tournament title, also making an appearance in the CollegeInside.com Postseason Tournament (CIT). The Men's Outdoor Track & Field 4x100-Meter Relay team were 2019 Honorable Mention All-Americans and WAC Champions. Their feat marked the first time the Chicago State's men's track & field program was represented at the national meet. Chicago State volleyball recorded a historic season in 2021, with Yanlis Feliz becoming CSU's first volleyball All-American and head coach Tony Trifonov earning selection as WAC Coach of the Year. During that same season, three different CSU teams earned victories over Big Ten opponents with men's soccer beating Northwestern, women's basketball upending Wisconsin and volleyball, which established a school record 17 wins and hosted a post-season volleyball tournament for the first time in program history, swept Indiana in Bloomington.
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