Home Sweet Home...vs. North Carolina Central
The CSU women's basketball team will wrap up a busy week with a home game against North Carolina Central on Saturday, December 3 at 1 p.m. at the JCC. It will be Girls Day Out/HBCU Pack the House Day at the Jones Convocation Center.
This will be the third meeting between the two teams with each team previously claiming one victory. They played in back-to-back seasons in 2008-09 and 2009-10, with NCCU claiming a 68-47 win in Chicago on January 10, 2009 while the Cougars rebounded the following season and won 77-64 at NCCU on February 20, 2010.
NCCU enters the contest with a 2-6 record and have lost six of their last seven games after opening the season with a win at home against Johnson C. Smith.
Last Time Out...
The Chicago State women's basketball team traveled to Carbondale, Illinois at lost to the Southern Illinois Salukis 115-57. Three Cougars scored in double-figures as Ana Haklicka and Ahlea Myers finished with 15 points each, while Josie Hill added 14 and led the team in rebounds (7) and blocks (2). Thursday's game was the ninth all-time meeting between the two schools with Southern Illinois now holding a 7-2 advantage. Before Thursday, the last time the two teams played in Carbondale is also the last Chicago State victory, a 55-51 CSU win.
Independent Status
Chicago State and Hartford are the only two Divison 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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