Cougars Welcome Aurora University to the JCC
The Chicago State's men's basketball team returns home following a four-game road trip and will host Aurora University on Saturday, January 28 at 2 p.m. The Cougars are undefeated at home in four games with victories over IUPUI, Valparaiso, Southern Indiana and East-West University and it's the first four-game home win streak since the 2013-14 season when CSU won five straight at home between Nov. 9 and Dec. 16. A win over Aurora would match that streak.
The Spartans, members of the NACC, enter the contest with an 12-7 record and 7-4 in conference play.
Cougars Undefeated at Home in 2022-23
Chicago State's men's basketball team earned their fourth consecutive home win with a 90-70 victory over East-West University. The Cougars have opened the home schedule with victories over IUPUI, Valparaiso and Southern Indiana and it's the first four-game home win streak since the 2013-14 season when CSU won five straight at home between Nov. 9 and Dec. 16.
Cougars Snap Road Losing Streak
With the 74-70 road win at Coastal Carolina the Chicago State's men's basketball team snapped a 21-game road losing streak which was 22 games if you add the neutral-court loss to Utah Valley in the first round of last year's WAC Tournament. The last true road win prior to Coastal Carolina was at Lamar on January 15, 2022 by a score of 67-56. Last season, head coach Gerald Gillion snapped an inherited 24-game road losing streak with a mid-December win at IUPUI. Under Gillion, CSU has won 12 games over the past two seasons, which is more than the previous four seasons combined (10 wins from 2017-21).
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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