CSU Men's Basketball Travels to Hartford in Battle of Independents
The Chicago State's men's basketball team will travel to West Hartford, Connecticut to face the Hartford Hawks on Saturday, February 4 at 1 p.m. at Chase Arena. The Hawks, the only other Division I men's basketball program this season, enters the contest with a 5-17 record and are coming off a 73-56 win over Stonehill College. 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. The two schools have never faced each other on the basketball court and this matchup will be the first of two this season, with Chicago State hosting the Hawks on Sunday, February 19 at the JCC.
Cougars Undefeated at Home in 2022-23
Chicago State's men's basketball team earned their fifth consecutive home win with a 101-66 victory over Aurora University and it's the first five-game home win streak since the 2013-14 season when CSU won five straight at home between Nov. 9 and Dec. 16. CSU will now take aim at extending the streak to match the next longest streak, eight home games bridging two seasons, winning five in a row to end the 2008-09 season and the first three home games of the 2009-10 season.
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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