The sphere for the lads’s and girls’s NCAA tournaments is sort of set, and Traditionally Black Faculties and Universities are making historical past earlier than a recreation is even tipped off.
With wins by Prairie View A&M, Tennessee State and Howard, the lads’s area of 68 will function three HBCU squads. It’s probably the most faculties to qualify for the match since 1994, when Texas Southern, Tennessee State and North Carolina A&T all reached the NCAA match.
For Tennessee State, its second journey to the massive dance comes with historic priority. After successful the Ohio Valley Convention match, the Tigers had been chosen as a No. 15 seed, bypassing the First 4, which the NCAA Choice Committee has historically positioned HBCU applications up to now. Going into the nationwide match, the Tigers accomplished a sweep of the OVC’s common season and convention tournaments and have gained a school-record 23 video games this season below first-year head coach Nolan Smith. 2026 marks their third tourney look total after back-to-back bids in 1992-93 and 1993-94.
If the Tigers do win in opposition to Iowa State, they might develop into the second HBCU 15-seed to beat a 2-seed, becoming a member of Hampton, which beat Iowa State in 2001.
Becoming a member of the Tigers are the Panthers of Prairie View A&M, who gained the SWAC title match. The Panthers, who additionally gained the SWAC soccer crown, grew to become the second workforce to ever win the SWAC males’s hoops title because the No. 8 seed, becoming a member of the 2023 Texas Southern Tigers. The Panthers will face Lehigh within the First 4, with the winner dealing with defending nationwide champion Florida within the first spherical.
Additionally within the dance is Howard College. The Bison are having fun with a renaissance in each their males’s and girls’s applications as the lads clinched their NCAA tourney bid by successful the MEAC whereas the ladies did the identical of their convention match. Howard will face UMBC within the First 4, a faculty famously recognized for being the primary to ever upset a No. 1 seed as a No. 16 seed within the males’s match, when it beat Virginia in 2018.
Within the ladies’s bracket, the Southern Jaguars are additionally within the match together with Howard. The Bison earned a No. 13 seed after a dominant run by the MEAC with a 26-7 season. Southern, which took down Alabama State to punch its ticket, faces Samford within the First 4. The winner? They’ll meet Daybreak Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks.
It doesn’t matter what occurs, the Discipline of 68 in each brackets will function loads of HBCU pleasure, a bit trash speak and loads of ambition to shock the world.
