The CIAA basketball tournament gets one last Charlotte run before moving on to Baltimore
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Jacqie McWilliams grew up in Colorado Springs with the desire to one day attend a historically black college on the East Coast. Hampton, then a charter member of the CIAA, was her target.
When Hampton basketball coach James Sweat extended her an invitation as a preferred walk-on, a chain of events were set in motion that carry through to this day.
Today, McWilliams is the commissioner of the CIAA and she is overseeing the league’s final conference tournament in Charlotte for at least the near future. Between then and now, McWilliams — who earned All-Conference honors in basketball and volleyball at Hampton — developed a profound understanding of the 112-year-old league and its crown jewel event.
It’s more than a basketball tournament. While games unfold inside Bojangles Coliseum and the Spectrum Center, something special happens outside. It’s a family reunion. It’s a celebration of culture. It’s a beacon for high school students to follow into the league’s member institutions.
It’s a little bit of everything for just about everybody.
“We are a community,” McWilliams said. “This is an event for culture and the love of our community. It draws generations of families and fans and alumni every year. We’re impacting the game inside the venue and we’re killing it outside the venue, so I’m just really proud of the work we’re able to do.”
The tournament annually draws more than 100,000 people to its games and surrounding activities. McWilliams said the league is expecting more than 130,000 in this 15th and final year in Charlotte before the NCAA Division II tournament moves to Baltimore for a three-year run. It is one of the nation’s best-attended tournaments regardless of division. It will be as wild and frenetic this week as it was for McWilliams when she attended her first CIAA tournament as a Lady Pirate in 1988.
“As a student, it was like, ‘wow’,” McWilliams said. In those days, the tournament was played at Norfolk Scope Arena. “It was packed. As student-athletes, you couldn’t find a seat. The environment was always fun. Going outside the arena, where all the vendors were, it was packed, too. You couldn’t move. It always felt like a place you wanted to be. It was hard to get in the building. It was hard to get tickets.”
When McWilliams returned to the league as commissioner in 2012, she set to work streamlining the tournament week. Over the years, too many events had been piggybacked onto the tournament and the party atmosphere began to overtake the tournament itself. Playing in a voluminous venue such as the 20,200-seat Spectrum Center also affected the ambiance.
“We had been in buildings with 10-12,000 seats in Raleigh and Winston-Salem (before Charlotte),” McWilliams said. It created a different and unwelcome challenge for the league that has been partially rectified with the upcoming move to the 14,000-seat Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore.
The history of the CIAA basketball tournament
This year’s tournament is the league’s 75th. It’s first, just after World War II, was hastily cobbled together on a $500 budget. It featured the 16-member league’s top eight teams and was played at Washington D.C.’s Turner Arena, where 3,000 people squeezed into 2,000 seats. The championship game between North Carolina College and Virginia Union went into triple overtime with the school that would become N.C. Central winning 64-56.
The 1950 tournament featured West Virginia State’s Earl Lloyd, who so impressed during that week at Washington D.C.’s Uline Arena that the NBA’s Washington Capitals selected him in that year’s NBA draft. Lloyd became the first African-American to appear in an NBA game that fall.
Countless future NBA players have passed through the league over the decades. Even more students have passed through the member schools’ graduation lines. McWilliams said the tournament also serves as a showcase for the schools to attract students. Last year, more than $1 million in scholarships were awarded to more than 1,000 students who applied during or as a result of that week’s activities.
McWilliams is eager to see what Charm City can offer the league in the years to come. But for right now, she can’t wait to experience what the Queen City has in store for its last hurrah.
“I think everybody is wanting to be here for the last time in Charlotte,” she said. “People who haven’t been here are coming for the first time. We’re still getting calls for tickets we don’t have. I’m excited that we can say no, because we are not walking around with any tickets left in our pocket. It’s a fun problem to have.”
Teams, matchups, schedule
Division champions Virginia State (19-8, 12-3) and Johnson C. Smith (19-7, 13-4) enter the tournament as the co-No. 1 seeds, but no team is hotter than Northern Division runner-up Virginia Union (18-10, 11-4), which is riding a seven-game winning streak.
That hot finish to the regular season likely will pit Virginia Union against Fayetteville State, the league’s surprise team, in Thursday’s first quarterfinal matchup. Behind former Bowie State coaching legend Luke D’Alessio and a plethora of incoming transfers, the Broncos improved from 7-20 a year ago to 21-7 (10-7 in league play) this season.
The first round began with St. Augustine (11-17, 5-12) beating Lincoln, Pa. (9-19, 5-10), 66-61, and Claflin (13-15, 9-8) knocking off Elizabeth City State (12-16, 4-11), 70-60. Today, Fayetteville State will play last seed Shaw (5-22, 2-15) at 10 a.m., followed by Livingstone (12-16, 5-12) and Bowie State (16-13, 8-7). Johnson C. Smith will play St. Augustine’s (8:50 p.m.) and Claflin will face Virginia State (6:40 p.m.) in the quarterfinals.
Winston-Salem State (16-10, 13-4), Virginia State, Johnson C. Smith and Virginia Union had first-round byes.
The championship game is set for 4:30 p.m. Saturday.
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 5:22 PM.