MEAC Basketball: 3 candidates to replace the departing North Carolina A&T

North Carolina A&T basketball ended its last season as part of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference this year. Where will MEAC Basketball turn to find a suitable replacement for its former flagship school? The eventual answer may lie in one of the most storied basketball conferences at the Division II level, The CIAA.

There’s no other way to say it; The loss of North Carolina A&T basketball from the MEAC Basketball landscape hurts…A LOT. The Aggies were a cornerstone program for MEAC athletics in general, with an extremely high-profile on the gridiron, and in other revenue sports. Aggie hoops was also a jewel for HBCU basketball at the Division I level, becoming an attractive destination for P5 transfer talent over the years.

This year’s roster had a bevy of talented players, including All-Conference players Ronald Jackson and Kameron Langley. the squad had also entrenched themselves at the top of the MEAC basketball pecking order, along with traditional basketball rival North Carolina Central. The program’s increasing consistency over the years had also increased the overall competitive profile of the conference in comparison to the rest of the greater Division I mid-major basketball landscape. With the athletic program jumping ship to the Big South conference, the MEAC is left with a vacuum, and a need to find an eventual replacement for the 2021-22 season.

Of course, its way too early to say who will replace A&T in the MEAC basketball hierarchy. There are a lot of factors that aren’t basketball-related that will ultimately determine who’d be a proper fit for the culture and profile of the conference. That, however, won’t stop us here at busting brackets from examining who could be a good potential replacement for the Aggies from a purely hoops perspective. At the Division I level, the mid-major programs that would fit the MEAC culture and conference regional footprint are scarce. The other HBCU basketball conference at the Division I level is the Southwestern Athletic Conference, which has its own distinct cultural and geographical footprint, chock full of rivalries that wouldn’t make sense anywhere else.

The other D1 HBCU program that has a sizeable following outside of the MEAC and the SWAC is Tennessee State, which has a happy home in the Ohio Valley Conference. The MEAC may eventually look to a familiar source for potential programs to take up the mantle to replace the Aggie program: the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA). There’s precedent for this, as the MEAC has turned to the CIAA in the past to bring current conference members Norfolk State and North Carolina Central, as well as past member (and current Big South member) Hampton University.

There are three current CIAA members that have the basketball pedigree and culture to take up the mantle the Aggies left behind.