Norfolk State's Dream Season Continues As Spartans Ascend To HBCU Greatness

Norfolk State is quietly having one of the best HBCU women's basketball seasons in a decade. How their success paints a future picture of upward mobility for coaches and players in women's basketball.

Courtesy: Nick Sutton // Norfolk State Athletics

March of 1984. That was the last time a historically black college or university has won an NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament game that wasn’t a First Four play-in.

Tennessee State got close in 1995, taking fifth seeded Oregon State to overtime. Hampton did the same in 2011, losing by 4 in extra frames to four seed Kentucky. It’s exceedingly rare for HBCU teams to get a ranking higher than 14th in the NCAA Tournament and almost impossible to dethrone a high-major team once they get there.

But Norfolk State feels different this year and have a singular goal in mind: stamp their legacy as owners of one of the best HBCU seasons since C. Vivian Stringer led Cheyney State to that 1984 Final Four.

“You don’t have to be in the ACC or the Big Ten to be special,” head coach Larry Vickers tells me over a video call with his two star players, Kierra Wheeler and Diamond Johnson, listening in.