The Tennessee State Tigers basketball team represents

Tennessee State University Tennessee State University (Tennessee State, Tenn State, or TSU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1912, it is the only state-funded historically black university in Tennes ...

(TSU) in

Nashville Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

, United States. The school's team currently competes in the NCAA Division I's

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It participates in Division I of the NCAA; the conference's football programs compete in partnership with ...

. They play their home games at the Gentry Complex and are led by sixth-year head coach Brian "Penny" Collins. While they were a member of the NAIA, they were three time national champions (

1957 Events January * January 1 – The Saarland joins West Germany. * January 3 – Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch. * January 5 – South African player Russell Endean becomes the first batsman to be Dismissal (cricke ...

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the thir ...

1959 Events January * January 1 – Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 – Soviet lunar probe Luna 1 is the first human-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reaches the ...

). TSU was the first team to win three consecutive basketball national championships at any level of college basketball – a feat only repeated by

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

(seven straight championships from

1967 Events January * January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair. * January 6 – Vietnam War: United States Marine Corps and Army of ...

–

1973 Events January * January 1 – The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark 1973 enlargement of the European Communities, enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union. * January 14 - The 16-0 19 ...

) and Kentucky State (

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 1970 Tonghai earthquake, Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli ...

1971 * The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses (Solar eclipse of February 25, 1971, February 25, Solar eclipse of July 22, 1971, July 22 and Solar eclipse of August 20, 1971, August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 1971 lunar eclip ...

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, ...

). The 1957 championship made TSU the first historically black college to win a national championship. The team was coached by

Harold Hunter __NOTOC__ Harold Atkins Hunter (April 2, 1974 – February 17, 2006) was an American professional skateboarder and actor. He played the role of Harold in Larry Clark's 1995 film '' Kids''. Career Hunter was born in New York City and grew up i ...

from 1960 to 1968. Hunter still holds the record as the second-winningest men's basketball coach in Tennessee State's history. Hunter had succeeded outgoing coach John McLendon, who left in 1959. The Tigers joined

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...

for the 1977–78 season and joined the OVC for the 1986–87 season. Since joining Division I, Tennessee State has appeared twice in the NCAA Tournament, most recently in 1994. Seventeen former Tennessee State Tigers have played in the

NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...

; the best known are Ben Warley, Robert Covington,

Dick Barnett Richard Barnett (October 2, 1936 – April 27, 2025) was an American professional basketball player who was a shooting guard in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Syracuse Nationals, Los Angeles Lakers, and New York Knicks. He wo ...

, John Barnhill,

Truck Robinson Leonard Eugene "Truck" Robinson (born October 4, 1951) is an American former professional basketball player and coach. He played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Washington Bullets (1974–77), Atlanta Hawks (1977), New Orl ...

, Anthony Mason and Carlos Rogers.

Postseason results

NCAA Division I Tournament results

The Tigers have appeared in two NCAA Division I Tournaments. Their combined record is 0–2.

NCAA Division II Tournament results

The Tigers have appeared in seven NCAA Division II Tournaments. Their record is 18–8.

NAIA Tournament results

The Tigers have appeared in seven NAIA Tournaments. Their combined record is 23–4 and are three time national champions (1957, 1958, 1959). Those same teams were later announced as inductees into the

Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is an American history museum and hall of fame, located at 1000 Hall of Fame Avenue in Springfield, Massachusetts. It serves as basketball's most complete library, in addition to promoting and pre ...

on April 6, 2019, with those teams being "the first collegiate team to win back-to-back-to-back championships."

CIT results

The Tigers have appeared in three CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournaments (CIT). Their combined record is 0–3. They accepted an invitation to the 2020 CIT before it was cancelled amid the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

References

External links

* {{Ohio Valley Conference men's basketball navbox