When Harold Ellis became the director of athletics at Morehouse College in August 2023, the former Tigers basketball star wrote down a list of things he wanted to accomplish. One of the high-priority items on his list was earning the bid for Morehouse to once again host the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) men’s and women’s basketball championship tournament.
Over the last decade, Birmingham, Alabama, Rock Hill, South Carolina, and most recently Savannah, Georgia, have hosted the annual Division II postseason tournament. However, neither Morehouse nor the city of Atlanta has hosted the tournament since 2013, despite the SIAC’s headquarters being housed in the city.
That’ll change this week as Morehouse hosts the quarterfinal, semifinal and championship rounds of this year’s SIAC tournament in the college’s Forbes Arena, something Ellis believes is long overdue.
“That [getting the tournament in Atlanta] was one of my ultimate goals,” Ellis told Andscape. “We have the biggest market. Everybody wants to come to Atlanta, and this will make the tournament much more exciting going forward.”
More than a week before last year’s SIAC tournament at Savannah State University, the conference requested proposals for its 2024-2026 host sites for championship games. Savannah State was in the last year of its two-year agreement to host the event.
After analyzing two years of data from Savannah State’s hosting of the tournament and considering multiple venues, the conference signed a renewable three-year partnership with the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority to bring the tournament to Morehouse, according to SIAC commissioner Anthony Holloman.
“We wanted to put ourselves in the best position to put on a class event as well as give our student-athletes, cheerleaders, fans and bands the opportunity to be in a championship atmosphere,” Holloman said.
Ellis, a 1992 Morehouse graduate and a key member in the Tigers’ NCAA DII Final Four run during the 1989-1990 season, said hosting this year’s tournament will allow the athletics department to generate revenue for all of its sports, give exposure to the university and further elevate the program’s brand recognition.
In addition to the games, the SIAC will host events for fans on campus, as well as activities at Black-owned restaurants.
“This tournament helps the entire city,” Ellis said. “When [Commissioner] Holloman called me about the [hosting] news, I was ecstatic. From the different events surrounding the tournament, knowing where college athletics is now, the changes to recruiting and the transfer portal, you need that exposure to further enhance your program. This is big time for us.”
However, hosting this year’s SIAC tournament came with new twists. In the past, every round was played in the tournament’s host city. In addition, the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds from the East (E) and West (W) divisions on the men’s bracket received a double bye from the first two rounds of the tournament while the Nos. 3 and 4 seeds from both divisions and the No. 5 seed from the East division earned a first-round bye. On the women’s side, the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds from each division earned a double bye from the first two rounds of the tourney while the Nos. 3, 4 and 5 seeds received a first-round bye.
This year, only the No. 1 seeds from each division for both the men and women’s brackets received a first-round bye. The Nos. 2-7 seeds in opposite divisions — meaning 2E vs. 7W and 2W vs. 7E — for the men’s and women’s brackets played in the opening round, with those games taking place on the campus of the team with the higher seed.
Holloman said the modification to the tournament’s layout was geared toward elevating the overall buzz for the event, increasing attendance for the preliminary round games on campuses and reducing travel costs in a 15-member institution conference spread across seven states.
“I think we incentivized the schools to take every game seriously and to play your very best in each contest because you want to position yourself to get a favorable matchup,” Holloman said.
As the regular season culminated, knowing that Morehouse would host this year’s tournament, Ellis hammered away at the idea of the Tigers securing a top four seed in the SIAC East to host an opening round game and give itself a chance to play for a conference title with home court advantage.
“I put pressure on [Morehouse] Coach Douglas Whittler to make it happen,” Ellis said, laughing. “I told him, ‘If we get that crowd in there [Forbes Arena], it will really make a difference for our guys.’”
Prior to Morehouse’s game on Feb. 22 against Clark Atlanta University, the Tigers sat at No. 4 in the SIAC East. After a double-overtime win against the Panthers and victories against Allen University and Benedict College to close out the regular season, the Tigers captured the No. 2 seed. Morehouse’s regular-season finish pitted the Tigers against LeMoyne-Owen College in a first-round matchup versus playing Spring Hill College — the SIAC’s highest-scoring team — should they have remained in their initial place in the standings.
“We’d been up and down at home all season and gave some games away,” Whittler said. “I think once we understood it was survival-and-advance mode and that we were in a fight for our lives, the team played together and believed in each other. When we do that, I’m confident in us winning any game.”
All of the quarterfinal matchups are set to take place on Wednesday and Thursday this week. On the women’s side, the top seeds from the East and West divisions, Miles College and Clark Atlanta, will face Savannah State and Central State University respectively. Other matchups include Tuskegee University versus Spring Hill and Lane College versus LeMoyne-Owen.
Miles, the 2024 women’s SIAC champion, will seek back-to-back tournament titles for the first time in program history while Clark Atlanta hopes to win its first title since 2018. Savannah State and Spring Hill, two teams who have never won a SIAC championship, will seek to hoist their first championship trophy inside Forbes Arena.
In the men’s bracket, Miles and Clark Atlanta — the No. 1 seeds — will join the tournament action Wednesday with matchups against Savannah State and Kentucky State respectively. On Thursday, Tuskegee will face Albany State while Morehouse gets a rematch against Central State, a team that the Tigers defeated 78-59 at home in December.
Since 2019, Miles has won three SIAC tournament titles, with the program’s last championship coming in 2023 while finishing as the runner-up to Clark Atlanta last season. The Panthers, a team that closed the season as winners of six of its last eight games, have never won back-to-back championships in program history.
“We probably have six or seven teams that could possibly win the tournament,” Holloman said. “With having the largest of the four HBCU conferences, we want to be strong from top to bottom in the league. … Basketball has improved in our league, and I think we are playing it at a really high level.”
Whittler said that his team must remain focused, continue to attack the basket, rebound, navigate its rotations quicker and maintain leads if they hope to cut down the nets inside their arena following the SIAC championship game on Saturday night.
Morehouse sophomore guard Cedric Taylor III, an Atlanta native who leads the Tigers in scoring this season, agreed.
“We’ve been working on situational basketball, when and when not to take shots and rebounding,” he said after Saturday’s victory. “If we continue to attack the basket and box out on the glass, it plays in our favor.”