Chicago City Wire

Preview: CSU Men's Basketball at home vs. Saint Xavier, Feb. 11 at 2 p.m.

Cougars Look to Remain Perfect at Home Versus Saint Xavier

The Chicago State's men's basketball team returns to the Jones Convocation Center on Saturday February 11 to host Saint Xavier University at 2 p.m. The game will be the first of three consecutive home games where the Cougars are undefeated in five games this season. Saint Xavier enters the contest with a 21-5 record and 15-3 in the CCAC.

Saturday's game will be the 12th all-time meeting between the two teams dating back to 1981. Chicago State holds an 11-1 advantage in the series and has won the last six contests between the two teams.

Cougars Undefeated at Home in 2022-23
Chicago State's men's basketball team earned their fifth consecutive home win with a 101-66 victory over Aurora University and it's the first five-game home win streak since the 2013-14 season when CSU won five straight at home between Nov. 9 and Dec. 16. CSU will now take aim at extending the streak to match the next longest streak, eight home games bridging two seasons, winning five in a row to end the 2008-09 season and the first three home games of the 2009-10 season.

Cougars Snap Road Losing Streak
With the 74-70 road win at Coastal Carolina the Chicago State's men's basketball team snapped a 21-game road losing streak which was 22 games if you add the neutral-court loss to Utah Valley in the first round of last year's WAC Tournament. The last true road win prior to Coastal Carolina was at Lamar on January 15, 2022 by a score of 67-56. Last season, head coach Gerald Gillion snapped an inherited 24-game road losing streak with a mid-December win at IUPUI. Under Gillion, CSU has won 12 games over the past two seasons, which is more than the previous four seasons combined (10 wins from 2017-21).

Independent Status
Chicago State and Hartford are the only two Division I programs playing an independent schedule during the  2022–23 season. CSU left the Western Athletic Conference following the 2021–22 season while Hartford began a transition to Division III in the 2021–22 school year, and left the America East Conference in July 2022. Hartford has announced it will join the D-III Commonwealth Coast Conference in July 2023. Before 2022, the last D-I independent school had been NJIT, which was forced to go independent when its then-current home of the Great West Conference collapsed in 2013 due to conference realignment. NJIT would eventually find a home in the ASUN Conference in 2015, and is now in the America East. 

Original source can be found here