HBCU players struggle to make the professional leagues. Will an All-Star Game help?

In the coming weeks, tens of thousands of people will attend the Final Four of the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments. They’ll pack into raucous arenas and argue with strangers about the merits of college basketball stars – and then celebrate victory or mourn defeat with those same strangers hours later. At the center of the commotion and excitement will be eight teams, young men and women who are among the best in their sport.

But there will be another group of athletes in San Antonio at the same time as the men’s Final Four is played there, and it will include the best basketball players from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The 48 players – 24 men and 24 women – are not going to be in Texas for the Final Four, but instead will compete in the 2025 HBCU All-Star Game & Experience, a six-day event that culminates in back-to-back championship matches on 6 April.

This year marks the fourth men’s HBCU All-Star Game and the first time organizers have added a game for women, something they said is “long overdue.” It’s also the first in San Antonio, a city that is “buzzing about this event,” says founder Travis L Williams, who coached for a combined 17 years at Tennessee State University and Fort Valley State University. The six-day event is about more than a basketball game; Williams and the event’s organizers also host a college and scholarship fair, a social justice and civil rights panel and a pro day combine and a fan fest. The event will also include BAM testing, a performance evaluation service used by the NBA as part of the draft. The organizers enlisted the service to make sure HBCU athletes are evaluated in the same manner that potential NBA and WNBA draft picks are.

“We want no excuses,” Williams says. “We want to level the playing field and provide these amazing opportunities for both our men and women in this space, and there’s not a better audience than college basketball’s biggest weekend.”

That goal is admirable and ambitious, but is it enough? HBCU hoopers have long been ignored in America. The NBA has drafted 351 men from HBCUs into the league; the first was West Virginia State’s Earl Lloyd in 1950, and the most recent was Kyle O’Quinn in 2010. The WNBA, meanwhile, has drafted only seven women from HBCUs, and none are on team rosters this year.

Those numbers and stats can start to feel like a lack of representation, something that could discourage other talented HBCU athletes from pursuing collegiate basketball seriously, says WNBA and NBA analyst Diamond Forrest. Forrest, who spent two seasons playing for HBCU Jackson State, pointed to the case of last year’s third-round pick Angel Jackson as an example.

It’s not news that most third-round WNBA picks don’t usually end up playing in their rookie season, if ever – teams have limited roster space, so later draft picks are the most likely to be dropped – but Forrest was frustrated when Jackson was cut by the Las Vegas Aces. Before her dismissal, the Aces posted photos of Jackson in a jersey (a common practice after players are drafted), something Forrest found frustrating because she says it felt like a bait-and-switch.

Teams like the Aces could do more than draft a player from an HBCU for a photo opportunity, she believes. “You could keep them on the roster and develop them,” Forrest says. “There’s no reason why Angel Jackson isn’t now on the Aces’ roster. She could learn from A’ja Wilson – they play the same position.”

The reality is that it might not be that easy. It’s not as if NBA and WNBA scouts and teams aren’t aware of HBCU programs and events like the HBCU All-Star Game. As Williams notes, the 2024 HBCU combine was attended by 15 of the NBA’s 30 teams – but no one was picked up. And that’s partly due to structural reasons that mean HBCU programs find it tougher to attract the best high school players.

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Jim Crow America is an important starting point when attempting to understand some of the challenges HBCUs are up against. 1954’s Brown v the Board of Education, struck down racial segregation in the classroom. But the athletic departments at southern universities and colleges remained segregated by law, and those at their northern counterparts practiced “de facto segregation,” says Eric Moyen, assistant vice-president for student success at Mississippi State University.

The situation began to change significantly after Kentucky’s all-white Kentucky team lost to Texas Western’s all-Black starting five in the championship game of the 1966 NCAA Tournament. White colleges started to recruit Black players, and HBCUs – already underfunded – soon found they couldn’t compete with powerhouse programs like Alabama and Duke when it came to signing the best young talent. Those big programs could (and still can) offer Black athletes perks like television exposure and a degree of celebrity – that HBCUs are unable to, Moyen says. “Does an 18-year-old want to fly on a chartered jet to his next game or take a 10-hour bus ride?”

That lack of funding – a systematic issue that touches everything from state support to athlete lifestyle – has a massive ripple effect; if HBCUs can’t attract top talent, they won’t be able to take advantage of revenue from televised games, and they don’t benefit from payouts from participating in the NCAA Tournament. That lack of revenue means they are less attractive to the best high school players and the whole cycle starts again. And even if a less recruited players suddenly develops into a real talent at an HBCU, they are likely to be lured by a bigger program.

“This year in the NCAA Tournament, there will be dozens of players who were overlooked in high school recruiting but became excellent players at ‘mid-majors,’” Moyen says. “Those players have jumped to big-time schools where they can get paid now, gain exposure, and face competition that will help prepare them for the NBA. There will be a limited number of universities that will be able to keep up with this model, and that is where the HBCU All-Star Game may be able to carve out a niche and strengthen HBCU schools and conferences.”

Williams took 10 men’s players from the 2024 HBCU All-Star Game to Paris last summer to participate in Quai 54, the world’s biggest streetball tournament, against some of the top talent around the world. Williams wanted to “provide more opportunities on a global scale” and expand the athletes’ horizons. Approximately 50% of the athletes who have participated in past HBCU All-Star Games are now playing professionally overseas. In fact, providing opportunities to play professional basketball outside the US, with showcases such at Quai 54, could even be the kind of incentive that can help something like the HBCU All-Star Game continue to grow, and could encourage higher caliber athletes to attend HBCUs – even over powerhouse teams – in the first place.

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Each year’s HBCU All-Star Game has been built on the success of the previous year’s edition. Williams says the first three games, in 2022, 2023, and 2024, pulled in a combined 1.6 million viewers on CBS, the city of San Antonio has embraced an event previously enjoyed by Houston and New Orleans, and this year’s group of athletes will undoubtedly play their hearts out. But there is still some way to go.

“To put it in perspective, there are 450 NBA players, 30 NBA teams, 156 WNBA players, and 13 WNBA teams,” Williams says. “[HBCUs] have zero representation in both. We are just not provided the same exposure and access.”

But Williams believes this year’s HBCU’s All-Stars are among the best he has come across. “And so events like this, platforms like this are important to showcase the best in Black college basketball,” he says. “The game is continuing to grow, grow, grow, and folks really still don’t understand the magnitude of it because I feel like we haven’t scratched the surface.”

For Williams and his team, this year’s HBCU All-Star event is about more than what happens on the court; it’s about bringing his athletes to college basketball’s biggest weekend and giving them the largest stage possible. And after that, it’s all out of his hands and into those of the powers that be.