The North Carolina Central Eagles are Durham basketball royalty — a program from one of America's great HBCUs with a Division II national championship in its history, a MEAC dynasty in its recent past, and one of the most respected coaches in the sport on its bench. From John McLendon to LeVelle Moton, the sideline at NCCU has been occupied by giants. The current mission: end the NCAA tournament drought and remind everybody who runs this league.
The history here is sacred ground. The legendary John McLendon — the first Black head coach in professional basketball and a Naismith Hall of Famer — coached at what was then North Carolina College, and the arena that bears his name is a monument to that legacy. The program reached the Division II Final Four in 1989 and cut down the nets as NCAA Division II national champions under coach Michael Bernard. Through the CIAA years and into the Division I transition, NCCU basketball meant excellence: conference tournament titles in 1946 and 1950, and a pipeline of talent that made Durham a basketball town on its own terms.
The Division I breakthrough came under LeVelle Moton, and it is one of the great coaching stories in HBCU sports. Moton — a Boston native and former Eagle guard — took over his alma mater in 2009, inheriting an independent program with no conference and no postseason path. Within four years he had NCCU in the MEAC and in the NCAA tournament. From 2014 through 2020, the Eagles owned the conference: four MEAC regular-season titles and four MEAC tournament championships, with NCAA tournament trips in 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Moton's résumé is the envy of the league: two-time MEAC Coach of the Year (most recently 2017), nearly 70 percent of his MEAC games won, and a roster of All-MEAC honorees developed along the way. Entering the 2025-26 season — his 17th at the helm — he sat roughly 22 wins shy of 300 for his career, a milestone that would put him among the most accomplished HBCU coaches of all time. His teams are known for toughness, discipline and togetherness — old-school virtues in a transfer-portal world.
The one thing missing is an NCAA tournament win. The Eagles have been to the Big Dance four times under Moton and are still chasing that first victory — the final validation of everything built in Durham. The drought dates to 2019, the program's last tournament appearance, and breaking it has become the obsession of everyone in maroon and gray.
The 2024-25 season was a rare down year: 14-19 overall, 6-8 in the MEAC, sixth place — the program's first losing record in a full season since 2015-16. But even in a down year, the Eagles showed their March DNA, knocking off Delaware State in the MEAC quarterfinals before falling to South Carolina State in the semifinals. In Durham, the tournament is the season, and NCCU never goes quietly.
The 2025-26 reset came with modest outside expectations — picked tied for fifth in the October preseason poll — but real pieces. Senior guard Dionte Johnson earned preseason All-MEAC second-team honors as the engine: 4.5 assists and 3.0 steals per game, the kind of two-way floor general Moton teams are built around. Khouri Carvey emerged as the league's best rebounder at 9.5 boards a night, and Gage Lattimore poured in 22.5 points per game. The Eagles led the MEAC in three-point shooting and free-throw shooting — and when a Moton team shoots it well, it is dangerous.
The non-conference slate was a gauntlet worthy of the program's ambition: opening night at NC State's Lenovo Center on November 3, then road trips to Virginia, Appalachian State, North Carolina's Smith Center, Dayton, Kentucky's Rupp Arena and Penn State. Six power-conference road games. Nobody in the MEAC scheduled tougher — and nobody needed the tests more, because Moton has always believed November steel sharpens March.
Home is McDougald-McLendon Arena — 3,056 seats honoring the McLendon coaching legacy, an intimate, deafening bandbox where the student section sits on top of the court and the pep band never stops. On rivalry nights, when North Carolina A&T comes to town — as the Aggies did on December 6 — there is no better atmosphere in HBCU basketball.
That rivalry remains the heartbeat of the schedule. The Eagles and Aggies split their recent meetings, and with the programs now in different conferences, the annual December collision is pure pride — no standings, just history. In a state overflowing with blue-blood programs, the Durham-Greensboro rivalry is HBCU basketball's crown jewel.
What comes next is the Moton standard: defend, share the ball, win in March. The 300-win milestone is coming. The MEAC tournament, staged in Norfolk, is the annual proving ground. And the first NCAA tournament win — the one thing this golden era hasn't delivered — is still out there. Seventeen seasons in, LeVelle Moton is still chasing it. In Durham, nobody doubts he'll get there.