Maryland Eastern Shore head coach and HBCU basketball lifer by birth, Cleo Hill Jr. has seen a lot of college basketball. But until his team showed up to the Norfolk Scope on Wednesday night to take on Norfolk State, he didn’t have any experience in the MEAC Tournament.
“After the Del State game, my attention just got locked in on the tournament because I haven’t even been to the MEAC tournament — being in the CIAA — I don’t believe,” Hill told the media following his team’s 77-70 loss to the top-seed in the quarterfinals.
The loss punctuated the end of a 6-25 season for UMES in Hill’s first season at the Division I level. Those 25 losses were equal to the amount of games he lost in his last three seasons at Winston-Salem State University where he won 59 games during that stretch.
The losses were abnormal to Hill but not to the program. The 2024-2025 season marked the third season in the last decade the team has lost at least 25 games and the seventh since the turn of the century. The tiny school in remote Princess Anne, MD has had just four winning seasons since going Division I in the mid-1970s. It has never been to the NCAA Division I Tournament. Considered one of the toughest jobs in college basketball due to finances, location and history, this job is not for the faint of heart.
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Cleo Hill Jr., son and namesake of an HBCU basketball legend and coach, knew this when he took the job. The former North Carolina Central guard has spent the last quarter century coaching at HBCUs — first as an assistant at Shaw University — then with a five year stint at Cheyney University before returning to Shaw as head coach and leading that program to a CIAA championship in 2011. He led Shaw to a 116-67 overall record, including multiple NCAA Tournament appearances before spending several years away from college basketball as a trainer and entrepreneur.
He returned to the CIAA in 2018 coaching at his parents alma mater, WSSU, and leading the program to CIAA titles in 2020 and 2023 and making it one of the most visible Division II programs. His 2023 team included a slight but athletic freshman named Ketron “KC” Shaw on a team full of Division I level talent.
When Hill took the job in June, Shaw hit the transfer portal and followed him up to Princess Anne, along with his younger brother Kyrell. Less than a year later, he went from being a third-option at WSSU to the go-to-player for UMES.
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