Columbia HBCUs get go-ahead for basketball season. No spring football games for Allen

Benedict College and Allen University will be playing basketball this winter, with their seasons starting in the new year.

The Division II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which Benedict and Allen are a part of, announced Tuesday that teams will begin a men’s and women’s 12-to 14-game basketball schedule Jan. 10. The season also will feature a tournament championship.

Allen University will be in its first season as a member of the SIAC after moving up from NAIA. Benedict has been a member of the conference since 1932.

Fans won’t be allowed to attend games, the conference said, at least at the beginning of the season. That could change as the year goes along.

In July, the SIAC canceled fall sports, including football, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The SIAC will not sponsor championships for football, men’s and women’s cross country, and women’s volleyball for the remainder of the 2020-21 academic year,” the conference announced Tuesday, “although individual institutions may, based on unique or special circumstances, participate in intercollegiate competition in those sports.”

That opens the door for those falls sports to participate in individual games in the spring.

Allen University won’t be playing football in the spring and will resume the sport in the fall, school media relations director Jason James confirmed.

Benedict sports information director Dennis Switzer said the school hopes to have three or four “scrimmage-type” football games against other schools in the spring and wants to announce that schedule soon.

Benedict, which hired Chennis Berry to lead its football program in February, held football practices in the fall and an intrasquad scrimmage to cap off those practices. Benedict ended its fall semester Friday and will take final exams online.

Members of the Benedict and Allen coaching staffs have been spotted at high school games this season. Division II coaches still are allowed to be on the road and recruit even though Division I teams can’t.

“I definitely want (his players) to have something to play for,” Berry told The State earlier this month. “As long as they tell me we’re playing, we’ll be prepared.”

The SIAC spring 2021 season will feature men’s and women’s tennis, golf, men’s and women’s track and field, softball, and baseball.