Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

Our final non-conference game is with Morgan State.  Most of you know it is in Baltimore.  But do you know anything else about them.  By the time you read this you will know a little more about the school itself, and the current state of the Morgan Basketball program.  Morgan is located on East Cold Spring Lane in Baltimore, which is a little north of Lake Monitbello, and the site where Memorial Stadium once stood.  I read that 65% of the students are from Maryland.  Tuition cost about $6,500 a year instate and almost $15,000 for those out of state.  It appears there are about 6,005 students who attend Morgan.

A little history on Morgan and how it evolved.  It was founded in 1867 as Centenary Biblical Institute to train men in ministry.  It 1890 it was renamed Morgan College when it began to teach both men and women to become teachers.  In 1915 Andrew Carnegie gave Morgan $50,000 to build on a new location, but that was met with controversy as the local landowners did not want a “negro” college to be built near them.  It was built anyway after many court cases.  It remained a private College until 1939, when the State purchased the school, so the state could have more opportunities of higher education for its black residents.  So in 1939 it became Morgan State College.  Morgan opted out of becoming part of the University of Maryland system, but it is still a state school.   Not exactly sure how that works.

Morgan has quite a distinguished list of Alumni.  There are 11 US army Generals, a longer list of Colonels, quite a few politicians, and judges.  I doubt any of those names will stand out for you.  They do have four members of the NFL Hall of Fame:  Len Ford, Leroy Kelly, Willie Lanier, Roosevelt Brown.  I am not sure Maryland can make that claim.  Joe Black is a Morgan Alum, and he was the first Black Pitcher to win a World Series game with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952.  Also was Rookie of the Year.

Morgan is a member of the MEAC and the mascot is the Bears.  The football team may be more well known for the halftime entertainment knows as the Morgan State University Band.  Last years basketball team made was the MEAC regular season champion, but lost in the conference tournament.  They did not earn an at-large bid to the big dance, but did get invited to their first ever NIT.  They lost in the first round to Virginia Tech.  This years team was a near unanimous pick to win the MEAC again.  They currently are 5-8 on the season with wins against UMBC, Marshall, Depaul, Coppin, and William Jessup.  They are led by  Jr. guard, Reggie Holmes at 14.3 points per game.  The other four starters average between 8.8 and 9.8 points per game.  Jermaine “Itchy” Bolden is averaging 4.6 assists and 2.1 steals per game.  Maryland has a 5-0 record against the Bears since 1988-89 including last years 89-65 Maryland win. 

There will be more info on Maryland later.  I need to do a little more research.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under Maryland Terps Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.