In discussing the greatest players to ever compete in the CIAA tournament, a nice starting point might be Earl Lloyd.

The 6-foot-7 forward — known as “Big Cat” — led West Virginia State to the 1948 and 1949 national titles and a runner-up finish in 1950 to North Carolina College (now Central).

The 1948 West Virginia State Yellow Jackets went 30-0 en route to what was considered the “Black National Championship.”

He was later named CIAA Player of the Decade for the 1940s.

The CIAA introduced its league tournament in 1946, long before most conferences. The ACC, for example, didn’t start its tournament until 1954. The Big 10 didn’t join the postseason party until 1998.

The CIAA events in the late 1940s were held in Washington, D.C., at that time, not too many miles from Lloyd’s high school alma mater, Parker-Gray High in Alexandria.

Parker-Gray won the 1945 State Virginia Interscholastic Association (VIA) in Lloyd’s senior year. The VIA was the state’s umbrella organization for Black schools prior to integration and linking to the Virginia High School League.

Following his brilliant three-time, All-CIAA career at West Virginia State (located in Charleston), Lloyd went on to become the first Black athlete to compete in an NBA game.

That was with the Washington Capitols; he scored six points on Halloween night 1950.

Soon after, Lloyd was joined in the NBA by Chuck Cooper with Boston and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton with the New York Knicks. Cooper had starred at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh; Clifton, at Xavier in New Orleans.

In 2015, a documentary about Lloyd’s life was titled, “The First To Do It – The Life and Times of Earl Lloyd.”

West Virginia State was a CIAA member from 1942 to 1955. It’s now a Mountain East affiliate.

In addition to becoming the first Black athlete to play in the NBA, Lloyd’s other “firsts” include:

• First Black athlete to play on an NBA championship team – Syracuse Nationals, 1955.

• First Black man to become an NBA assistant coach, 1965 with Detroit, and third Black man to become NBA head coach (1971, following John McLendon and Bill Russell).

• First Black executive with the Chrysler Corporation, Dodge division.

Honors include CIAA Hall of Fame, Virginia Hall of Fame, West Virginia Hall of Fame and Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame.

The basketball court at Alexandria’s T.C. Williams High (now named Alexandria City High School) bears his name.

And add this: In the months between West Virginia State and the NBA, Lloyd played with the Harlem Globetrotters, then a serious team. Twice, Lloyd led the Trotters to victories over the all-white NBA champion Minneapolis Lakers.