Moores Hill College moved to Evansville and became Evansville College in 1919. The athletics program was begun with the opening of the new campus. A member of the Missouri Valley Conference, the University of Evansville sponsors teams in seven men's and nine women's NCAA sanctioned sports.
The University of Evansville athletics department was built upon a foundation of success in men's basketball. In the early years of the men's basketball program the Purple Aces appeared in the NAIA national tournament. The Purple Aces appeared 4 times in the NAIA Tournament. The Purple Aces had a NAIA tournament record of 3-4. The furthest distance Evansville got in the NAIA tournaments was in third round in 1951, only to lose to Regis University 70-68. Shortly after the 1955 season the Purple Aces would move up to the NCAA College Division, now called NCAA Division II. The Evansville Purple Aces won five national championships in the NCAA College Division: 1959, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1971. This ranks second all-time. In 1977 UE began playing in NCAA Division I athletics. That same year on December 13, a chartered DC-3 carrying the entire UE basketball team crashed in a field near the Evansville Regional Airport en route to a game against Middle Tennessee State. Every member of the team and coaching staff on the plane was killed. Legendary Aces coach Arad McCutchan, had retired after the previous season and was not on the plane. McCutchan was the first NCAA College Division coach selected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. One player was not able to attend the game and thus was not on the plane; not long after the plane crash, however, the player who was not on the plane was killed in a car accident along with his younger brother. Tremendous community support brought back the basketball program the next year. Evansville was a charter member of the Midwest Collegiate Conference, now known as the Horizon League. The Aces won or shared the MCC regular season title in 1982, 1987, 1989, 1992, and 1993. They also won the conference tournament title in 1982, 1992, and 1993. The Aces are now a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, and won the 1999 regular season title. The Purple Aces have made five trips to the NCAA Men's basketball tournament two trips to the NIT, three trips to the CollegeInsider.com tournament, and two trips to the College Basketball Invitational tournament. On November 12, 2019, the Evansville team took down the #1 ranked University of Kentucky basketball team in Rupp Arena, gaining national and global prestige for the upset.
The Purple Aces were a fully funded NCAA Division I-AA program in the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League until 1997. They were champion of the Ohio Valley Conference in 1948 and 1949. Talk existed since about 2007 about upgrading football again to a fully funded NCAA Division I team, but, after a year of investigation, the Board of Trustees voted against this in October 2012 as currently being too expensive.
