A cool cat named Alex Brown

One of the toughest decisions looming for SIUE men's basketball Head Coach Lennox Forrester will be one made off the court.

Alex Brown, a senior recruited out of Herrin High School was set to join the Cougar's roster next season, but allegations of theft put his high school career in limbo, as the Alestle reported two weeks ago.

Once details regarding the allegations became public at a Jan. 20 hearing in Herrin, the decision inevitably got harder for the SIUE coaching staff. Brown's prep playing days have ended.

Brown, along with two teammates, JoJo Hart and his younger brother DeShaun Hart walked to a local convenient store to get some snacks and sodas to compliment a long night of video gaming.

You probably know what's next; they stole from the store. Well, you guessed wrong. Enter, gray area.

A "cougar" approached the trio. No, it was not our furry friend Cory, rather the other kind: a 35-year-old woman, according to the Benton Evening News.

The article out of Benton tells the story of how the woman asked them to come to her house, where she offered food, alcohol and sex.

Interesting.

At the meeting, the Harts' mother, Dondra Porter, addressed the incident, claiming the players did not give into their temptress, declining her sexual advances, passing on her booze and not eating her food, meanwhile accepting the non-SIUE-cougar's gifts, which included a television, camera and iPod.

Porter said once the woman fell asleep, with Brown and the Harts still at her residence, they hightailed it out of there with the gifts, prompting the "cougar" to identify the players on Facebook and call the police. The police went to Herrin and questioned the players, prompting their suspension.

The items were later returned.

The biggest question is why did the players go to the house in the first place if they wanted nothing to do with sex, booze and free food? Why did they stay?
If what Porter says is the real story, then no harm is done. The players made a stupid decision and apparently never learned about taking candy from a stranger in kindergarten.

The woman should be the one punished for offering alcohol to minors, and the younger Hart was under 18 so if she was offering him sex, she could be punished for that as well.

On the other hand, parents are always trying to get their kids out of trouble, and it is easy for anyone to speculate on the night being any different than we have come to believe.

Truthfully, we will probably never know the entire story.

I have no idea whether or not SIUE needs to reconsider Brown's scholarship. That ball is in their court. One train of thought leads to believe boys will be boys and the other lends to every action having a consequence.

SIUE wants the best student athletes they can get. From numerous stories we have done, and the shiny 3.03 GPA across the Athletic Department, I can honestly conclude this university does not want questionable individuals on its courts or fields.

This whole situation opens the door to questions concerning Brown. Once again, if the story is as it was told, he did nothing wrong. He is also 18, so if anything sexual occurred, it is null and void in the eyes of the law.

SIUE needs to make an informed decision about Brown. Given what we know, the ideal scenario would be for Forrester to sit down and have a conversation with Brown, find out the whole situation, and try and get him to learn from this and become a better person on and off the court. This is a character issue that can be fixed, rather than something with criminal intent and should be treated that way.

His suspension may just be an overreaction to a young adult's actions by Herrin High School, but Forrester and his staff need to give this some serious thought, and ultimately give Brown his shot at continuing his basketball career and growing up a little bit.

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From the other side

The Cougars blew another halftime lead and lost to UMKC tonight.

I was not happy about it.
Normally my job requires me to show no emotion or bias in supporting SIUE athletics. I am after all, a journalist. First and foremost though, I have a lot of pride for the Cougars, which I feel is okay since I am a student. Being christmas/winter/holiday break (whichever you prefer) and being a native of Edwardsville (and not having anywhere to go home for the holidays because, um, I'm already here,) I wanted to go to the Vadalabene Center tonight. I had two choices: be the journalist I am, providing some sort of game story recap on this very blog, attend the post-game press conference, get quotes and provide some live game blog analysis, or since the Alestle does not print over the recess from classes go to the game in an entirely different function. That of a fan.
And I chose the latter.
This was new to me. I could yell things at the other team and clap. it didn't help the Cougars efforts being one of about ten students in the audience of 1,650 but being able to partake in the emotion and intensity of college basketball was something special for me.
It didn't hurt that the marketing people chose me out of the deserted student section to participate in the Commerce Bank Dash for Cash at the first media timeout of the second half, they really didn't have a choice. It was me or my friend who attends Illinois State. After the home opener Nov. 15 it was safe to say he was not stepping foot on that court. I got $93 out of it, not too shabby, considering I would have made about $24 covering the exact same game and having to do some serious "work."
The Cougars jumped out to an early 9-0 lead while shooting over 60 percent from the field. Nikolo Bundalo opened things up with a nice hook-shot in the lane, Mark Yelovich tallied a mid-range floater, Denycko Bowles hit a three and Yelovich capped it off nailing another jump shot.
Things were looking good for SIUE. UMKC could not get a rebound if their scholarships depended on it and SIUE was doing a good job maintaining defensive pressure and forcing turnovers.
Then it got away a little bit and the tide began to turn. The Kangaroos fought off an 8-0 run of their own to get within one and after another Cougars run they got back into the game yet again and went into the locker room down two.
My first thought at the break was "here we go again."
The same thing happened to SIUE at home against Lipscomb and IPFW. They led Lipscomb by eight at halftime on the road before getting pummeled in the second half towards a 20 point defeat. It is nothing against the will of the players, they just cannot play 40 minutes of solid basketball on any given night. You can bet on 20, but 40 is pushing it just a little bit.
It is all the mental things that cost the Cougars tonight, and I saw a direct correlation with SIUE's volleyball team. Now, I am starting to talk like a sports reporter, but the problem with SIUE's 2-27 volleyball squad was their inability to put together a solid match throughout. When opponents made runs the Cougars never had the intangible ability to shift the momentum back in a positive direction. Back to basketball, it is the same problem. It is all mental. You can contribute this to whatever you want, inexperience, coaching or execution. In my opinion, tonight's loss was a combination of all three things.
Inexperience: When UMKC went on runs the Cougars confidence took a nose-dive and there was no way they would be able to kick it into overdrive. Chalk this up to having a young team.
Coaching: Kevin Stineman should not be starting basketball games. Nothing against him, but he is not what we need in the starting five even if Stephen Jones can't go, which was the case today. There is no reason in my mind at least to play a defensive specialist in the starting lineup when you have scorers like LeShaun Murphy at your disposal. Sure, Murphy is a freshmen, but when he is on his game he has the ability to be the most electric player on the basketball court. Murphy is fourth on the team in scoring with 6.1 ppg in limited action. Stineman? 3.2 ppg. Bowles probably needs to get his starter tag removed as well, in favor of David Boarden. A starting lineup of Bundalo, Yelovich, Murphy, McCleary and Boarden sounds absolutely deadly in my mind. Stineman had two points to show for his 27 minutes on the court. Bowles put together a decent effort with a season-high ten points, but he has not proven to be a consistent answer for SIUE.
Execution: The Cougars take way too many three-point shots. You can attribute this to having virtually no interior game, but you have to try to get buckets however you can and the perimeter is not the answer. SIUE went 4-18 from long-range, and the second half was just a disaster from that point of view. It doesn't help that there isn't someone to depend as a garbage disposal down low to punish the inside and get some hard-earned points, but the Cougars need to find better ways to attack defenses. I don't care if Dob Mavrik rebounds with one hand or if Zeke Schneider is still a work in progress. UMKC was switching up their looks a lot, and that proved frustrating, as they mixed and matched zone coverage with man-to-man throughout the second half. Execution was also lacking on the defensive end. SIUE sent the Kangaroos to the free-throw line 35 times, and they capitalized on 27 attempts. There's your game. Nearly 43 percent of all of UMKC's points CAME FROM THE FREE THROW LINE. It deserves to be capitalized and now spelled out, because it was FOURTY-THREE PERCENT OF ALL OF THEIR POINTS. You cannot do that and expect to win at any level of basketball. That, is how you win a basketball game shooting 38 percent from the field.
Rebounding was a little bit better for the Cougars, but UMKC is not a good rebounding team by any stretch of the imagination. They came in averaging under 30 per contest. They ended up holding the advantage 36-32 in this one, after SIUE got a little sloppy boxing out in the second half.
SIUE forced more turnovers than they gave up, 20-15, but it sure didn't seem like it. Almost every time the Cougars had a critical posession the ball ended up headed the other way.
The last ten minutes of this game my hands were on my head and my heart was sinking with every missed oppurtunity or UMKC free-throw attempt. Yelling at UMKC's Kurt Korver and telling him he'll never be as good as his brother (Utah Jazz forward and former Creighton bluejay Kyle Korver) was also a highlight of this rare oppurtunity to just kick back and watch some Cougar basketball, just as I did watching the game against Purdue on ESPNU last week.
I would have traded my $93 in prize money for that first Cougar's Division I victory on home soil, but it wasn't meant to be, and now I'm left with a wad leaving people wondering where I've been and this blog entry highlighting the woulda coulda shoulda's of tonight's game.
As a fan I just have to keep reminding myself the wins will come, and one day we will be crowned Ohio Valley Conference champions earning ourselves an automatic bid in the big dance, and as a reporter I have to remind myself that one day in the near future I will have to ask Coach Forrester another tough question.
Allan Lewis
Alestle Sports Editor

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