Friday, May 18, 2007 12:42 AM CDT
Brown picked as Lake Land coach
By RICK DAWSON Staff Writer
rdawson@jg-tc.com
MATTOON – Lake Land hired Cedric Brown as its new men’s basketball coach Thursday, one with both NCAA and NJCAA ties who exuded boundless energy during a phone interview from his Trinity Valley office Thursday.
Trinity Valley, a community college in Athens, Texas, is the site where Brown spent the past season as an assistant coach. A New York City native, he said he was satisfied to be trading Southwestern heat for Midwestern winters and an opportunity to direct a program.
Previously, he was an assistant at Parkland, South Dakota State and Chicago State University. Long before then, the 39-year-old Brown competed in state track meets at Charleston as a Murphysboro High School sprinter and played for Southern Illinois University’s football team.
“My mother is originally from Champaign-Urbana and my wife’s family is from Valparaiso (Ind.),” said Brown, who was eager to raise his two children, Quentin, 4, and Isaac, 2, in Mattoon. “It’s a good deal all the way around.
“It’s a dream come true. When I began coaching at Parkland in 2001 I told myself I wanted to be a head coach before I was 40. I don’t know if that’s prophetic, but I’m a man of faith and I think the Lord works in ways for a purpose and that things happen for a reason.”
The position is a full-time coaching and teaching one. Brown has been hired as an education instructor and is also to teach health and fitness courses. Previous coach Jim Dudley had long worked in a part-time capacity after retiring from teaching.
“I believe in education because education has gotten me to where I’m at right now, a young kid that grew up with a single-parent family,” Brown said. “Education was my only way to better myself. We had such terrible financial constraints. I am an educator first and foremost. I know my job is twofold, but I pride myself on being an educator in the classroom and an educator on the basketball court.
“I welcome the challenge. They are hiring an educator that just happens to be a young man who’s taking over a Lake Land basketball program that’s going to be successful.”
Brown’s hire brings a shot of diversity to the men’s program. Of the college’s eight former basketball coaches, all were white. Brown is African-American.
He inherits a 7-24 team that returns guards Zach Lewis and Aaron Warner and center Andrew Shick, and he mentioned getting to know them as one of his first priorities. His ties to Southern Illinois, Chicago, Indiana, New York and now Texas make for a wide recruiting base, and he was already hard at work Thursday trying to lure his first ones.
But he also mapped a strategy to recruit in-district talent first, starting with Mattoon and branching outward. Trinity Valley head coach Pat Smith thinks his recruiting skills are one of his biggest assets.
“My favorite quote is that you don’t win the Kentucky Derby with a jackass,” Smith said. “You’ve got to have players. And he’ll get you players.”
Smith, who took Wabash Valley to the NJCAA national tournament in 1993, hired Brown after the 2006-07 school year had begun and credited him for being accessible but willing to crack down on players struggling with conduct issues.
Eight of Smith’s former assistants are now in head coaching positions, four at the JUCO level.
“He’s tough on our guys, which isn’t always easy to do a week after you’ve met them,” Smith said.
“I think what you’re getting at Lake Land is somebody who’s going to come in and cover the whole gamut. He’s going to be good at academics, he’s a heck of a recruiter and a good basketball mind. He’s full of energy and along with the energy he’s got great vision of where he wants to get his program to.”
In filling the position, Brown was selected ahead of two-year assistant Mark Tovey, Millikin assistant Todd Creal and former Maryland-Eastern Shore coach Larry Lessett. When talking about reasons for his hire, Lake Land athletics director Denny Throneburg pointed to his passion and educational background as two of the deciding factors.
“I don’t want to compare one against the other because I thought all of our candidates were excellent,” Throneburg said. “Having coached and taught at the junior college level was important. He has taught in the classroom at the junior college level and that was very important to us. Purely in a basketball sense I would have been pleased with any of the four finalists. But to find an educator-slash-coach, the committee felt like that was the right call.”
As for his coaching style, it won’t vary entirely from Laker teams of the past. He stressed defensive pressure, especially in the halfcourt, and an up-tempo offense.
When the Lake Land job opened with Dudley’s retirement in March, Brown said he jumped at the chance, having known Dudley and the level of play in the Great Rivers Athletic Conference.
“It feels like he’s wearing a size 15 and I have a size 9 and I have to grow up real fast to fill those shoes,” Brown said. “Jim Dudley is a tremendous coach and a tremendous legend in the state of Illinois. I know he’s going to be there to support the things that we’re trying to do.”
Contact Rick Dawson at rdawson@jg-tc.com or 238-6855.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
Tyler25il wrote on May 18, 2007 12:07 AM: