Valley Alumni in the NCAA Tournament

Several in the St. Louis Games

(St. Louis, MO) – In this ‘portal pandemic’ version of college basketball, player and coach movement is talked about as much as the games. There are numerous Missouri Valley alumni playing in the NCAA and NIT Tournaments.

Several are here in St. Louis.

Iowa State has four people associated with the Valley, three from the Northern Iowa Panthers. Two coaches at Purdue have ties to Southern Illinois and Queens University features a former Valparaiso Beacon.

We caught up with two of the three Cyclones tied to the Panthers, both Boliermakers and the Royal.

Iowa State senior Nate Heise and assistant coaches Kyle Green and Erik Crawford were big parts of UNI’s previous success. Assistant coach JR Blount is on his way to becoming San Diego’s head coach, but one of his previous stops was at Drake.

Purdue head coach Matt Painter and assistant coach Paul Lusk have ties to Southern Illinois and Lusk was the head coach at Missouri State.

Queens forward Carson Schwieger played last season at Valpo.

Players and coaches all move for reasons they believe to be important.

Around the country, players like Carson’s twin brother Cooper (Wake Forest), Nevada’s Tayshawn Comer (Evansville) and others are playing in the NIT. Tennessee’s Ja’Kobi Gillespie (Belmont) and others are participating in the ‘Big Dance’.

Valley Alumni With Great Experiences

Green and Heise reunited at Iowa State and each says the move to the Big 12 has been gratifying. Heise notes, the big arenas and competition and Green the relationships.

Schwieger left Valparaiso after spending a season at Valpo. One of Queens’ assistant coaches is a former coach of his and the two connected during Schwieger’s time in the portal. With his brother playing at Wake Forest, it made sense to play in some relative proximity to his twin.

He’s thrilled with the way things turned out.

The very locker room Valpo used during their 2025 Arch Madness semifinal loss is the same locker room where we spoke.

Former Saluki player and Missouri State head coach Paul Lusk is an assistant at Purdue. He says life is difficult for mid-major conferences like the MVC.

Matt Painter on the Valley

Purdue head coach Matt Painter was a two-year assistant and one-year head coach at SIU. The extremely successful Painter says his time in the Vally were some of the best years of his life.

“It was some of the best times of my life being able to be at Southern Illinois “ said Painter. “Obviously becoming the head coach there for one year, but being Coach Weber’s assistant for five years. St. Louis is a great basketball town. It has been really good to the Missouri Valley in that league, and Southern.”

He remembers the Salukis’ great success of the early 2000s.

“I was an assistant for two years and we went to the NCAA Tournament. I was head coach for one and Chris Lowery was head coach for three,” says Painter. “A lot of folks don’t realize in that six-year span, Southern Illinois went to six straight NCAA Tournaments, but five of them were at-large bids. Coach Weber was the one that really taught me how to put the schedule together and do everything in your power with that schedule to try to get in the NCAA Tournament.”

He remembers his St. Louis area players from 20 years ago with fondness.

“Coming to St. Louis we recruited a lot of good players from this area,” remembered Painter. “Darren Brooks from Jennings, Stetson Hairston from across the river. Both of those guys will be coming tomorrow to the game. Bryan Turner texted me today from Beaumont. It worked with those St. Louis area kids we got. They all graduated, they all had success. We all got to the Tournament. They won conference championships. Just had good experiences.”

In our next story we’ll have more time with Kyle Green.

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