Year Eight for Barone

Season of New Beginnings at SIUE

(St. Louis, MO) – Brian Barone begins year eight as Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s head basketball coach. Bible commentators tell us the number eight, is the number of ‘new beginnings’ and for the first time since his first Ohio Vally Conference season, he has very few ‘long term’ players on his roster.

While Barone has a history of great retention with his players and seven of eight that could have returned to his roster did come back, the returning minutes and production aren’t like most of his previous seasons.

Before the son the legendary Tony Barone took the head coaching reins at SIUE, the Cougar program had never enjoyed a winning Division 1 basketball season. After three losing seasons of his own, Barone has steered the Cougars to seventy-seven wins during the last four. An OVC Tournament win and an NCAA Tournament berth in 2025, of course are his crowning achievements.

Those teams were built with continuity and Barone’s ‘Find-A-Way-Family’ mentality. Year eight will be a year of new beginnings and Barone will have to lean on more newcomers, or ‘unproven’ players than at anytime other than his first couple of seasons.

He recognizes it is something of a new day at SIUE.

 

Year Eight Major Returners

Tyler King and Darrion Baker became major contributors last season, they and longest tenured Cougar, senior Jordan Pickett are the stabilizing forces on this year’s team, none of those players started more than 18 games last year. The 6’4 King battled injuries early in the season, but came on strong late in the year averaging 12.8 points during OVC play.

Baker’s repeated foot injuries (he had another procedure this offseason) have limited his availability, but is an effective ‘big’ with three-point range. Pickett has appeared in 81 SIUE contests and has been around for most of SIUE’s run of success.

Barone says he is looking to those three players to help the rest of the squad understand the Cougar culture.

Harrison Alexander, Corentin Efono, Iwo Baganc and Dehiro McCaskill are players that saw very little or no playing time last year, but know Barone’s standards and system. While McCaskill ‘red-shirted’ last year due to injury, he could have played late in the season, but under the old NCAA rules, Barone didn’t want to ‘burn his red-shirt season’. Now Barone laments that choice since eligibility rules and changed. He says McCaskill could have helped SIUE win games last year.

The Mississippi State transfer Alexander showed flashes of potential last season.

Top Newcomers

Veteran transfers Gianni Cobb (Northern Illinois) and Gestin Liberis (Saint Peters) and sophomore Jacob Martin (Alabama) are key D1 transfers. The 6’ Cobb was the MAC’s third best assist man and averaged nearly ten points per-game. His strong defensive game (51 steals) will fit well in Barone’s tenacious defensive scheme.

The 6’9 Leberis brings NCAA Tournament experience with him and is a proven rebounder. He started 29 games for the Peacocks and has logged 87 D1 contests. While Martin played just ten games for the Crimson Tide, at 6’10 he brings the best chance of being a legitimate rim protector to the Cougar defense.

Barone says he must maintain a balance between high expectations on these players and finding out who they will be in the OVC.

Barone believes in building his program with prep players. He says freshmen bring a unique energy to college programs.

Three highly rated freshmen will be joining SIUE. The 6’7 Brennan Miller is the sixth rated player coming out of the state of Indiana. He may be one of the top ten high school players ever recruited to SIUE. Jayden Riley is a 6’2 guard that scored over 2,000 prep points and handed out 700 assists.

Kain McCaskill is Dehiro’s younger brother and both were state champions at St. Louis’ legendary Vashon High School. Whispers around the Cougar program say the younger McCaskill is a freak athlete that plays above the rim.

SIUE has thrived while recruiting high-level junior college players and 6’7 David Wilson is the next in that line of succession. The Independence Community College transfer is another outstanding athlete that averaged nearly 19 points and four rebounds. Jucorecruiting.com ranks Wilson the 93^rd best juco player.

Year Eight Wild Cards

Foreign players could play surprising roles this season. Sophomores Corentin Efono (Belgium) and Iwo Baganc (Poland) came highly recommended last season. Each has good size (Efono 6’4) and Baganc (6’8) and significant international experience. Barone expects significantly bigger contributions from them.

Just signing with SIUE is Egyptian born Belal Sohaib. The 6’10 Sohaib could provide another rim protector for the hard-nosed SIUE defense. Barone says recruiting foreign players is all about relationships with trusted friends and basketball people. He says Sohaib has an outstanding basketball IQ.

He played for his national team this summer and just recently arrived in the US.

Other wild cards include the road games at Duke and at Missouri and the wildly unpredictable Ohio Valley Conference. Seemingly, the OVC changes champions every year and the now nine-team league will be challenging.

What won’t be a wild card is Barone’s passion for building family-style relationships with his players and staff. His ‘find-a-way-family’ is not a slogan, but a way of life for this basketball lifer.

He wears the ‘Tony Barone’s son’ title with pride and truly believes in building relationships with players that last. Recent weeks have seen the return of former players Ray’Sean Taylor, NBA Summer League performer Arnas Sakenis and Lamar Wright.

While last year’s star Ring Malith was trying to decide his future, he was working out and doing rehab work on the SIUE campus, even though it was extremely unlikely that he would have eligibility remaining. Some reports had him signing with Belmont,

Coaching is not transactional for Barone and his teams are also succeeding at a high level on the court and in the class room.

Year eight will be different from any of the first seven, but expect the Cougars to be fighting for one of the top spots in the OVC by season’s end.

Do Good