How's his senior season going? Any updates? Since he is our whole recruiting class so far, I thought we might keep an eye on him. Thanks for any news. Hook'em!
He was suspended from playing for the basketball team for 30 days after he and his coach went after it during a game, so I think it's fair to say his senior season probably isn't what he was hoping it would be. It's a bad situation that he needs to get out of as soon as possible. I'm not saying J'Covan is completely innocent, but it wasn't going to be a situation conducive to his success, either.
Barnes is gonna have his hands full with this one. I dont know anything about his current situation, but it seems like he has some issues with authority. Hope he finds the guidance he needs with Barnes in Austin.
This guy has had way too many issues with officials and coaches. It's going to be shape up or ship out for him in college, and ship out could very well be the outcome at the rate he is going.
The guy has a fiery attitude which is why he has a rep as a hothead. He'll have to mature out of the issues with refs (he has been getting better) but getting away from his HS coach will help him out tremendously.
Basically his head coach is horrible as a teacher and implementer --- but there are plenty of those. The worst part is he's an opportunist. He saw J'Covan Brown as an opportunity to provide a financial gain, but J'Covan's insistence on wanting to attend Texas hasn't been conducive to that objective.
don't make TH out to be the bad guy. he may have intentions on profitting off JB, but this kid has a horrible attitude. this kid curses refs, coaches and teammates like he isn't 17 years old. his talent is unmatched in the area, but he needs to realize that once he get's to UT or college in general, he's going to have to prove it all over again. his parents are also caught in the j'covan hype as well. I wish my son would walk away from a game, or curse the coach out or his teammates. I would be the reason he's suspended, not the coach. He needs to realize he has hype, but he doesn't have the type of hype where teams wont pass on him. LBJ, OJ Mayo, Oden.. they had the hype, where they could have done anything short of killing and some NBA team would have still taken a chance. This kid doesn't have that. You don't see ESPN coming to PA to get his games on TV. I pray he get's it together, before it's too late..
i wasn't aware of any of this. thanks for the info. i'm not sure i see this ending well for jb. if anyone thinks jb has a quick fuse, i guarantee it is nothing compared to barnes' with regard to putting up with this type of attitude.
interesting developments. i had no idea any of this was going on, although SL reported awhile back about Brown's fiery attitude.
not trying to ruin JB. I know JB, his family, etc... but blaming the coach is not the answer. TH is really stuck in btw a rock and a hard place. He has a star athlete on his team. Yet his star athlete, curse at him, his teammates, etc.. at games in front of Fans, School Officials, other players parents, etc.. If JB, is going to control the team, the coach might as well not be the coach. JB doesn't get away with half the stuff that he get's away with on the court, in the classroom. This kid didn't get suspended for jacking up too many shots or not being a good teammate. He got suspended for taking off his jersey throwing it on the floor and leaving with a profanity laced tirade WHILE the game was going on. Why because he got benched for a tech (which he shouldn't have got, he got the rasheed/dennis rodman treatment this time). and get this, to top it off, his team was WINNING at the time of his departure and this isn't the first time it happened, but just the latest. You think if this happens next year at UT, during a televised game and get's played on ESPN about 15 times, that Rick Barnes is going to just let him come out and play next game? You think i'm trying to blast JB, please, he community was so excited when his parents allowed him to come play at home as opposed to OakHill. This kid has just as bright a future as any other PortArthur talented athlete, but he's going to let it slip away with this attitude. He is like the AI, at PA Memorial for the last 2 years. People come to see HIM play. But by last year even the fans were getting fed up with his antics, it was only a matter of time before the coach had to have the balls to let the public think he has control of the team. THE KIDS...The fact that it's already spreading on the INTERNET about his attitude is a problem.
Thanks for contributing, PATEXAS. First of all, anyone who has followed J'Covan Brown is fully aware the kid has some attitude problems. As a UT fan, on the surface J'Covan Brown is not the type of kid I'd normally root for in any way, shape or form. However, there are some things I really like about the kid. One, he's talented. Without that, there's no reason to invest anything in talking about the kid when it comes to basketball in the first place. He's real talented, in fact. He can score off the dribble or off the ball. He can attack the rim or shoot from the outside. He's capable of being a talented playmaker for his teammates. Two, he's fearless. Pressure doesn't bother him. He thrives in clutch situations. Three, he loves Texas, and I mean LOVES Texas. He's withstood incredible pressure from his AAU coach, his high school coach, and other people close to him to maintain his intention of going to UT. Some of the crap they've pulled is unbelievable in their efforts to freeze Texas out of J'Covan's recruitment and convince him to commit/sign with a program who will financially reward them for it. Terrell Henderson is certainly a huge part of the issue. First of all, he's one of the worst coaches in high school basketball. The guy is horrible. J'Covan Brown has never had anyone around him create proper boundaries. The kid has a quick fuse, virtually no control over his temper, and no real good idea of how to behave towards authority. Why? Well, when nearly everyone around you associated with basketball has been trying to get a piece of you, how could he learn? The people around him don't act in a way to benefit J'Covan. They act in ways to benefit themselves. They don't come down hard on J'Covan when they need to, because they feel like they need him as a star player on their team, and they want to remain in his good graces so they can be paid for delivering him to a school willing to do so. Then J'Covan will do something so over the top, something has to be done, but the punishment won't even come close to fitting the action, because all this anger and resentment has been building up towards the kid. There's no evenhandedness towards J'Covan. There's no trust within his basketball relationships. No one around him has J'Covan's best interests at heart. I'm not saying J'Covan is going to work out at Texas. I've never said that. What I've always said is that Texas is the best shot for J'Covan to get a better handle on his issues so he can at least have a shot at reaching his potential on the basketball court. He's going to know real quick during the summer with Todd Wright if Texas is really where he wants to be or not, because Wright is going to get in his face and push his buttons. The difference between what will happen at Texas versus what has happened with the TMac AAU team, the Port Arthur AAU team, and now Port Arthur Memorial, is that Texas doesn't need J'Covan Brown, they're not going to put up with his crap for even a moment, and they'll have his best interests at heart. For the first time in his life, he's going to get some level of consistency in terms of how the people around him respond to his behavior. There's also the fact that Texas is where he's grown up wanting to play, and Texas will have players in the locker room like Gary Johnson who will be in a position to take J'Covan aside and tell him his act isn't going to fly. As far as the particular incident for which he was suspended, during the game a ref overheard a comment he didn't appreciate, and called a technical on the player he thought said it, a sophomore on the team. As Coach Henderson screamed at the player for getting the technical, J'Covan confessed it was actually him that made the comment which earned the technical, and that it wasn't his teammate's fault. This was in the first or second quarter. The coach proceeds to bench J'Covan for the rest of the game, and Port Arthur lost. J'Covan threw his jersey on the floor and stomped off into the locker room with about 20 seconds left in the game because he was pissed his team was going to end up losing and he felt like he could have made a difference. That doesn't make it okay. He deserves the suspension. However, Henderson didn't have to sit the kid the rest of the game for confessing to the technical, either. The thing is, with Henderson there's no way to know for sure what his intentions are. IMO, he's pissed off at J'Covan for not signing with Oklahoma State, New Mexico, or Cincinnati the way he wanted him to, and sitting him for the rest of the game for the technical was part of the punishment. Maybe it wasn't, but because Henderson acts so underhanded in so many ways, it's difficult to trust the intentions of any of his actions. I'll also add the coach came in the locker room screaming at J'Covan, that he's a worthless punk who is never going to amount to anything, and that he'll never get into UT. I'm not holding up J'Covan as some kind of angel. However, the situation he's in there's simply no way for him to battle his demons successfully. He's set up for failure. I hope he doesn't play for Port Arthur for the rest of the year, works on making sure he qualifies, reports to Austin in June, and sets about trying to get a fresh start on the rest of his life. I'll also add that Port Arthur has a history of producing basketball stars with attitude, no filter, and ill defined behavioral boundaries. Stephen Jackson is probably the most famous right now, but there have been others. Growing up and succeeding in the Port Arthur community tends to develop a bit of attitude in its best players. Part of J'Covan's issues are part and parcel with where he's from.
I don't know if SLX has all of the details right -- I suspect he's largely correct -- but that was a helluva post.
SL Xpress, Thank you so much for the well written response and information on J'Covan. While it's hard to believe the things you say about his head coach, I know that it's true. It seems that nowdays there are 2 kinds of people in the coaching businsess. The pimps and the ones that do it the right way and for the good of the kids and love of the game. Unfortunately there seems to be more of the pimps and they seem to get all the attention. It's very unfortunate, and more proof for why AAU/summer ball has ruined amature basketball.
As someone who follows the AAU and basketball scene in Houston very closely, I will concur that Terrel Henderson is a horrible coach and as shady as they get in AAU, which says a lot in a state that boasts Jazzy Hartwell. Unfortunately, the NCAA really has no jurisdiction over AAU teams. If the UIL tries to illegalize AAU, then players will just play AAU year-round instead of playing hs basketball. There's too much to gain for HS kids AND their shady coaches for it to ever change or go away.
John Eurey and the guy who runs the Dallas Mustangs --- Mitch WhatsHisFace --- I consider worse than Jazzy Hartwell. Edit: It's not the Dallas Mustangs. I meant Mitch Malone with the Texas Blue Chips. Thanks to IcyHotStunta and ellzup for the corrections.
The part that disgusts me most is the part where brown's coach was trying to force him to go to a school he didn't want simply to further his own interests. Not to mention the blackballing of texas by his coach to try to ensure he couldn't go there.
No. Steve Smith doesn't sell players. However, it does get a little complicated. Nike sponsors the Oak Hill athletic department with millions of dollars per year. Since UNC is the most prominent Nike symbol in college basketball, and the program and head coach are lockstep with Nike, naturally that's where the Nike people wanted Durant to go the most. Durant wasn't pulled out of Oak Hill for that reason, though. He was pulled out of Oak Hill because he had grade issues. It was felt if he transferred to Montrose Christian he a) wouldn't have to travel quite as much --- although Montrose Christian is certainly a powerhouse private high school basketball program, they don't travel as extensively as Oak Hill does --- and b) he'd be able to live at home, where his parents could set him up with private tutoring to get him where he needed to be academically. The main thing being, the Durant deal and J'Covan's are two entirely different scenarios, and shouldn't be lumped together. Frankly, I can't recall anyone holding out like J'Covan has done for the school of his choice in anything remotely like a similar situation.
His stepdad is a wealthy oilman who was pushing Winston to A&M to satisfy his self delusional big man status among his Aggie friends. It also wasn't a conspiracy involving nearly everyone with influence over his football career prior to heading off for college. That was a lot of pressure, though. When you get kicked out of the house because you didn't choose the correct school, that's messed up.
SL, Love reading your posts. I don't follow the high school or aau scene, but have only read about the exploits of aau coaches on various internet or magazine articles. This is an innocent question, but do you think OSU, UNM or Cincy (or their "boosters") offered to pay his aau coach (directly or through camps) which would then trickle down to his high school coach?
