Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

John Brady spoke in Little Rock Friday to a gathering of Arkansas State fans and alumni, who love getting the straight dope from their basketball coach. Brady delivers, and did once again.

A couple of weeks ago, Brady helped get the Sun Belt Conference some national attention it otherwise wouldn't have gotten during its teleconference media days when he took exception to the league's issuing a press release about a scheduling mandate for the Sun Belt schools. He simply said that at a time when the league and the media should be embracing the coming season and which teams might contend for the NCAA Tournament berth out of the conference, he was being asked - first question, mind you - what he thought about the league's announced stance on scheduling and whether he thought the Sun Belit needed "repairing."

So, he gave the media and conference officials listening in a 10-minute animated dissertation on his thoughts about the subject. Understand that each coach was scheduled to speak on their teams for just 10 minutes each. So, it wasn't lost on Brady to joke after he was finished assailing the timing of the release, or the difficulties and disparaties that exist throughout the Sun Belt in terms of scheduling, "Do I have to take anymore questions? I took 10 minutes on that one."

He's funny a lot of the time. He's demonstrative a lot of the time, especially on court during the games. He's passionate on a lot of issues. He'll let you know in no uncertain terms how he feels at that moment.

Arkansas State has itself a good basketball coach. The Red Wolves improved seven wins over Brady's first year, and he can say with certainty the talent level now is better than when he arrived.

It could have been even better if Brandon Reed hadn't listened to some people back in Georgia and decided to transfer to Georgia Tech in the off-season after earning Sun Belt Freshman Player of the Year honors. At the time, Brady didn't mince words with the press about the situation, and he still doesn't. ASU gave Reed a chance when nobody else did. Now, somebody was convincing the Reed family back that the kid was better off finishing the rest of his career at a more prestigious school, in a more prestigious conference.

The good news, the way Brady rationalized it Friday, was that though the Red Wolves lost a star scorer, they gained a rare sixth year of eligibility for Donald Boone, who was the top player two seasons ago and missed all but one game last year after tearing up a knee.

Brady has four other starters back. "Maybe we don't have a great player, but we have a lot of good players," Brady told the gathering Friday at the Little Rock Hilton on University Avenue.

ASU didn't look very sharp in an 83-71 exhibition win at home over Ouachita Baptist on Thursday night. Two very important things to note: ASU won, and it was an exhibition game. Perhaps some players were put in some situations that weren't that comfortable for them but allowed some teaching from Brady and his staff. No, erase "perhaps" from that situation. They were. Brady was willing to admit as much. Not many coaches would have.

He knows what he has is still a work in progress. Taking the job, he'd like to have thought by year three he'd have in all his recruits and perhaps be the favorite at least in the West Division. He's the second-place pick behind North Texas.

But note, "We beat the favorite twice, once at their place and once at ours. That tells us we're in the mix."

The league took a failed page out of other conferences in the summer and encouraged the coaches to bolster their nonconference schedules and boost that league RPI, and maybe that would get the NCAA Tournament selection committee's attention for an additional team in the "dance." Last year, North Texas won the league tourney at Hot Springs and was the only representative.