Longwood men’s basketball honored its two seniors on Saturday afternoon just before their final home match against the Charleston Southern Buccaneers. Guards Darrion “DJ” Allen and Isaac Belton belonged to the first freshman class in the new era of Jayson Gee.
The pair entered the program in 2013 with Damarion Geter, Curtis Rowser, Eric Shaw and Charlie Lockwood. Their class was supplemented by four transfers, including Longwood’s eventual first All-Big South selection Lotanna Nwogbo and Leron Fisher, who recorded over 200 steals for the Lancers in three seasons. All were recruited by Gee.
Allen, Belton and Geter, who will play an additional year after redshirting during the 2014-15 season due to a torn labrum, have been with Gee since the beginning. They’ve seen the team during its highest and lowest moments since the energetic head coach from Ohio took over the program.
From rallying against the conference’s top seed, making a run into the 2015 Big South semi-finals to facing backlash when a player was charged with alleged sexual battery in 2014, Gee’s seen a tumultuous first four years.
As The Rotunda’s men’s basketball beat writer for two years, I constantly watched their games, interviewed Gee and his players and wrote not only about their on-court results, but their individual stories as student-athletes and, simply, people. This included the brightest moments, like when former standout Shaquille Johnson was invited to the NCAA’s dunk contest, to their darkest, like Jason Pimentel and Johnson’s suspension following possession of marijuana charges.
As editor-in-chief, I continue to follow the team closely, and as a student-athlete on the women’s soccer team, I continue to objectively evaluate situations from both perspectives.
Following public indiscretions, Longwood men’s basketball has repeatedly come under fire from both the Longwood and local community. The pattern continued without fail following The Farmville Herald’s report of the Prince Edward County commonwealth’s attorney’s decision not to pursue charges in a case that allegedly involved a fight between several Hampden-Sydney football players and Longwood men’s basketball players on Dec. 4 at Hampden-Sydney College (H-SC).
The identities of the parties involved are unconfirmed as the sole sources cited in the report included an interview with the father of an alleged victim from H-SC and an unpublished portion of the H-SC police’s report from that night.
However, the report resulted in another wave of criticism through editorials and op-eds published in local media outlets, including a guest column in The Rotunda.
Questions circled around what, if anything, was being done to discipline the players. Dismay surrounded recruiting decisions. Attacks centered on the program’s poor performance. Calls were made for Gee’s firing.
The reactions paralleled those immediately after the alleged sexual battery incident, Johnson’s dropped felony assault charges or the marijuana offenses. It’s nothing new.
In fact, external criticism is almost routine for the coaches and players. In an interview with Gee, he said, while the people expressing it are justified, now he just doesn’t read it.
“Anytime you don’t have success, you open yourself up to criticism,” he said.
During our talk, Gee didn’t shy away from the conflicts of the past and the issues that have led to the negative gaze toward his program. He recognized that some players “haven’t acted well” since he took over four years ago.
Even though he doesn’t read the criticism, he said he feels like a culture has been created in the community “that it’s just okay to punch on men’s basketball.” To him, it leads to the amplification of incidents.
As the program that receives the most funding through the athletics department, men’s basketball is scrutinized more harshly than Longwood’s 14 other sports teams.
Aside from their team affiliation, student-athletes are generally held to higher standards of conduct due to their elevated status. As players, they are viewed as extensions of the university and its brand, shortening their leash in comparison to the average college student.
Though when Gee looks at his players, he strips away that status. Gee said he has a team of “young people,” and, as a group, young people are known to make poor choices.
“We have made some poor decisions, but we also feel that the whole story hasn’t been told,” he said. “Unfortunately, it can’t be. So there’s only one narrative.”
Gee is referring to the restrictions placed on information, what’s allowed to be public versus private. In the private realm, individual testimonies sit there, unable to be provided to the press for greater context on the limited explanations of court databases and university crime logs.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) protects journalists’ ability to receive a minimum amount of facts; any additional information is at the discretion of parties involved in the incidents, whether it’s law enforcement officers, plaintiffs, defendants or witnesses.
In the case of the university’s disciplinary proceedings and incident reports, all information is immediately confidential and protected from FOIA under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
As the coaching staff and players consider all of these factors when choosing whether to comment, the notion of transparency comes into play. It raises the question of how much should the public trust that a program is making the right disciplinary decisions based on unknown team rules.
While Gee didn’t disclose his team’s rules, he explained the team had its own disciplinary procedure. Sometimes consequences are handed down by Longwood Director of Athletics Troy Austin. Typically, those punishments include practice and competition suspension or team expulsion.
Outside of games and training, Gee said they also put their players on “dawn patrol,” where they get the players up at 5 a.m. to run.
But as Vice President of Athletics Communications Chris Cook noted, who was also in the room during the interview, there’s only so much he’s capable of doing.
“There’s a threshold for the severity of punishment a coach can issue, (he has) only so much power as a basketball coach,” said Cook.
Therefore, if Gee only has so much power to discipline a student-athlete once he’s in uniform, one may ask why not recruit less risky players. Gee detailed some aspects of his recruiting process, and what he looks for in potential Lancers.
According to Gee, his coaching staff visits recruits with the potential to receive scholarships at least seven times before bringing them on campus to visit. He said he talks to their counselors, peers, coaches and family to try to get a well-formed image of each recruit.
“It may look like we’ve made mistakes, maybe we have,” said Gee. “But not intentionally.”
Once players do arrive, the men’s basketball team has programs in place to work with its student-athletes outside of discipline. Gee said he created a mentor program and life skills program for his players as part of his “commitment to the total person.”
The mentor program pairs every player with people in their future career, aiming to give them guidance during their time at Longwood and connections post-graduation. Gee said when the student-athletes are undecided, they are typically paired with a Longwood faculty member for a character mentor. He provided Jonathan Page, director of the Office of Citizen Leadership and Social Justice Education, as an example.
“Many (players) come from an underprivileged background,” said Gee. “It’s about having someone else on their team.”
He said his players also attend speakers regarding life management with character and professional perspectives. Topics range from sex education to financial literacy.
To Gee, the issues his players have been criticized for are “a reflection of young people, not a reflection of men’s basketball.”
As a reporter, I have covered the men’s basketball program from all sides. As a student-athlete, I recognize the complexities involved in the inner workings of a sports program.
The public continually expresses its frustration toward the slow progress of Longwood men’s basketball and the negative perception they’ve created due to the actions of a few members.
Over the past four years, Gee has coached 35 players. Of those 35, he recruited 26. Of the 26, four players – Charlie Lockwood, Victor Dorsey, Jason Pimentel and Shaquille Johnson - were responsible for the public offenses that led to community outrage.
Twenty-two of Gee’s recruits haven’t been involved in assault, drug or golf cart-related scandals.
While I recognize the cloud grows over Longwood with each public display of immaturity, I can respect Gee’s determination to love and commit to the players he recruits. Gee said he made his own mistakes as "a young person," and had a coach who never gave up on him and ultimately changed him. Drawing from his own experience, Gee likely models his disciplinary decisions after one of his coaches.
As a coach who began with such fiery optimism despite the program’s poor history, Gee remains dedicated to building the Longwood men’s basketball program one young man at a time. I believe we should let him.
