Andre Nation Dismissed From JMU Basketball Team
Andre Nation is no longer a member of the JMU basketball team. This afternoon Head Coach Matt Brady announced that he had dismissed Nation from the program. The move is effectively immediately, but Nation will remain on scholarship for the remainder of the Spring semester. Brady didn’t go into great detail and simply stated “Working with Andre this year, it has become apparent that he no longer fits within our program and the vision we have for the future. I care about Andre and his well-being and wish him all the best in the future.” He added that neither he nor any of the remaining players will discuss the matter further.
The DNR’s Nick Sunderland reached JMU AD Jeff Bourne for comment. Bourne told Jones that the decision was made solely by Coach Brady and there was no specific incident that led to Nation’s dismissal. Instead, it just seems that Brady decided that the situation with Nation had deteriorated to the point where the program was better off without him.
As most JMU fans know, Nation has had a number of off the court issues and has been suspended multiple times. After his most recent suspension, Brady announced that Nation was facing a “zero tolerance” policy. Sadly, Nation getting kicked off the team practically seemed inevitable. Unfortunately it proved to be just that.
Now there are a number of ways to break this down. We could lash out at Nation and attempt to take him down, assaulting the character of a young man we’ve never met in the process. Or we could look down at him from our perspective as older alums and condescendingly lecture him about how he’s wasting his talent and a chance to graduate from a institution like JMU. Both of those options seem utterly pointless, not to mention sort of pathetic if we’re being honest. So instead we’re just going to say that this is sad. It’s sad because as a freshman, Nation was a joy to watch and made us excited for the future of JMU basketball. He was immensely talented, played both ends of the court with enthusiasm, and seemed to be a fun guy off the court. He also gave us plenty of highlights including a game winning alley-oop dunk to defeat Delaware, going toe to toe with Victor Oladipo and the Indiana Hoosiers during March Madness, and more blocked shots, steals, and slams than we can count. And while he clearly hadn’t been playing up to his potential this season, he still managed to treat us to another game winning alley-oop. He was voted to the CAA All Rookie team as a freshman and the All CAA third team as a sophomore. Prior to this season he was selected to the preseason All CAA first team. The point is that he was (and still is) a tremendously talented basketball player. Now he joins the (larger than we’d like it to be) list of players who have left the JMU program since Brady took over.
We wish Nation well. However, he’s definitely had some issues and had become a distraction, so we trust Brady that cutting bait was the right move. It’s still hard to not to think about what might have been, if Nation would have managed to steer clear of some of his issues and reach his potential. Two years ago we were thinking about JMU making multiple trips to the NCAA tourney under the leadership of Nation, Ron Curry, Taylor Bessick, and Charles Cooke. Now only Curry remains from that group we thought would form the core of a successful JMU hoops program. But we move on. Maybe this will be a case of addition by subtraction. We certainly hope so.
Like yall said in an earlier post, Curry is the leader of this team. Nation was not a factor all year. I think this eliminates a distraction and we’ll be more focused the rest of the year. Caa wide open like in 2013
Can anyone solve for x …. “x-strikes and you’re out” ?
This move, as you stated, “seemed inevitable” …. however, it remains to be seen if the timing was correct.
Very sad but also interesting. Nation posted this on Twitter this morning, probably right after it happened…..”It’s crazy how a grown man can sit in yo face n tell you one thing then go behind your back n lie jus to make themselves look better smh” And just recently this, which makes me think he’s headed back to Florida….”Bouta slide back to the city to vibe wit ?????????? tho ???? #JustWaitOnIt” The missing boxes spelled out gang.
OH NO! Now the men’s team is going to suck! Oh wait…..
I thought he already got kicked off the team anyway? Whatever….this was inevitable. They should give his scholarship to someone who is actually contributing….effective immediately.
Very well written post. Agree completely with your assessment.
I think we could all see this being the conclusion of this soap opera about 6-9 months ago. It is sad and I wish him the best of luck in the future.
That being said I think this move was overdue and will be in the best interest of the current JMU basketball team. It seemed to me that he had become a huge distraction and the team actually played better when he was not on the court.
This is another long line of departures from this program that raises some serious RED FLAGS with regard to Matt Brady and his staff and how this program operates. Some turnover in college basketball is a given but this has become a chronic issue under Brady. This is not an issue with guys he inherited but rather guys he recruited — so this is as much on Brady and lack of control of his program as it is anyone else.
I agree with the comments that the massive amount of player attrition from this program over the years is a reflection on the coaching staff.
It was clear to me that Nation just didn’t seem to be the same player and I was an advocate for Grays to start instead of him anyway. I just wonder whether this might influence whether they still redshirt all of the guys they planned to. The team already appears to be short of quality guards. I was watching Matt Risse warm up against W&M and the guy can definitely hit 3 pointers.
I could tell by the way Nation moped around a lot on the court that something was wrong. He took it way too hard when calls didn’t go his way and he certainly wasn’t the same scorer.
I just hope the team can recover from this. Too many players being lost.
I think this will help Brady make a decision that he needed to anyway to shorten the player/sub rotation. Should be a solid 8 man rotation now. Definitely get a better shooter/scoring threat with Grays on the court more.
Yoyo
Tom V
Curry
Kent
Grays
Hall
Satkus
McClean
Please keep Chubaka and Lukic on the bench.
The number of players exiting this program voluntarily or otherwise isn’t a good sign. It reflects poorly on the coaching staff. Time for a change.
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