{"id":7486,"date":"2015-01-14T20:33:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T01:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=7486"},"modified":"2015-01-14T20:33:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T01:33:48","slug":"andre-nation-dismissed-from-jmu-basketball-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=7486","title":{"rendered":"Andre Nation Dismissed From JMU Basketball Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Andre<\/a>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<\/a> “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.<\/p>\n

The DNR’s Nick Sunderland<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, 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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n