Southeast Missouri State Interim AD addresses situation surrounding men's basketball departures

Editor's note: Story edited to clarify attribution of information

Southeast Missouri State interim athletic director Brady Barke confirmed Sunday that the departure of three men's basketball players earlier in the week was "absolutely not" any sort of misconduct or criminal issue with any of the players.

Rather, Barke stood by men's basketball coach Rick Ray's freedom to shape the program as he sees fit.

"It's never a good situation for anyone, but I feel like when you hire a basketball coach to come in and try and take a program to a place where we would like for it to go, we have to provide some flexibility for a coach to be able to do that," Barke said. "As long as conversations are had and people understand the reasons for it and the options and it's done in a way that we honor our commitments from a scholarship standpoint and those types of things, we have to have a little bit of deference to the coach in terms of what's going to be best for the program."

Over the past few weeks, Barke and Ray discussed how Ray's first year at the helm of the Redhawks program was progressing.

"Just about kind of how things were going in terms of the year and how implementing his system and style of play was going, knowing that he had a lot of players from Coach [Dickey] Nutt's era and that they played a little bit different style of play," Barke said of those conversations. "We were just kind of talking through some of those things."

Southeast Missouri State interim athletic director Brady Barke poses for a photo Wednesday, July 29, 2015 at the athletic administration building. (Glenn Landberg)

Earlier last week Ray, whose squad has started the season 0-9, indicated to Barke that he planned to speak with a few of his players about the potential of them transferring out of the program.

Those individual meetings with sophomores Marcus Wallace, Ladarius Coleman and JT Jones occurred on Wednesday morning.

"We went to the meeting and he basically said he felt like we were unhappy and he felt like seeing us frustrated on the court was going to frustrate him, and he thought it would be best for me to transfer as soon as possible," Wallace said. "I obviously was like, 'OK,' I kind of took that as he's asking me to leave."

In a press release issued at 10:40 p.m. Friday night, Ray was quoted as saying the program was "not a good fit" for the three players.

"I think Coach Ray has a much more structured offense and it's different from the type of play that we saw, I think, with Coach Nutt," Barke said. "I think you get frustrated as a player trying to adapt, especially when things aren't always going the way that you'd like for them to go. But I don't think it was necessarily frustration between players and coaches and those types of things.

"I think it was trying to see whether or not you could adapt to his new style, and I think that's where, ultimately, making sure that you could be playing the type of game that the coaching staff wants to play and the coaching staff can be happy with the type of play that players play, so I think that's where the fit comes in."

Wallace, a guard from Little Rock, Arkansas, started two games this season and played in all eight that he was still on the team for, averaging 25.1 minutes per game.

He'd averaged 7.6 points, 3.8 rebounds and led the team with 3.1 assists per game.

Coleman, a guard/forward from Memphis, had played in the last six games, averaging 23.5 minutes per game, after serving a two-game suspension to open the season for violations from the 2014-15 academic year. He averaged 6.8 points and 5.8 rebounds (second on the team).

Jones, a walk-on from Sikeston, played in five games, making three starts. He missed last Saturday's game due to illness and did not play against Bowling Green on Tuesday.

He averaged 13.6 minutes per game.

After the AD and coach met early in the week, Barke said he spoke with the players and their parents to discuss their options.

The school will honor the player's scholarships for the rest of this academic year if they choose to remain enrolled at Southeast.

Barke said Ray wanted to them to leave the program now so that if they were able to find another Division I institution to transfer to right away and had to sit out a year for NCAA regulations then they'd be able to begin playing for their new team at the start of the spring semester next year in time for conference play.

Wallace plans to remain at Southeast next semester and Coleman was unsure what he'd do because he didn't want to "make the wrong decision again."

"We've talked to them and told them that we will grant them their permission to contact other schools," Barke said, "and I know Coach Ray has indicated to them that he will likely have a lot of coaches that reach out to him and that he will be helpful in that process, even to the extent that if they would like to kind of narrow their focus to, 'Hey, I'm interested in a particular region,' or that type of thing then we will continue to help them as much as we can."

Barke said that the reason the department's press release announcing the players' departures came out late Friday evening was because he was meeting with parents and giving them a chance to review the press release and read Ray's statement.

"As soon as that process was done we immediately got it out," Barke said. "I know that it wasn't well-received. I think the timing of it and the availability for additional comment and follow-up wasn't as well-received. It was one of those situations where it was such an ongoing process in making sure that everyone had their opportunity to be heard before we said anything."