Near the end of my latest column, I address the continuation of the USI-Kentucky Wesleyan College men’s basketball series. The reason it came about: both schools worked the phones. USI coach Rodney Watson said he had been talking with former coach Todd Lee during the season. After Lee left to take a job as an assistant at a Division I school, Watson got on the phone to KWC athletic director Dave Williams to find out if the series was still a priority at Wesleyan. “He gave me complete assurance that that was something they wanted to do,” said Watson. Then, when Happy Osborne was hired as the Panthers’ new coach, he called Watson “and expressed interest in playing,” said Watson. “We really got it done with one phone call.”

These schools may be bitter rivals athletically, especially in men’s hoops, but they know what pulls in the fans. Even better, they know what helps both schools to earn berths in the NCAA Division II tournament. It’s strictly region based, and if you haven’t played many quality region games outside of your conference, your seeding in the postseason — even the possibility of your even getting in the tournament — is in trouble. Now USI and KWC have cemented two regional games into their schedules before the conference season begins.

A teaser, if you will, about my column coming up in Monday’s print edition and online.

DeWitt, the all-region and all-GLVC first team center on the USI men’s basketball team, may not be returning to USI for a possible fifth year of eligibility. Also, I’ll try to make the argument that the renewal of the annual two-game series between the Eagles and archrival Kentucky Wesleyan — despite Wesleyan’s move from the GLVC to the Great Midwest Athletic Conference — may be better for both schools in the long run.

If DeWitt doesn’t return, he wasn’t technically supposed to anyway. He was a senior in eligibility. Getting an additional year is always problematic — heck, anything involving the NCAA is problematic — but he obviously would have been a welcome addition, especially with senior-to-be forward Aaron Nelson coming off knee surgery. I’d still have liked to see how that duo would play out a full season together. If not, well, so be it.

Playing two region games, but not conference games, against a foe like Wesleyan has to help in the all-important region rankings in Division II. USI has been trying for years to schedule more games against Midwest Region schools, but it hasn’t worked out very well. Next season, the GLVC and the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) will be joined in the region by the conference KWC moved to, the G-MAC. It has eight teams, considerably smaller than the other two leagues (about half the size, in fact), and USI has beaten about half of those teams already. Yes, it’ll mean more competition for the eight NCAA regional berths, but also a greater chance of playing — and winning — games against region teams not in your conference.

Apparently, Rick Herdes will not be the next men’s basketball coach at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Cole Claybourn, a sports reporter for the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, posted on his blog that the former USI head coach was told that KWC was “going in a different direction.” The post is here.

Briefly recall that Herdes was forced out as USI’s coach for various NCAA rules violations in 2009 and USI ended up vacating all the victories from that season, was banned by the GLVC from playing in the postseason for a year and was fined by the NCAA. Herdes also was given what the NCAA calls a “show cause” sanction in February 2011, meaning he would have to undergo ethics training if a school hired him over the next two years — essentially becoming a ban on coaching over that period since just about every school would not dare take a chance on him for fear of running afoul of the NCAA. That sanction ended at the end of this season.

That said, Herdes deserves a second chance. Having to sit out for two four years (that includes the two after he was let go on top of the two years from the show-cause order) was a severe punishment for somebody whose very identity is that of a college coach. I hope he’s learned his lesson, but the only way to find out is to give him another shot at coaching. He certainly showed he can coach before he got in trouble — he posted a 200-59 record over eight years at USI and guided the Eagles to the Division II title game in 2004. Herdes, from my experience, is as intense as any coach I’ve known and he knows his stuff. Some college will be very lucky to hire him. But that hiring might have to be by a school far away from the Evansville area in order to give him a fresh start. Wish him good luck.

Cole Claybourn, a sports reporter for the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, wrote on Wednesday that he heard that former USI coach Rick Herdes is interested in the Kentucky Wesleyan job recently vacated by Todd Lee, who accepted the job as associate head coach at Division I Grand Canyon University. The full story on Herdes and other KWC possibilities is here. Another blog post by Claybourn from late Thursday is here.

The Herdes report is intriguing.

Recall that USI forced Herdes to resign in May 2009 after the school reported NCAA violations that included providing extra benefits to a basketball player, when a former assistant coach bought airline tickets for that player; academic fraud that involved a man identified as Herdes’ father-in-law, and the assistant coach; and lying to investigators. The NCAA eventually placed USI on one year’s probation and fined it $2,500 in February 2011 (USI had already forfeited its victories in 2008-09 and the Great Lakes Valley Conference had banned it from postseason play for 2010-11). The NCAA also placed a two-year  “show cause” order on Herdes. That meant that if he was hired by an NCAA school, he would have to attend attend rules seminars and ethics training for those two years. Now that that order has expired, Herdes — who compiled a 200-59 record over eight years as USI’s coach and guided the Eagles to an Elite Eight berth and into the Division II title game in 2004 — is free to look for another coaching job.

Remember that KWC has left the Great Lakes Valley Conference and moved to a new conference for next season, the eight-team 10-team Great Midwest Athletic Conference, with several of its teams based in West Virginia and Ohio (USI played three G-MAC schools, Cedarville, Urbana and Virginia at Wise, this past season, although Urbana and Virginia at Wise are already leaving the conference after this season). But USI and KWC hope to continue their longtime rivalry, although it will probably be reduced to one game a year. If Herdes is hired by KWC, that would make this rivalry even more, um, interesting.

By the way, some of the other possibilities Claybourn listed — and he insisted he was only speculating — included Vincennes University coach Todd Franklin, former University of Kentucky player Saul Smith and Mount Vernon High School coach (and former USI star point guard) Marc Hostetter.

In case you don’t know, Brandon Hogg and the German professional team he plays for, the Noerdlingen Giants, lost the third game of a three-game quarterfinal playoff series on Tuesday, falling to Schwelm, 97-76. That ended Noerdlingen’s season one victory short of the final four in the German Pro B league. Hogg scored 15 points in the game — tied for the team high — while passing out five assists and grabbing seven rebounds. Hogg was 5-for-9 from the field, including 1-for-4 from 3-point range.

Finally tracked down an actual story that mentioned USI basketball coach Rodney Watson as a candidate for the Ball State head coaching position. On April 1, the Muncie Star-Press printed Watson’s name within a long list of “other head coaches linked to the Ball State search through various sources,” whatever that means. According to this story, “only Bellarmine coach Scott Davenport and South Dakota State coach Scott Nagy have publicly confirmed they interviewed with Ball State.” But the story goes on to hint that other people — namely Michigan State assistant and former Indiana University player Dane Fife and former Purdue guard Linc Darner — have also interviewed with the school. The list of other coaches includes Jeff Neubauer of Eastern Kentucky, Brian Wardle of Wisconsin-Green Bay, assistant coaches Steve McClain at Indiana, Jack Owens at Purdue and Dwayne Stephens at Michigan State. Craig Neal’s name also is listed, but he’s now the head coach at New Mexico, of course.

I’m going to take a wild guess and say Scotty Davenport will be hired, especially if Louisville wins the national championship on Monday night. Davenport was an assistant under head coach Rick Pitino at Louisville and has won a Division II national championship (and got his team all the way to the Elite Eight semifinals last year) — two pretty impressive credentials for a mid-major school looking to hire a ready-made winner. And I don’t think Davenport would be looking to move on after a year or two if he’s successful. That’s because — and this is not a sign of disrespect or age-ism — he’s no young gun. If he stayed awhile, he could conceivably turn a mid-major into a major player, and every low-level school is looking to become the next Florida Gulf Coast.

Well, that didn’t take long. A couple of minutes after I tweeted about this post, Michael Robertson at USI tweeted to me that Arizona assistant James Whitford has already been named BSU’s coach — a name nowhere on the Star-Press list, by the way. A search showed CBSSports.com and ESPN reported he was hired on Saturday. As I re-tweeted to Robertson, blogs can be dangerous. At least, USI fans can breathe a sigh of relief that Watson’s going to be around for at least another year. For now, anyway. Whitford, by the way, is 41 years old, from Madison, Wis., and served previously as an assistant at Miami (Ohio) and Xavier.

This is a USI-centric blog, but teams that USI plays are almost as important. And Drury, which came within a minute of losing to USI in the GLVC Tournament’s championship game, is important — very important now that the Panthers won the NCAA Division II national title on Sunday, beating Metro State 74-73 after trailing by as many as 17 points.

In a game like this the stars of the team must play well, and Drury’s did. Alex Hall scored 21 points, was 4-for-7 from 3-point range and sank the two free throws at the end that won the game for the Panthers. Brandon Lockhart scored 14 points and passed out nine assists (and committed eight turnovers). Meanwhile, two other players scored in double figures: Ian Carter (10) and Drake Patterson (12), who was 4-for-6 from 3-point land. The Panthers were outrebounded by Metro State, 33-27, and were dominated on the offensive boards, 16-8. But Drury shot 54.2 percent (26-for-48) for the game while Metro State shot just 46 percent (29-for-63).

Another major factor in winning a title is bench scoring. Drury got 12 points from Cameron Adams (seven) and Lonnie Boga (five, including a big 3-pointer) who, with Kameron Bundy, played a total of 50 minutes (with Adams piling up 32 of those minutes). Metro State got zero points from three different players off the bench, and they only took two shots while playing just 15 minutes.

But the most amazing stat sheet to look at is the second-half play-by-play.

At 17:52, a Hall turnover led to a Jonathon Morse dunk to give Metro State a 43-30 lead. Then Patterson buries a 3-pointer, Hall steals the ball, hits a 3-pointer, is fouled on the shot and hits the subsequent free throw. Just like that, Drury’s only down 43-37. The Panthers finally tie the score at 53-53 on Boga’s 3-pointer at 13:29.

Metro State re-builds a four-point lead, but Drury rallies again, with Hall sinking a 3-pointer at 9:31 to put his team ahead, 59-58. But Metro State goes back up by five less than a minute later. Drury keeps getting close, but can’t move back in front, and Metro State’s up by six, 71-65, with 4:35 to go.

Less than two minutes later, an Adams layup pulls Drury with 73-71. The rest of the way — the final 2:47 — Drury puts on a defensive clinic. It forces Metro State into missing two shots and turning the ball over twice while it also missed two free throws. Meanwhile, Drury’s Adam hits the second of a two-shot foul to get his team within 73-72 with 26 seconds left/. Three seconds later, Hall is fouled and hits both free throws to put Drury on top 74-73. After a 30-second timeout, Metro State can’t get a shot off for the next 19 seconds until Mitch McCarron misses a jumper with 4 seconds showing and teammate Nicholas Kay fails to tap in the rebound. Time then runs out.

In one way this game was similar to the game USI played against Drury at the Ford Center. The Eagles finally grabbed the lead late and had possession but faced a Drury press. Keith DeWitt tossed a long pass over the press down the court to Kenyon Smith, but led Smith too much and the ball went out of bounds. On Drury’s next possession, Hall hit a 3-pointer that put the Panthers in front for good.

This isn’t to rub salt in USI’s wounds, but to show that Drury was a resilient team throughout the postseason. The Eagles didn’t suffer disappointment alone. They ended up being one of nine teams in the postseason to undergo this treatment — and one of 23 teams IN A ROW that Drury defeated since Jan. 10. The Panthers got the basket or free throws or stop they needed when they needed it, every time. Doing that inevitably leads to championships.

In my last post I mentioned Brandon Hogg’s having turned himself into a high-scoring guard for USI’s basketball team a few years ago. Well, he’s continuing his efforts in a European professional league, helping his team to within one victory of a final four berth in a German Pro B league. Hogg is averaging a team-high 19.7 points as well as 5.2 rebounds and 3.0 assists for the Noerdlingen Giants, who won a quarterfinal playoff game on Saturday. Hogg finished with 22 points, seven assists, six steals and five rebounds as they beat Schwelm — which is in first place in the Group North division — 111-103 in overtime on Saturday in the second of a three-game series (Schwelm won the first game, 92-76). The rubber game is scheduled for Tuesday night.

Noerdlingen, which is in Group South, has won six of its last seven games and has a 13-9 record while Schwelm is 17-5. Hogg’s other significant stats: He’s averaging 38.5 percent (42-for-109) from 3-point range and 79.2 percent (152-for-192) from the free-throw line. Noerdlingen, by the way, is located in Bavaria in southern Germany and has a population of about 24,000 — almost exactly the same population as Hogg’s native Edwardsville, Ill.

Individual spring workouts began for the USI men’s basketball team this week. But a couple of weeks off since the end of the season apparently weren’t enough of a rest. “We’re all still mentally tired,” said head coach Rodney Watson. But the work continues anyway. Watson is having his players concentrate on strength and skills training in an effort to get both on equal footing. This far out from the start of next season might seem odd, but he’s trying to get them to develop good practice and workout habits that they can take with them into the real off-season — the four-month, unsupervised summer break. Many a player has turned himself into a force over that time — recall what Brandon Hogg did between his sophomore and junior years, making himself into a high-scoring guard after being nothing more than a bit player off the bench.

Key people to consider in that regard include forward Taylor Wischmeier, who I wrote about for our Sunday print and online edition; guard Ben Jones, who became one of USI’s best defensive players and showed that he could be a deadly outside shooting threat; and point guard DeAndre McCamey, who is coming off a knee injury that cost him the entire season. McCamey, I have to say, is always — and I mean ALWAYS — shooting when I walk into the Physical Activities Center. On Thursday, he was practicing a 16-to-17-foot jumper from along the baseline, and every shot was dropping.

By the way, Wischmeier brought up something interesting when I talked to him Thursday for Sunday’s story. “We have to improve to another level, like Bellarmine and Drury did,” he said. He was talking about Bellarmine’s improvement from the first time USI played the Knights and held them to a season-low 49 points to the second and third time the Eagles played Bellarmine and lost both games badly. When he was talking about Drury, he meant the Panthers’ improvement from last season, when it finished fourth in the GLVC West Division, lost in the second round of the GLVC Tournament and did not receive a berth in the NCAA tournament, to this season, when it finished first in the West, won the GLVC Tournament title and the NCAA Midwest Region championship and will play for the Division II national crown on Sunday afternoon. “We have the pieces,” said Wischmeier. “We just have to see how good we can be.”

USI is still in the process of gathering material to present to the NCAA when the school asks for another year of eligibility for center Keith DeWitt (recall that he played in only two games his junior year at Division I Southern Mississippi). That said, he hasn’t disappeared. In fact, he has been going through spring individual workouts, which started on Monday, with the rest of the team. Judging from what I saw on Thursday, he’s working as hard as ever — a good sign. As for the eligibility situation, nothing is cut and dried with the NCAA, of course. From what I’ve been able to find out so far, the devil’s advocate argument against his receiving an extra year is that he was still a member of the Southern Miss. team for the entire season even if he played in just two games. On the other hand, his now playing in Division II instead of D-I would seem to work in his favor. I hope to write a story about it later this month, pulling together as much detail as I can dig up, both pro and con, about DeWitt’s situation. Stay tuned.