ENMU hires Brent Owen as men's basketball coach

Brent Owen's drive from the basketball game on Jan. 14, 2010, was different than any before.

Owen was in his first year as a graduate assistant for the Southern Indiana men's basketball team, which had just beaten Kentucky Wesleyan on the road, 74-69, and improved to 16-0 overall, 7-0 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference.

Those numbers, though, were immaterial on that Thursday night. Southern Indiana center Jeron Lewis, a 21-year-old senior and captain, had collapsed during the game and died at a nearby hospital from an enlarged heart.

It was a shock that reshaped the perspective of Owen, who had previously hoped his NCAA coaching path would lead him to piles and piles of money.

"I'm driving back from that game and just had a kind of upside-down of, 'What am I doing here?'" Owen recalls thinking. "You're not promised tomorrow, so how much does money matter?"

And his goal, his focus, changed. "I became a builder of great men," he said, "in their transition from young men to adults."

Owen's latest construction job has taken him to Portales. On Tuesday, Eastern New Mexico University announced that Owen - Southern Indiana's top men's basketball assistant for the past six years - had been hired as the new ENMU men's basketball coach.

"I couldn't be more excited," Owen said last week in a telephone interview. "Since they told me I had the job, I've been going to sleep at 1:30, 2 in the morning and waking up at 6 in the morning. And I don't get tired.

"It's such an exciting time, and I couldn't be more juiced up and ready to go."

As of Wednesday, Owen and his family were packing, as they prepared to leave the Hoosier State for the Land of Enchantment. They are being extra careful as they face that trek in the time of COVID-19 - Owen's wife Ashley is pregnant with their second son.

Though a Chrisman, Illinois, native, Owen played for Southern Indiana University in Evansville, Indiana, and was looking to climb onto the coaching ladder after college. Rodney Watson was hired as Southern Indiana's head men's basketball coach in the spring of 2009, and brought Owen on board as a graduate assistant. Owen held that position for three years before taking a high school head-coaching job in Tell City, Indiana.

"It was a great experience for me," Owen recalled of Tell City. "I was 25 years old; it was great for the chance to coach my own team and develop my own program. But I was really glad to get back to USI; I feel like my passion was really in the college ranks."

In 2014 Watson hired Owen as his top basketball assistant at Southern Indiana. While in that job the past six years, Owen's basketball acumen didn't go unnoticed in the state of Indiana.

"He has a passion for the game of basketball and is a tireless recruiter," Purdue men's basketball head coach Matt Painter said in a statement. "Most importantly, he has developed a reputation within the coaching community as being a great person. Those qualities will serve him well as a head coach."

Owen's first college head-coaching experience has been unique, having to meet with his Greyhound players via Zoom.

Though that is new to Owen, the Lone Star Conference is not. Southern Indiana has played Midwestern State and West Texas A&M, the latter in the 2019 Division II Elite Eight in front of 7,330 fans at Evansville's Ford Center, a record turnout for that round.

Owen said a key part of his coaching philosophy is his technique.

"You can either motivate people based on fear or you can motivate people based on love," Owen said. "I think fear is really easy; you can scream and shout. Bobby Knight at Indiana was really successful at that tactic, but in this day and age you need someone whose players love him. ... It all starts that you coach with love and they know that you care about them beyond the basketball court."