ST. LOUIS – Trent Brown (First Team) and Lance Jones (Second Team) earned spots on the Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athlete Teams, the league announced Thursday.
Brown, who holds a 4.0 GPA in management, is one of the best defenders and most improved players in the MVC. A Scottsdale, Ariz., native, Brown has started all 24 games for SIU and ranks fourth in the league in 3-point field goal percentage and seventh in minutes played, often while guarding the opposing team’s best perimeter player. In conference games, Brown ranks fourth in the league in minutes and 10th in steals. He scored a career-high 21 points and went 5-for-6 from the 3-point line in SIU’s win at Butler, which snapped Butler’s 59-game home court nonconference winning streak.
Jones holds a 3.341 GPA and was named to the All-MVC Third Team earlier this week. Jones ranks in the top-10 of the MVC in points, assists, steals, 3-point field goal percentage and minutes played. After Marcus Domask’s injury, Jones played 34 minutes per game and averaged 15 points while shooting 42% from the 3-point line. He scored in double figures 18 times this year, including four 20-point games and a 30-point performance against the nation’s No. 1 defense, Loyola. He hit seven 3-pointers in SIU’s win over Northern Iowa, the most 3-pointers in a game by any Saluki since Kent Williams hit seven 3-pointers in a game in 2000.
SIU plays tonight (Thursday) against Bradley in the opening round of the MVC Tournament. Tipoff is set for 5 p.m.
Voting was conducted by league’s sports information directors.
The criteria for the Missouri Valley Conference’s Scholar-Athlete Team voting parallels the CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) standards for Academic All-America voting. Nominees must be starters or important reserves with at least a 3.20 cumulative grade-point average (4.0 scale). Nominees in grad school must have a cumulative GPA of 3.20 or better both as an undergrad AND in graduate school. Nominees must have reached sophomore athletic and academic standing at an institution and must have completed at least one calendar year at the institution. True freshmen, red-shirt freshmen and ineligible athletic transfers are not eligible. Graduate students who are competing at a different institution than the one from which they earned their undergraduate degree are eligible even if they are in their first semester at the graduate institution. A nominee must have played in 50 percent of his team’s games.