LOYAL. LOCAL. COMPLETE.
An Edgar County native is moving up the NCAA Division II head coaching ranks, accepting the top job at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C.
Chrisman’s own Brent Owen – who still bleeds red and white - will lead the L-R Bears as the school’s 20th head basketball coach.
Owen comes to Hickory from Eastern New Mexico University where he has served as the men’s basketball coach since May 2020. In 2024, ENMU finished with a 22-9 record, the most successful season in more than three decades.
“I accepted the Lenoir-Rhyne job at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, I went and picked up boxes and my wife, Ashley, and I began packing,” Owen recalled. The couple packed all day Thursday and headed out at 3 p.m. Friday for the more than 1,400-mile cross-country drive with their two sons from Portales, N.M., to North Carolina.
In the four months Owen has been as the Bears coach, he has spent a lion’s share of his time on the road recruiting for his new team. Owen had nine positions to fill on the 2024-25 team.
“We just finished up the 2024-25 class this week,” he said during an interview with The Prairie Press. “The good news is we also have established relationships with players for the 2025 and 2026 seasons.”
Owen, the son of Danny and Angie Owen of Chrisman, learned his love of the game early in life, watching Coach Roger Beals and his successful players and teams. Owen was determined to be a part of the Cardinal program and spent all his spare time shooting baskets in the family backyard.
One day, Chrisman Coach Chad Benedict drove by and saw Owen working, a sight he observed several times. Eventually, the coach stopped and presented the eighth grader with a pair of Chrisman practice shorts. Owen said Benedict explained, “I like to reward people who work hard.”
“I wore those shorts until I couldn’t wear them anymore because of the holes,” Owen said.
The next year, as a freshman, Owen practiced and dressed with the varsity. Owen’s passion was visible to Benedict, now the principal at Mahomet-Seymour High School, who told him perhaps in the future Owen might be hiring him for a job.
After Chrisman, Owen was recruited to play at the University of Southern Indiana.
“I was a role player but no one was going to out-work me,” he said. Promised by his coach he could serve as a graduate assistant, Owen decided to finish his career at USI.
“I really wanted to get into coaching,” he said.
The day Owen went to sign his contract as a grad assistant, the coach was fired for NCAA violations. USI’s next coach proved to be a man who has been Owen’s mentor and has influenced his philosophy of coaching.
“The first time I met Rodney Watson, we shook hands and I said I played at Chrisman,” Owen said. “He told me our relationship can only go up.”
Watson, of course, was born and raised a Tiger athlete during the years when the Chrisman-Paris rivalry was hot.
USI did not have any coaching positions for Owen but he served as a volunteer coach.
“I worked three jobs,” he said, including folding towels at the student rec center, security at a local bar and serving as a caddy at a local golf course. Eventually, he had the opportunity to work as the coordinator of summer camps at USI, where he met school administrators.
“I needed a job and was hired by Tell City, Ind., as their high school coach,” he explained.
Once a spot opened up on the USI coaching staff, Owen was back working with Watson. The first year, he was the second assistant. When the number one man on Watson’s staff left, Owen moved up and became the recruiting coordinator for the Screaming Eagles.
Owen openly shares his priorities in his life and approach to the game he loves – God, family and basketball. His entire approach to coaching he credits to Watson and experiences at his side.
The Screaming Eagles were facing archrival Kentucky Wesleyan in Owensboro, a showdown between a pair of nationally ranked Division II teams.
“We were undefeated and so were they,” Owen recalled.
With 4:32 remaining in what ultimately was another USI win, the team captain, senior Jeron Lewis collapsed. “We thought he hit his head,” Owen said.
As the two men were walking to the team with plans to take the team to check on Lewis, Watson received a call from the team trainer – Lewis had died 23 minutes after his collapse of an enlarged heart. Lewis’ death shifted Owen’s outlook immediately.
“The most important thing to me was that we won that game,” Owen said. “I remember specifically, there was a call where a referee signaled a jump ball and halfway up, he changed it to a foul on us. That was the worst thing. It was a close game and I thought it was a bad call that could’ve affected who won or lost. When we were driving home that night, that call meant nothing. That game meant nothing.”
“Coach Watson immediately made it clear to the coaches the importance of prioritizing what’s important,” Owen said. “It’s bigger than basketball. We as coaches are there to build great men.”
The move to Hickory allows Owen’s parents, grandparents and brother, Cody Owen who is a federal marshal in Washington, D.C., to see the family more, a happy change for his wife Ashley and his sons, aged seven and four.
Owen was among 250 applicants for the L-R coaching job but school administrators quickly recognized he was something special, according to vice-president of athletics Kim Pate. She noted in introducing Owen he had successfully built the Eastern New Mexico program from the bottom up, culminating with the 22-9 record in the 2023-24 season.
In only his third season at ENMU, Owen’s Greyhounds won the Lone Star Conference Tournament Championship for the first time in 31 years and earning a Division II NCAA Tournament for the first time in 20 years.
Owen said in his talks with university officials “it became immediately evident that they have a strong desire for Lenoir-Rhyne basketball to compete among the best on the national stage.”
The new coach is confident “we can build a championship-level program,” joining other successful programs at L-R.
“I want the fans out there to know that it would be best to pick out the seats you want now, because eventually we will be selling out Shuford Arena,” he said.
After a recent recruiting trip and with his wife and sons at the beach, Owen was shooting in Shuford Arena, declaring it as “a shooter’s gym.”
Watson praised the L-R administrators’ choice of Owen as its new coach.
“Brent Owen was my copilot for nearly a decade at the University of Southern Indiana. His passion for recruiting enabled us to compete on the national stage,” Watson said. “Brent is an outstanding teacher of the game and most importantly, Coach Owen will care for your student-athletes from Move-in Day through Graduation Day.”
Watson concluded saying, “Bear basketball is in great hands. You are going to enjoy the Owen family and many exciting nights in the South Atlantic Conference.”