Rocky offseason continues for Southeast basketball

It has certainly not been a smooth offseason so far for the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team.

First sophomore point guard Roderick Pearson, a two-year starter, decided to transfer.

And now Ronnie Dean is also out.

Southeast coach Scott Edgar last week informed Dean — the Redhawks' chief recruiter — that he was not renewing Dean's contract for next season.

Dean has been a Southeast assistant coach the past four seasons, including the final two years of Gary Garner's regime and the first two years of Edgar's tenure.

Before the 2007-08 season, Dean was selected the nation's fourth-best junior college recruiter by the national publication Basketball Times.

There has not been an official announcement from the university on Dean's release. His contract with Southeast expires April 30. All Southeast assistant coaches are on one-year contracts.

Personally, I hate to see Dean leave — he's a great guy and became a good friend of mine

Also, while Pearson is definitely leaving the program, I've heard rumblings that a few other players are considering transferring, but nothing definite on any of that yet.

Meanwhile, the spring signing period begins April 16. With Pearson departing, some others possibly following and the eligibility of some incoming recruits in question, Southeast will probably have a few more scholarships available than had originally been anticipated.

With Dean now gone, and before a new recruiter is hired, it will be up to Edgar to sign his own players.

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Southeast beating sixth-ranked Vanderbilt on Tuesday was a notable win, but the reason it's hard to get too carried away with a single result from the sport of baseball is what transpired the next night.

A little more than 24 hours after knocking off one of the nation's best teams, the Redhawks lost to an Evansville squad that entered the contest with a 3-21 record.

That's just the nature of baseball on any level, mainly because it's the only sport that — not counting injury — doesn't put its best players on the field for every game.

I'm talking about pitchers. So much depends on who is on the mound, especially during mid-week, nonconference college games, when teams often use the bottom levels of their pitching staff.

That's why, in baseball more than any sport, you see bad-to-mediocre teams beating powerhouse squads on a one-shot basis.

That's not to say Southeast is a bad-to-mediorce club, because I think the Redhawks are pretty solid this year and I'd be surprised if they don't make a run at the OVC title.

And that 12-8 victory over the Commodores in Nashville, Tenn., is still an impressive accomplishment, one that I'm sure Southeast players will remember for a long time.

Southeast has regular-season wins over the likes of perennial national powers Oklahoma State, Wichita State and Missouri during coach Mark Hogan's 14-year tenure, and in 2002 Southeast stunned host Alabama — ranked fourth at the time — for the program's only NCAA Division I regional victory.

But according to school officials, Vanderbilt is the highest-ranked Division I baseball team Southeast has ever beaten in the regular season.

So the triumph no doubt ranks right up there with the program's all-time best victories.

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I've already written about the Southeast football team renewing its series with Southern Illinois beginning with the 2009 season.

But, for people who want to start making really early plans, SIU has now officially released the dates of the games for the three-year deal.

SIU comes to Cape Girardeau on Nov. 21, 2009, followed by Southeast visiting Carbondale on Sept. 18, 2010 and the Salukis again coming to Cape on Sept. 10, 2011.

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Kudos to the Southeast gymnastics team for its NCAA regional berth, the second for the Redhawks in the past three years.

There aren't nearly as many women's gymnastics squads across the country as there are most other sports, but to be among the top 36 nationally is still a remarkable achievement.

The Redhawks will compete in Saturday's South Central Regional in Norman, Okla.

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There's no telling how long Blake DeWitt will remain with the Los Angeles Dodgers this season. But what DeWitt has done so far is still a really neat story.

The 2004 Sikeston High School graduate was drafted in the first round by the Dodgers following his senior season and has put together a solid minor-league career so far.

Still, DeWitt had never played above the Class AA level during his four minor-league seasons and was expected to begin his fifth professional campaign in either Class AA or Class AAA.

But DeWitt parlayed a strong spring training and several injuries to make the Dodgers' opening-day roster, and he was their starting third baseman during the first week of the season.

The 22-year-old DeWitt singled in his first big-league at-bat and enters this week batting .278 (5-of-18). He has also drawn four walks and has not committed an error.

I've never met DeWitt, but everybody I know that is familiar with him says he is about as fine a young man as imaginable, with a work ethic to match.

That's the kind of guy I like to root for, especially since he's from about 30 miles down the road.

Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian.