Despite controversy, end of Teel's career should be honored

Flashback to Nov. 21, 2008: There's a sellout and record-setting crowd of 4,534 in Gersten Pavilion, much because brand new Head Coach Bill Bayno is set to coach his first game on the bluff. Bayno, however, is nowhere to be seen. Despite the confusion in the building about where "the savior" of our program is, the 0-3 Lions are hosting No. 8 Notre Dame, a big task any year. But despite never holding a lead, LMU hangs in throughout the game. With a starting lineup of Ashley Hamilton, Marco Deric, Kevin Young, Jarred DuBois and Kevin Young, the misfit Lions are down only four with five minutes to play.

The energy in the building was different than it had been in years, with lofty expectations set for the program with an NBA-worthy head coach at the helm. The players can sense the transition, and one in particular is willing to do whatever it takes to meet these new expectations set by the 4,534 in the building.

In just the fourth game of his Lion career, then-redshirt sophomore Vernon Teel is the Lions' leading scorer and rebounder after three games. But after a bad-step midway through the first half, he heads to the bench in obvious pain. Not wanting to leave the court in such an important game, he returns, and with ten minutes to play pulls down a huge offensive board and scores, pulling the underdog-Lions to within one. He plays just three minutes the remainder of the game; Teel has a broken foot.

“He told [the trainer] to tape it up and days later he ended up having to have a screw put in his foot,” Head Coach Max Good told me last season. “There’s no doubt about it, Vernon will compete.”

With the timing and severity of his injury, a medical redshirt could have been in the cards for Teel, who ended up appearing in only 16 games in the 2008/09 season. But watching his team struggle mightily on the court, Teel felt he had to come back.

“I was just trying to make our team better,” Teel said to me last season when asked about his decision not to sit out the remainder of that year. “It wasn’t about me getting another year, it was about the team and making us better. I didn’t want us to win just one game the whole year. I told Coach Good that I wanted to come back and play. I felt like I started the year with the team, I wanted to end the year with the team.”

In the Lions first conference win of the season, Teel narrowly missed a tripe-double, going for 21 points, nine rebounds and eight assists. The Lions would go just 3-28 on the season.

There were turnovers. There were missed free throws. But in Teel's LMU career there was always the heart of a Lion. There is nobody who played harder for the LMU these past three years, and who stepped up to so many different challenges asked of him. Teel deserves nothing but applause and respect from Lions fans, and I am disappointed that is not what he received this season.

Teel would be the first to admit that this season wasn't what he had hoped it would be, both for himself personally and the team, but if you watched him play the one thing Teel never lacked was effort. Considering Lions fans envisioned a starting lineup of Jarred DuBois, Vernon Teel, Drew Viney, Ashley Hamilton and Edgar Garibay this year, it is easy to see why Teel, at times, felt he had to carry the weight of the team on his shoulders. By mid-season, the rest of the starting lineup wore street clothes more often than not, and instead of being able to be the facilitator that led us to a turnaround season just one year ago, he was instead forced to change his game to fit the team's needs, and attempt to lead a stagnant offense. While it didn't always provide winning results, I thank Teel for stepping up when everyone else was down.

What happened at the end of the season happened, and I respect the coaches for making the decision they felt they had to make. But Vernon played with emotion and passion that was unmatched by any other Lion, and the mistakes he made were reflective of that. In the end, he finished the last three years with more points (1,140), minutes (2,566), games played (80) and assists (353) than any other LMU player during that span. He will be missed on the court next season, and as a Lion fan I wish him the best.