By BO ALLEGRUCCI
Salina Journal
Just how well do you know your Brown Mackie basketball trivia?
Do you know who the only Lion is to win a national championship as both a player and a coach for BMC?
Do you know who the only player is in school history to start at least one game at all five positions for hall of fame head coach Francis Flax?
The answer to both questions is the same name, and if you know it, you've hit a homer -- Jason Homer. The 6-foot-4 Coffeyville native was a key ingredient on the 1999 Brown Mackie team that won the NJCAA II national title, and was an assistant coach for the dynamic 2005 team that won it all with a 35-1 record.
Homer took the floor as a point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward and even a drastically undersized center during the 1998-99 season, and Flax has always appreciated that versatility and dedication in his player-turned-coach.
"Jason had DI potential in football, baseball, and track, but he loved basketball and he really understood the game," Flax said. "He had no natural position, but he's a very athletic person and he could play wherever I needed him on any given night. He was undersized in the post, but he knew all the tricks, and no one ever made it through the lane without getting a forearm in the chest when Homer was there."
Homer has returned for a third shift at BMC after spending two years in Oregon, where his youngest son was diagnosed with autism at age two. This time, he's here to help Flax put the tiny two-year business school back among the nation's elite junior college hoops programs.
Brown Mackie is struggling through a down year by any standards, let alone their own. The Lions lost Earnest Noel -- their leading scorer and lone sophomore -- to academic ineligibility at the first of the year, and BMC is currently 11-18 heading into their opening game of the Region 6 tournament tonight at Hesston.
Whispers are whirling about the potential of next year's recruits and redshirts, 11 of whom are already enrolled, and neither Homer nor Flax are prepared to take the 2007-08 season lying down.
"Coach is a straight-shooter who tells it like it is and so am I, and people know we're not happy with where things are right now," Homer says. "We're used to hanging banners around here, and that's where we want this program to get back to.
"The only school colors I bleed are Brown Mackie blues. I'm a Kansas boy born and raised, but I don't really get into all the KU-K-State stuff. I'm a Lion -- this is the only place I want to coach and coach Flax is the only coach I want to work for right now."
Homer is a childhood friend of Mondrel Fulcher, an all-state quarterback who later played tight end for the Miami Hurricanes and Oakland Raiders, and Homer's junior college journey is an odyssey all its own. He signed with Butler Community College as a wide receiver out of high school, but football wasn't the same without Fulcher throwing him the ball.
After pulling his hamstring in preseason workouts, Homer went home to Coffeyville Community College and found his way back onto the basketball court. He then transferred to Brown Mackie for one championship season before finishing his collegiate career playing both basketball and football at Division II Fairmont State in West Virginia.
He returned to Brown Mackie as an assistant coach in 2003 and even played a little baseball for the Lions while settling in as Flax's right-hand man.
"If all of us growing up in Coffeyville would've taken care of business, I swear we'd have about 20 or 30 guys playing pro sports right now," Homer said. "We used to go down to the college courts when we were in high school and run the juco guys out of town, and we all had cousins and brothers with talent in every sport.
"If we'd all worked as hard as Mondrel (Fulcher) did outside of sports, people all over America right now would be like 'Man, how did all these pros come out of Coffeyville, Kansas?'"
Homer remembers the days when Brown Mackie went on the road and wowed the other team's crowd in pre-game warm-ups with alley-oops and athletic charisma. Ninety percent of his 1999 teammates later played at a four-year school, and he longs for the practices that were tougher than the games -- when everybody dunked on somebody at least once and then they all went to dinner together afterward.
His voice settles into a smile as he talks about the bus ride home from the '99 championship game, and he rejoiced just as much watching the 2005 team cut down the nets, like a proud big brother whose footsteps had finally been followed.
To Homer, that's what Brown Mackie basketball is supposed to be. He has known nothing else as a Lion, and his journey back to the BMC bench began before he ever even left.
Homer was 23-years-old and already a father when he arrived at Brown Mackie in 1998, and he often rode shotgun on the way back from road games beside Flax at the front of the van. Their frequent conversations became all-night sessions that built a bond between the beloved coach and his veteran leader.
"Jason has been loyal to me as a player and afterward, and that's the one thing you look for in an assistant," Flax said. "He would run through a wall if I asked him too, and as a coach, you want your staff to buy into what you're teaching and believe in what you're doing.
"He always practiced at 100 percent, which made everyone else on the team work harder. He wasn't our first choice and we weren't his when he first came here, but he trusted in us and we trusted in him. Jason is what our program is all about in a lot of ways, and we've built some of our best teams around guys like him."
Homer is one of 12 children and has four of his own, and he can be both a wise old owl and a class clown in the same day. He can be hilarious during pregame warmups and dead-serious during the game.
Coach Homer runs practices whenever coach Flax is out and about, and the 32-year old assistant still has the juice to offer the current Lions a first-hand demonstration of what Brown Mackie basketball is supposed to be.
"The players don't like what he has to say sometimes, but they have to listen because he can still do it," Flax says. "Homer thinks I've gotten soft in my old age, and he always reminds the guys they'd be running all practice long if they'd have done some of this stuff five years ago.
"This year's been hard on both of us because we're not used to losing. We've lost some good players and a lot of close games, but we've got a top-notch crew sitting out right now, and I think we'll be back in the national spotlight real soon."