Brown Athletics announced today that the team’s leading scorer, sophomore forward Leland King, has decided to leave the program for personal reasons.
The news is very unexpected with Brown just two games into Ivy League play (both losses, making Brown the only Ivy with two losses thus far).
And now that King is gone, so are his 14.6 points and 7.8 rebounds per game, a huge blow for a team that has already struggled on both offense (worst assist-turnover ratio in the conference) and defense (worst scoring defense in the conference) this season.
King had missed Brown’s last two road games, including the Bears’ 69-65 loss at Yale Saturday, a game in which senior forward Rafael Maia and sophomore guards Steven Spieth and Tavon Blackmon combined for 50 points, 18 rebounds and nine assists in King’s absence.
Senior guard Zeve Sanderson left the team earlier this team as well, and highly touted freshmen Aram Martin and Matty Madigan also left the program after their freshman campaigns in 2013-14.
i like Mike Martin and I have no idea about the culture of his program,however these defections could be a bad sign. They happened at Princeton with Joe Scott and Penn with GM (I still can’t say his name) before they got canned. I suppose we’ll all find out eventually.
Sophomore Matthew Madigan left the team at the end of last season as well.
Thanks for pointing that out, I updated the post to reflect that.
Madigan has a bad back,Martin is still at brown
The fact they’re still enrolled at the school doesn’t change that they’re talented players who, for whatever reason, have decided to leave the basketball program.
Players leave Ivy teams for all sorts of reasons, Martin never really participated last year, only practiced occasionally, Madigan had a bad back and is still at Brown, Sanderson was a 5’10” walk-on transfer, has to sit out last year and was getting little time as a Sr. with so many Fr. and So. guards. (He also was a Rhodes Candidate.) None were related to King.