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Saturday, April 24, 2010
Berry’s downfall his own fault, but adults culpable, too
Dayton coach Brian Gregory probably did the right thing in dropping recruit Jesse Berry after two arrests, but it’s a shame the situation even had to come down to that.
You can’t let Berry off the hook - he made some poor decisions - but you wonder where the adults were during his downward spiral.
My understanding is that the Lafayette (Ind.) Jefferson High School guard had been living in his own apartment for several months. Who lets a senior in high school have his own bachelor pad? That alone is a recipe for disaster.
I don’t know much about his home life. Berry had moved from Gary, Ind., with his mother, and when I asked him why she let him live on his own, he said, “I needed to get away to concentrate on my grades and I couldn’t do that at home.”
I also wonder what his coach, Scot Bunnell, was thinking. Couldn’t he have given his star an ultimatum that either he lived with adult supervision or he doesn’t play? That apparently didn’t happen, at least not right away. I was told that Berry did finally move in with an assistant coach, who was going to hold the player’s feet to the fire. But Berry didn’t warm to that arrangement and moved out.
I left repeated messages for Bunnell, and he never returned them. Maybe he knew he couldn’t talk without being critical of the Berry family situation and that it would be best to just let others speculate.
Again, Berry is responsible as an 18-year-old young man for his own decisions, but I can’t help but feel that the adults in his life let him down. The kid just had to stay on track through a few more months of high school, and he’d be off to Dayton and placed in a disciplined environment where he’d have every chance to succeed. Sadly, that won’t be happening.
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