EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. -- Lennox Forrester, the first Bradley assistant hired by Jim Les in 2002, has been named the seventh men's basketball coach at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville and was introduced at a press conference at his new school this afternoon.
Forrester replaces Marty Simmons, who was named the head coach at Bradley's Missouri Valley Conference rival Evansville last month. Forrester and Simmons actually worked together as assistant coaches at Evansville for four seasons (1992-96). After helping the Braves to 2006 NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 and the 2007 MasterCard Invitational Sweet 16, Forrester inherits a team that played in the NCAA Division II tournament in 2005 and 2006, before finishing with a 15-12 record this past season. Currently competing in the NCAA Division II Great Lakes Valley Conference, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville will make the leap to NCAA Division I status for the 2008-09 season.
“It is certainly difficult to say goodbye to Lennox, but this is a very exciting day,” said Bradley head coach Jim Les. “Lennox has been a tremendous asset to Bradley Basketball since he joined our program five years ago and he is ready to be a collegiate head coach. I know everyone at Bradley wishes Lennox and and his family the best of luck at SIU-Edwardsville.”
Forrester just completed his fifth season as a member of the Bradley staff and he was the second-longest tenured assistant coach in The Valley. Prior to joining the Braves in 2002, Forrester had worked the previous 10 years at his alma mater, Evansville. His 13 consecutive years in The Valley (Evansville joined the league for the 1994-95 season) trailed only Rodney Watson's 19-year run as an assistant at Southern Illinois-Carbondale for the most consecutive seasons in the league by any current assistant coach.
Heavily involved in recruiting at Bradley, Forrester also was the team's point person with scheduling. On the court, Forrester worked directly with Bradley's post players the last two seasons after working with the guards during his first three years. During his two years working with the post players, 7-foot center Patrick O'Bryant was selected with the ninth overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft and Zach Andrews broke Joe Allen's 39-year-old school record for career field goal percentage by shooting 62.1 percent from the floor during his two seasons as a Brave. During his three seasons working with Bradley's backcourt players, Forrester helped All-MVC guards Phillip Gilbert (1,689 points) and James Gillingham (1,416), locally known as Bradley's G-Men, become the first-ever Valley guards to simultaneously score more than 1,400 career points.
The first assistant hired by Jim Les when he took over the Bradley program in 2002, Forrester becomes the first Braves assistant to move directly into a college head-coaching position since George Barber was named the head coach at NCAA Division III Greenville College in 1999. The 13th Bradley assistant to eventually earn a college head coaching position, Forrester will become the eighth Bradley aide to become a head coach at the Division I level when the Cougars move up a level for the 2008-09 campaign.
