Coach Brian Barone celebrated SIUE’s first-ever NCAA Tournament berth with framed scissors, tributes for veteran players

A remarkable element with the NCAA Tournament is just how special it can be for some schools to make the field. That was the case for the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Cougars, who have only been in Division I since 2009, and made the field of 68 for the first time Saturday. That led to a remarkable interview, featuring both players like Ray’Sean Taylor and framed scissors to cut down the nets, with Cougars’ head coach Brian Barone on the ESPN2 broadcast of their Ohio Valley Conference championship game victory (69-48 over Southeastern Missouri State) Saturday:

The scissors there are perhaps a particularly notable prop, leading to headlines like “Ted Lasso had BELIEVE, SIUE’s Brian Barone had scissors” (in The Edwardsville Intelligencer). Barone talks to announcers Robert Ford and Richie Schueler about framing that pair of scissors above the locker room when he took over the program’s head coaching role in 2019 (he was previously an assistant there since 2017). But what maybe enhances that more still is how Barone makes this not just about the prop, but about the players, including Taylor.

“Six years ago! Six years ago, I put this above our locker room door. Six years ago, Ray! I’m so proud of you, man! Six years ago, and that’s been hanging above our locker room door. People didn’t think we were going to be able to do it. But that dude right there, that dude right there, believed me.

“We talked about filling the corners in our arena, we did that. We talked about hanging it, we’re going to break this right now, because we’ve been waiting six years to use these scissors right now. But I’m proud of it, because of the kind of culture we have and the kind of guys we have. We have guys that stuck with us, and a culture that people are sticking with us.”

Taylor’s story particularly resonates with those scissors. He joined the team in 2020, but missed that whole season after tearing his ACL in spring workouts. But he’s been a starter for them ever since, and became their all-time scoring leader this year after averaging a career-high 19.3 points per game.

That’s somewhat rare to see in the current transfer-heavy environment of college basketball, where many stars at schools in less-prominent conferences use their success as a pathway to higher-profile universities and larger NIL deals. But Taylor told Steve Overbey of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in January that he declined offers elsewhere to repay Barone’s belief in him:

“I’m staying with somebody who has believed in me right from the start,” Taylor said. “That type of (allegiance) was instilled in me from a young age. It’s not hard, it’s just what I believe.”

That certainly worked out for both of them Saturday. The Cougars will have to wait for Selection Sunday next week to find out where they fit in the field and who they’re playing, but they’ve clinched a berth. And that let Barone both celebrate the framed scissors and the players who let the team use them.