Following-up on something that I mentioned earlier today (D2 DIRT) – Southern Arkansas has named Angelo State assistant Mark Rutledge as their new head basketball coach. Here’s the official release:

Southern Arkansas University’s Director of Athletics Steve Browning has announced that Mark Rutledge has been named the newest Mulerider Men’s Head Basketball Coach; effective immediately. The official announcement was made at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday August 7.
 
“We are extremely excited to have Mark back in our program and this time as the leader,” Directors of Athletics Steve Browning remarked. Our tradition of transformational leaders within our men’s basketball program is strong and Mark will just continue to build upon that.  Mark, his wife Monica, and his children Elijah and Saniyah will be great assets to not only our Mulerider family, but the Magnolia community as well.  Our team is strong, our coaching staff is strong and the future is bright!”
 
Rutledge makes his return to Magnolia after having been the Angelo State Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach the past year and on staff for the Rams the last two seasons. The native of Tulsa, Oklahoma will be the eleventh Mulerider Men’s Basketball head coach since 1950 while also becoming the seventh leader in the program’s near 30-year association with the NCAA.
 
“I am honored to accept the position of head coach at Southern Arkansas University,” declares Rutledge. “Reuniting with the Mulerider family is a meaningful full-circle moment for me, as SAU has always held a special place in my heart for launching my coaching career. My family and I are excited to return to the Magnolia community.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to President Dr. Bruno Hicks and Athletic Director Steve Browning for this opportunity. We are committed to upholding and advancing the winning tradition at SAU.”
 
While at his post at Angelo State, Rutledge aided the Rams in earning 45 wins with just 18 losses. The Sooner State native has been a huge aid for the Rams in Lone Star Conference and national play as the group has gone 33-11 against LSC competition and has been selected to the NCAA DII South Central Tournament each of the two years with Rutledge.
 
During his time with the Rams, Rutledge helped in the production of seven All-LSC honorees as well as an LSC Defensive (2022-23) and Newcomer (2023-24) of the Year. Rutledge was a part of a coaching staff at ASU that accomplished a lot of firsts in his second-year in San Angelo, Texas. While at Angelo State, Rutledge and the Rams made back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances, defeated two ranked teams in the same season (first time since 2014-15 | #15 Fort Lewis & #6 West Liberty), and ranked as high as #10 in NCAA DII (highest ranking since Jan. 3^rd, 2017).
 
The Rams during Rutledge’s year as Associate Head Coach sat amongst the top four of many statistical categories in the Lone Star. Those being assists per game (14.4 | 4^th LSC), blocks per game (3.2 | 4^th LSC), fastbreak points per game (12.8 | 4^th LSC), field goal percentage defense (43.4% | 4^th LSC), three-point percentage (38.7% | 3^rd LSC | 15^th nationally), and three pointers per game (9.1 | 3^rd LSC).
 
The Tulsa native during his first season with Angelo State assisted in coaching a Rams squad that ranked first in the LSC for defensive field goal percentage (42.2%) and rebound margin (4.6). That was not all though as the club ranked within the top three of the league for four other categories such as rebounds per game (35.39 | 3^rd LSC), scoring defense (65.3/gm | 2^nd LSC | 21^st nationally), scoring margin (7.1 | 2^nd LSC), and steals per game (8.2 | 2^nd LSC).
 
“I also want to thank everyone at Angelo State University, especially Coach Vinay Patel, for their warm welcome and support over the past two years,” Rutledge noted. “This opportunity would not have been possible without them. I look forward to rejoining the GAC conference and getting to work! Let’s Ride!”
 
Rutledge presents no shortage of experience at the DII level, especially in the Great American Conference. Just prior to his time at ASU, the Tulsa descendant was on the coaching staff for four years at Henderson State, in which he served his last two campaigns in Arkadelphia, Arkansas as the Reddies’ Associate Head Coach.
 
While with the Reddies, Rutledge helped lead the charge for Henderson State to claim its first and only Great American Conference Tournament championship title in the 2019-20 season, which was also the first conference title in 17 years. The Oklahoman coached up the top defensive field goal percentage team in the conference for three consecutive seasons (2019-22) as well as aided in the development in nine all-league selections that he also recruited. Winning on the court is always great, but the most elite part of Rutledge’s time in Arkadelphia was the 100 percent graduation rate in the classroom during his occupancy. Rutledge could include himself in that statistic as he acquired his Masters of Sports Administration at the Henderson State.
 
The place where Rutledge got his coaching career started is the same place he will call home as the Sooner State native began his distinguished career at Southern Arkansas University. A graduate assistant coach for the Mulerider Men’s Basketball team was Rutledge’s start as he worked under SAU great Andy Sharpe in the 2017-18 campaign that saw the Muleriders go 15-14 and finish at the GAC Tournament.
 
Rutledge came to Southern Arkansas after spending time as a student assistant at the University of Central Arkansas as he completed his Bachelors of Science degree in Health Education. Prior to his time as a student assistant, Rutledge played his final two seasons on the hardwood for the UCA Bears, where he started 56 of 57 games across the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons. Over his two-year career at UCA, Rutledge averaged 8.7 points per game and was a 43% shooter overall from the floor. Before his time as a Bear, Rutledge played for the Connors State College Cowboys for the 2009-10 season and claimed honors for second-team all-region and all-conference.
 
Following his collegiate career, Rutledge took his talents to Battle Creek, Michigan where he played for the Independent Basketball Association’s (IBA) Battle Creek Knights which are now known as the Battle Creek Flight since 2014. Rutledge then took his playing career to Europe as he went on to play for the Shoqata Tirana of Albania Superliga.

The Southern Arkansas Athletic Department has announced that Logan Quinn is set to depart his post as the Mulerider Men’s Head Basketball Coach for his next opportunity in the National Basketball Association.
 
“We appreciate Coach Quinn’s leadership of our basketball program as well as our Muleriders in Magnolia community service initiative,” states Southern Arkansas University Director of Athletics Steve Browning. “We wish him, Bella and Brooks nothing but the best with their new adventures!”
 
Quinn, a native of Los Angeles, California, coached for three seasons as the program’s top assistant while serving the 2021-22 campaign as associate head coach under longtime program builder Andy Sharpe. Starting in the 2022-23 season, Quinn was named the Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Southern Arkansas.
 
The two-year head coach for the Muleriders aided in the production of many names that are held in high-regard such as Devante and Jalen Brooks, Aaron Lucas, Gregory Hammond Jr., and Carel Ray Jr.
 
The historic first-year of coach Quinn included an NCAA Era single-season program record for wins with 22; the most by a first-year Mulerider head coach and the most overall since the 1989-90 season, an NCAA Era single-season program record for conference wins with 15 and the program’s highest regular season Great American Conference finish at tied for second. Nationally, the Muleriders finished in the top 40 in the country in offensive rebounds per game (12.62; 26^th), rebound margin (4.7; 33^rd), three-point attempts per game (25.8; 39^th) and three point makes per game (9.3; 40^th).
 
“The last five years have been such an incredible time for myself and my family,” states Quinn. “Bella and I got married, and a week later we were starting this journey in Magnolia at SAU, so we have grown up as a couple here.  We will always remember that our son was born here. Being the assistant coach, associate head coach, and the head coach of the Mulerider Basketball Program has been a complete joy – every single day. The cutting down of the nets, huge road wins, and NCAA tournaments are accomplishments that we all did together. Being able to watch our players grow and become better players, but also better people, has been the best part about our time here. Thank you to Coach Browning for his belief in me as the leader of the program, but also, thank you to each person that has had a hand in the success of our players and program – this is truly a special place. This has been, and always will be, a player’s first program and it is time for the next head coach to continue to take OUR program to the next level. Thank you, Mulerider Country!”
 
As the Muleriders’ head coach, Quinn finished with a 33-28 record, two GAC tournament appearances, one GAC tournament championship, and one appearance in the NCAA DII national tournament.

https://muleriderathletics.com/news/2024/8/7/general-quinn-departs-sau-for-position-with-national-basketball-association.aspx
 

More than one wise person in my life has told me that I’ll never be able to please everyone. Heck, I can’t even please all cats, so why would I think humans were any easier?

I wouldn’t. Cats tend to be much easier, especially if you have some bites of egg or chicken on you. I’m usually most offensive to cats when I cough or sneeze in their general vicinity, as it’s apparently a great insult to their ancestors (I apologize a lot when I cat-sit during allergy season), or I forget for a few hours to clean their litterbox (usually because I’m writing and/or editing for this job).

If only my critics (and those of other people at the paper) were as easily assuaged and could understand that I’m not all-powerful (I’m not even mid-powerful) and can only work with what I have.

What I have much of the time, just as with other newspapers across the country that aren’t nationwide, is a limited number and range of letters for the Voices page. So when someone complains about vitriol on the page when I’ve so often pleaded for people at large to appeal to their better angels, well … I have to remind that I’m, again, not all-powerful.

Oh, if only I were …

There’d be a lot fewer people placing the lives of all women (including trans women) in danger by, oh, let’s say claiming that an athlete born female who is competing in women’s boxing in the Olympics is actually a man. Considering her country of Algeria is not exactly LGBTQ-friendly, she could be in real danger upon her return home (with an Olympic medal, at least a bronze as of this writing), simply because she doesn’t fit some people’s image of a woman, despite being born and living as a female her entire life.

The International Boxing Association, which is heavily influenced by its Russian sponsors, had disqualified that boxer and another woman from its 2023 world championships, claiming they “pretended to be women” and “tried to deceive their colleagues,” according to Mother Jones. The tests that supposedly revealed XY chromosomes haven’t been clarified by the group. And it wouldn’t matter anyway, since women can have XY chromosomes and still be women (like those who have Swyer Syndrome).

American non-binary Olympic athlete Nikki Hiltz commented on the controversy on their Instagram account: “Anti-trans rhetoric is anti-woman. These people aren’t ‘protecting women’s sports,’ they are enforcing rigid gender norms and anyone who doesn’t fit perfectly into those norms is targeted and vilified.”

People would think before they spoke, wrote, or posted on social media. Words are powerful, especially in the hands of someone well-known, so when people like J.K. Rowling (whom I once admired) post things like her accusation about the Olympic boxer, it’s hard not to lose faith in humans as a species. Watching how low people will go to hurt others for no reason other than they don’t fit an image or believe as others do is disheartening, and not at all what I was taught as a child.

There would be more letters to the editor coming in every day that didn’t insult specific other readers (public figures and amorphous groups don’t apply, within reason); go on and on about things that have been proved fraudulent, especially without citing sources; use form letters or plagiarism (citing sources applies to more than just fraudulent claims; don’t try to pass off someone else’s work as your own); didn’t rehash imagined slights from other readers or politicians not even relevant now; weren’t the same writers ignoring the 30-day cooling-off period; and weren’t just the same talking points over and over.

You know I’m no fan of politics, but that doesn’t mean politics is verboten in letters; heck, we’d be lucky to have one letter a day if that were the case. The plain fact is that not as many people write letters to the editor anymore, and some newspapers have even begun eliminating them (the Bellingham Herald in Washington, for example, calls them “a thing of the past” and “too difficult to verify and generally rife with misinformation,” according to the Post Alley blog). For now, anyway, we plan to keep running letters, but readers have to remember that Voices can only work with what it gets. We get more liberal to center-right letters than very conservative ones, and more of them tend to be written in a way that they can pass fact-checks with little trouble. I would absolutely love to get more letters, period, but more letters from conservative readers would be wonderful.

But ya know, none of this matters in the big picture because someone will always find a way to be offended. Some seem to even think that the right to be offended is in the Bill of Rights.

If you want to complain, feel free; it’s your right. However, that doesn’t then mean no one can complain about what you said or did. That’s the thing about living here in the U.S., where we are all entitled to the same rights … and oops, there’s no right to be free from criticism.

Sorry ’bout that.

Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Email her at blooper@adgnewsroom.com. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com.