Austin, TX
NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL: Cook has proven recipe in Texas and keeps locals in the mix
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Despite being nearly 2,000 miles away, Andre Cook remains plugged into the ‘518’s’ basketball scene.
For good reason, as it’s where the coach, 52, got his start. While he lives in Austin, Texas, spending his evenings walking the hilly streets of his residential neighborhood, Cook still resides inside the top 10 for career points at both Watervliet High School and Skidmore College.
Cook also keeps the ‘518’ area code attached to his phone number, 15 years since taking the job in the Lone Star State and building a new, winning legacy.
“I love the capital region. People always laugh, but I still call it, ‘I’m going home,’” Cook said in an over-the-phone interview with the Troy Record. “It’s home and it’s always gonna be home. I loved every second about growing up in Watervliet, New York, playing on 23rd Street. I loved going to college at Skidmore College, going to grad school, I loved my time as a high school coach and my time as the head coach at Hudson Valley. I wouldn’t trade any of it.”
“The 518 – I just have nothing but love for it. That’s all I can say, and you can see I still have my (phone) number.”
Cook took the job at St. Edward’s University, a private catholic university in Austin, Texas, with an enrollment of slightly fewer than 3,000 according to the U.S. Department of Education (2021-22), 15 years ago. He wrapped up back-to-back seasons at Hudson Valley Community College, with a 16-0 record in conference play and a combined, five total losses overall.
In his final season with the Vikings, in 2008-09, Cook led the team to the NJCAA Division III National Tournament, advancing to the semifinals. It was his first head coaching job at the collegiate level. It taught him lessons applicable to today’s age of college basketball and provided an outlook not many other coaches share.
At the junior college level, while not having to love it, Cook grew to accept and learned to navigate the transfer portal’s ins and outs.
“It helped me understand this era a little bit more. Obviously, we still recruit freshmen. We want and you hope that this is a four or five-year relationship, but you can’t be pollyannaish about it and think, ‘Oh, the good old days.’ Adapt or die, adapt or die, and that’s what we have to do,” Cook said.
For Cook, it’s still about keeping the ‘main thing,’ the ‘main thing,’ when it comes to the overall transfer portal and recruitment. Earning a bachelor’s degree from Skidmore in ‘94, completing a master’s degree in social studies teaching at Union College two years later, and with a wife who graduated from the College of Saint Rose, Cook believes that ‘main thing,’ is found in classrooms and campuses, not the hardwood and the bank accounts.
“If my athletic director walked in right now and said, ‘Hey, we’re shutting down men’s basketball.’ Well, okay, that’s terrible, I still have degrees from Skidmore and Union College; somebody might hire me. I might have a spot somewhere to go do something because of my education and you can tell me about the money and about professional opportunities, I get it, but still, for the overwhelming majority of them, education is still what carries today,” said Cook.
“Some of the best of the best are gonna go make hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars because of their basketball. But what’s that? 1%? 2%? The rest of us need our college degree,” he continued. “At some point that ball is gonna stop bouncing, you’re gonna be 25, 28, or 30, and you’re going to need to fall back on that St. Edward’s degree.”
So, when Cook hit the transfer portal this past offseason for his NCAA Divison II basketball program, he returned to his roots and guys he thinks will identify with them. He’d recruited locals from the Capital Region to Austin, Texas, bringing in Niskayuna 2021 graduate Nick Benton as a freshman before transferring to Saint Anselm in ‘22.
Two more are slated to join the Hilltoppers from Cook’s old neck of the woods—former Siena College guard Mason Courtney and Saint Rose guard Latiek Briscoe.
“It’s hard, when you’re 18, 19, or 20, to come 1,800 miles away from the Capital Region. So, when we bring kids down here, we say, ‘Hey, there’s that part of- you can come into my office, and you can talk about home and I know what you’re talking about,’” Cook said. “They can come in my office, we can close the door and it’s like we can almost reminisce and talk about the ‘518’ and it feels like we’re home for a minute. Part of that, I think, brings a comfortability with some of the players that we get.”
Cook’s Hilltoppers are coming off tying their best season since 2019-20, going 21-11 across the 2023-24 campaign, with a 14-7 record in Lone Star Conference play. Courtney and Briscoe saw quite the opposite years on their respective teams, as the Golden Knights (D II) and Saints (D I) went a combined 15-46 this past season.
“Latiek and Mason, besides going to school five miles apart, things didn’t go perfectly right. This is a second chance, a breath of fresh air and I’m all for it. I look forward to getting it more,” Cook said.
“‘18-19, ‘19-20, we won 57 games. We just, since COVID, haven’t gotten that back,” he continued. “21 wins last year, 21 wins the year before, 17-12 the year before; I don’t know how many games we played in COVID (20) but we got to the championship that year. In the last few (years), we are good, just not good enough. A lot of teams would be happy with 59 wins in the last three years. We’re not going to give them back, but we need to get back into the NCAA Tournament and I’m hoping that these two guys that we’re talking about can help us do that.”
Courtney is set to be a junior at St. Edward’s along his second collegiate stop since graduating from Shenendehowa High School in 2021, where he played under friends of Cook’s – Paul Yattaw and Tony Dzikas.
In his freshman year at Siena, Courtney appeared in five games, logging 14 total minutes and zero points. As a sophomore, this past season, Courtney was thrust into a much larger role for a younger Saints team, which on top of some inexperience was also marred by nagging injuries throughout the season.
The local guard however made good use of his opportunity, finishing as only one of three Siena players to play in all 32 games, finishing fifth on the team in points-per-game (6.1), and second in total assists (63). However, the production came during a program-worst year for Siena, finishing 4-28 overall after another, conference tournament first-round elimination.
Siena head coach and fellow Shenendehowa alum Carmen Maciairiello, who recruited Courtney from his alma mater, was fired at the end of the 2023 season.
“When I’m home from our games, I’d have the (Siena) games on sometimes in the background while I’m getting organized, or I’d sit down and watch some of it. They had a tough year. Obviously, a lot going on with injuries, not winning, a coaching change,” Cook said. “Mason Courtney, every time I watched them play on those Sundays, I noticed the kid was playing hard, he clearly had to play out of position and he was clearly trying to do everything he could, in a tough situation.
“I’m watching him get guys together in the huddle, dive on the floor, try to bring the ball up against pressure, and I just had an appreciation. He, to me, stood out in a tough situation,” Cook added.
After learning the junior’s ‘main thing’ was becoming an orthopedic surgeon, stemming from some in-person meetings and over-the-phone conversations with Courtney and his former coaches. Cook was sold.
In Cook’s eyes, the ending at Siena showed him more about Courtney’s character than the play style.
“He’s hardened. You’re a local kid, whose parents are Siena alums, and you heard a lot of venom all last year. In year one, I don’t know if he made a shot. In year two – and we’re all on some sort of social media and the things that people said about this kid were not nice – and he just played. He just kept trying to figure out if he could just help his team get a win,” Cook said. “I think Mason would tell you himself that two years ago, he wouldn’t be ready to leave his family to come to Texas. I think that experience at Siena was real life and eye-opening.
“Firings, new team, losing, being booed, people on you on social media that hide behind a fake name and say mean stuff, that toughens you up and allows you to say- ‘I’m gonna come 1,800 miles and blaze a new path,’” he said.
Briscoe is no stranger to playing through and around adversity either, as coming into the 2023-24 campaign, he and the rest of the student-athletes at Saint Rose were informed that the school was closing at the end of that academic year.
On top of the initial uncertainty about his future, Briscoe going down to injury seven games into his sophomore season couldn’t have helped alleviate the pressure.
“His situation was tough and he is mature beyond his years,” Cook said, “and he’s a good player that I hope is a guy that can go get us a bucket. I want good guys that can play in a system, score, and shoot, and my hope with Latiek is that he can go get a bucket for us and add all sorts of value to the locker room.”
Briscoe played in 32 total games across his two years at Saint Rose, starting in 26 and averaging 10.3 points per game, on 42% shooting.
Again, Cook put feelers to the ‘518’ for research and recommendations of his new, potential guard, this time, going to Golden Knights’ coach Brian Beaury, who he called an ‘Albany institution,’ in basketball. However, the glowing impression that led Briscoe to St. Edward’s didn’t merely come from his old coach. Briscoe had to do some of the leg work himself.
“(Beaury) described a few of his players that he felt would be good for us. The one I kept coming back to, in terms of toughness, leadership, work ethic, and a wantingness to win, was Latiek,” Cook recalled. “Then I started talking to Latiek. This kid is from New York City, he had to earn everything, got told his school was closing, and he was the real deal of toughness. I talked to him and I looked down at the phone and said, ‘Man, we’ve just been talking for 45 minutes, just about life, his Mom, New York City and Saint Rose, and his injury.’
“His generation is not one to talk on the phone a lot. They don’t have long conversations. It’s just the way it is…Latiek is just kind of old school. His conversing and ringing you up not just to talk about basketball, but about life, family, goals, and what he wants to get out of this, just really struck me as, ‘Wow, I want to be around this kid,’” Cook continued. “Brian’s eyes say he can play. My eyes say he can play. Now, he was coming like this over phone conversations? I think Latiek and I are going to have a long relationship.”
But, as Cook’s coaching career nears the three-decade mark since starting at Hudson Falls High School in ’96, his future isn’t easily forgotten. With more than 400 wins across all levels of coaching and a winning percentage of .641, it’s hard to imagine the Watervliet native not being a hot commodity in major, Divison I programs.
Cook has seen it firsthand, both for himself and other, mid-major and Divison II coaches making the step up. Still, the local wants to keep the ‘main thing’ the ‘main thing.’
“Guys are getting opportunities and that can only help others and with someone A.D. (athletic director) maybe taking a shot. But, as you get older, and you look at your family, everybody is happy,” Cook said. “My wife has a great job, my daughter loves her college, my son is at the high school he wants to be at and everybody’s happy. Do I, at this point in our lives, try to do something and try to take a chance and disrupt everyone else’s happiness? I’m not sure.”
“If we keep winning, hopefully winning at a high level, maybe some things open up. If not, I’m living where it’s 90 degrees outside, I can hear the birds chirping and life is good. I’m on my time,” Cook added.
So far this month, Austin’s main weather observation site at Camp Mabry has recorded 0.7 inch of rain, but the year overall has been dry. Since Jan. 1, we’ve recorded just over 2.5 inches of rainfall, which is about 2.75 inches below normal at this point in the year.
While the weekend rain wasn’t exactly a drought-buster, we can still keep our hopes high — or, in the words of a classic infomercial: “But wait … there’s more!”
Morning: We’ll wake early Tuesday under dark and cloudy skies, as the sun doesn’t rise in Austin until 7:46 a.m. because of daylight saving time. Temperatures will be near 70 degrees, but don’t expect the same foggy start we saw Monday. Winds will be a bit gusty out of the south, which will help keep the low-level moisture mixed and prevent it from settling in and creating a layer of fog.
Midday: Sprinkles or light showers are possible through midday, but the heavier rainfall will hold off during the morning. The upper-level low pressure system approaching from the west will help produce active weather across West Texas during the first half of Tuesday.
Afternoon: However, across Central Texas an atmospheric lid, known as a capping inversion, will remain in place until surface temperatures warm up enough for rising air to break through the “cap.” Once that happens, the atmosphere will gradually destabilize through the afternoon and evening, allowing rain and thunderstorms to develop.
Breezy south winds will continue throughout the day, with gusts up to 25 mph. Afternoon temperatures are expected to climb into the upper 70s and lower 80s.
Once the cold front transits east of Austin on Wednesday, drier and cooler weather will settle in for the rest of the work week before 80-degree afternoon temperatures reemerge next weekend.
Austin, TX
Texas Mother Is Exonerated After 22 Years for a Crime That Never Happened – Innocence Project
(Austin, TX – March 9, 2026) Carmen Mejia was exonerated today after Travis County District Court Judge P. David Wahlberg dismissed a 2003 murder charge against her, following a ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) — the state’s highest criminal court — overturning her convictions and finding that new evidence established that Ms. Mejia is “actually innocent.”
The CCA’s decision, on Jan. 22, 2026, found Ms. Mejia actually innocent of the death of a 10-month-old infant in her care who was critically burned from scalding bathwater due to a water heater in her rental home that lacked safety technology. Ms. Mejia has spent the last 22 years in prison for what the State claimed to be murder but now agrees was, in fact, a tragic accident.
“While we are overjoyed that the courts finally recognize that Ms. Mejia is innocent, this grave injustice should have never happened in the first place,” said Vanessa Potkin, Ms. Mejia’s Innocence Project attorney. “Ms. Mejia is a woman of immeasurable strength, who has relied on her deep faith to withstand a traumatic period of her life that most people wouldn’t be able to survive. Her case is far from isolated. There is a clear pattern in our criminal legal system of wrongly accusing caregivers when a child in their care dies from an accident or illness, particularly when those caregivers are women of color. We have seen too many cases like Ms. Mejia’s where false and outdated medical testimony lead to wrongful convictions, and there are undoubtedly thousands more people still wrongly imprisoned because of such testimony.”
“Ms. Mejia, today we acknowledge that our office failed you,” said Sarah Byrom, Assistant District Attorney, Travis County District Attorney’s Office. “The State pursued and obtained a conviction against you for what we now understand was a tragic accident and that failure cost you over 20 years of your life. Nothing that I say, and nothing that we do in this courtroom today can restore the time that was taken from you or undo the pain and separation that you and your children have had to endure.”
A Tragic Accident and Lost Evidence
On July 28, 2003, Ms. Mejia was at home with her four children and babysitting a 10-month-old when the fatal accident occurred. While Ms. Mejia was nursing her youngest child, her eldest daughter tried to bathe the baby. The water heater in Ms. Mejia’s rental home lacked the now-standard safety features, allowing the tub water to quickly reach 147.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Within seconds of being exposed to this high water temperature, the baby suffered third-degree burns. He died in the hospital later that day as a result of complications from the burn injuries.
Instead of recognizing this as the terrible accident it was, police arrested Ms. Mejia for murder.
A combination of factors — in particular, invalid medical testimony and lost evidence supporting Ms. Mejia’s account of the accident — contributed to her wrongful conviction. No medical burn expert was called to testify at trial. Instead, the prosecution’s experts — a medical doctor and retired law enforcement investigator — incorrectly asserted that the baby’s injuries could only have been caused by an adult intentionally holding the child down in scalding water.
As part of their investigation, forensic interviews were conducted with Ms. Mejia’s children after the incident. The children’s statements, which were video recorded, supported Ms. Mejia’s account that this was an accident. However, the recordings disappeared from law enforcement’s custody before the trial, as a result, the jury never heard these corroborating accounts.
At trial, the State presented no evidence of prior mistreatment or violence. Ms. Mejia had no criminal history.
Ms. Mejia steadfastly maintained her innocence, including during her testimony at trial. Nonetheless, the jury returned a guilty verdict, convicting her of murder and injury to a child. She was sentenced to life in prison, lost her parental rights, and did not see her four children again for over two decades.
“In this case from the start, the worst was assumed: That this was an intentional act,” said Collin Bellair, Assistant District Attorney, Travis County District Attorney’s Office, at today’s hearing. “We could not have been more wrong, and it turned a tragic accident into a wrongful conviction.”
A Conviction Collapses Under Faulty Science
One significant person who believed in Ms. Mejia’s innocence during her trial was Art Guerrero, the courtroom bailiff. Ms. Mejia’s testimony and her vehement declarations of innocence stayed with Mr. Guerrero years after her conviction, so much so that he contacted the Innocence Project, the District Attorney’s Office, and another judge, urging a reexamination of Ms. Mejia’s case.
“From the time that you were taken from this place to prison, you were not forgotten … you were not forgotten. There was somebody thinking about you the whole time and just trying to figure out what to do and how to do it,” Mr. Guerrero said, addressing Ms. Mejia at her exoneration hearing.
After the Innocence Project took up Ms. Mejia’s case in 2021, the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office also agreed to investigate her innocence claim. During the reinvestigation, they located Ms. Mejia’s children, who had been adopted in a closed adoption and had spent the past two decades wondering what happened to their birth mother, even hiring a private investigator to no success.
In 2024, the Innocence Project filed a writ of habeas corpus in Travis County District Court, challenging Ms. Mejia’s wrongful conviction. Over the course of a year, Judge Wahlberg conducted hearings at which multiple experts presented evidence that — contrary to what the State’ presented at trial — the child’s injuries were consistent with an accidental scalding.
Wendy Shields, senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy — whose decades of research have focused on preventing injuries in the home with particular expertise in scald burns — testified in 2024 that the water heater in Ms. Mejia’s rental home lacked recommended plumbing safety features designed to prevent scald injuries. She explained that this situation is common in homes built prior to the 1980s, like Ms. Mejia’s, before building safety codes were revised to require tap-level protections against scalding.
“Burn injuries remain a leading cause of accidental injury and death among children. My research estimates that approximately 6,500 children experience tap-water scald burns each year in the United States. Between 2013 and 2022, there were approximately 1,600 tap-water scald injuries involving children under age 18 in incidents where another child was involved,” Dr. Shield said today.
“The technology to prevent these injuries already exists. Devices such as thermostatic mixing valves and other temperature-limiting plumbing protections can dramatically reduce the risk of tap-water scald burns. However, these protections are not consistently required in older housing, leaving many families without basic safeguards. This is particularly concerning for renters, who often do not control the maintenance or temperature settings of the water heater in their homes,” Dr. Shield added.
In 2024, Dr. James Gallagher, a burn surgeon and former director of the William Randolph Hearst Burn Center — one of the nation’s leading trauma burn centers — testified that the tub’s incredibly hot water could have caused accidental burn injuries “in a matter of seconds.” He found that “there is no medical evidence to support that this child’s injuries had to be the result of an intentional act by an adult,” directly refuting the 2003 trial testimony of the State’s experts.
One of Ms. Mejia’s daughters, now an adult who missed out on growing up with her mother, also testified about her recollections of the accident, including turning on the water.
At Ms. Mejia’s 2003 trial, the State’s medical examiner testified that the death was a homicide based on the available evidence at the time. Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, who performed the autopsy, reversed the manner of death determination from homicide to accidental in 2025 and testified that she would have “ruled this an accident,” if she’d had all of the information now available. When asked during post-conviction proceedings why she decided to take this step, Dr. Peacock responded with great clarity, because “it’s the right thing to do.”
As a result of the new evidence presented in these hearings, the State’s key experts recanted their testimony supporting the prosecution’s theory that an adult had to have intentionally caused the burns. Judge Wahlberg found that no crime took place and subsequently, the CCA ruled that Ms. Mejia had established her innocence and overturned her conviction.
In dismissing the case based on her “actual innocence,” Judge Wahlberg told Ms. Mejia, “There’s nothing that I can say at this point that will bring back those 23 years. Signing this piece of paper won’t bring it back. There is no amount of money that will ever compensate you for losing the best years of your life. I wish I had that power. What I can do is say to you that there is a reason to hope and believe that your future will be better every day from now on, and I pray that it is so.”
Austin, TX
Bike MS Texas MS 150 returns April 25–26 with routes up to 96 miles and Leap Ahead option
Austin, TX — Bike MS: ACC Texas MS 150 is rolling back into Central Texas April 25–26 and it’s bigger, better, and bolder than ever. Sponsored by American Communications Construction, this legendary two-day ride is the largest fundraising event in the Bike MS series and brings riders from across Texas together to fund research and support for people living with MS.
Riders of all levels can find a distance to match their goals. Route distances this year include day-one options of 96, 75, 50 and 38 miles and day-two options of 55 and 82 miles. Plus the fan-favorite “Leap Ahead Route” on Day Two that lets riders skip forward and roll into the finish at Texas A&M’s campus amid cheering crowds.
New for 2026 is a scenic 38-mile option launching from Bastrop and winding through Buescher State Park and the Lost Pines, a tree-lined, single-day alternative for riders who want the full Bike MS experience without the two-day format.
The ride funds the National MS Society’s work. Bike MS has helped raise more than $1.4 billion for research, care and advocacy, funding treatments, navigator programs and partnerships that connect people affected by MS to resources. Your miles and dollars make a direct impact.
One of the largest and most visible teams on the ride is Team Tacodeli, founded in 2004 and proudly sponsored by Austin’s Tacodeli. What began as a dozen riders and roughly $10,000 raised has grown into one of the MS 150’s most successful volunteer-led fundraisers. Team Tacodeli consistently ranks among the state’s top fundraisers and has raised millions for the cause. For team details and how to join or volunteer, visit TeamTacodeli.org.
Team Tacodeli also hosts an annual fundraiser (admission $30; kids 12 & under free) featuring a Tacodeli buffet, New Belgium beer and non-alcoholic drinks (while supplies last), a full cash bar, live music, silent auction, kids’ activities and more , with 100% of proceeds benefiting the National MS Society. Riders for the ACC Texas MS 150 are asked to meet a fundraising minimum (Team Tacodeli minimum: $400).
Want to ride, volunteer or support? Register for the ACC Texas MS 150 or learn more about the event and how funds are used at the National MS Society’s website.
Learn more about Team Tacodeli: https://teamtacodeli.org/
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