Bowen wants answers, truth

Brian Bowen had the opportunity to spend a couple of days last week playing in real basketball games, replete with scoreboards and referees and with every courtside seat filled.

It’s unclear when he’ll be able to do that again.

Bowen might have been one of the most talked-about players in NCAA basketball over the last year, without so much as playing a single second of a game. He’s the one-time Louisville commit who left amid massive scandal — the federal probe into the college game, including allegations that his father took money during the recruiting process — and subsequently transferred to South Carolina.

But the NCAA hasn’t cleared him yet. It might not. So he’s taking a long look at the NBA, and Bowen’s invitation to the draft combine last week was a fact-finding mission that will help him decide whether to formally turn pro or return to school with hopes that his collegiate eligibility will be restored so he can play with the Gamecocks.

“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever been through in my life,” Bowen said after one of his 5-on-5 games at the combine. “They took the game away from me, a game I truly love. It made me realize how much passion and love I do have for the game. I put that into my workouts every day and I go as hard as I can.”

The 6-foot-7 Bowen of Saginaw, Mich. has until the end of the month to decide whether to keep his name in the draft or not. The draft itself is June 21. And there’s been no indication if the NCAA will offer him any clarity before he has not make his stay-or-go choice.

“My lawyer and the school are dealing with it,” Bowen said.

His is a most curious case, even in a draft that has a handful of players who have been tainted on some level by the ongoing mess that reverberated through the college game last season and probably will continue having a ripple effect for the foreseeable future.

Billy Preston, the 6-10 forward who left Kansas while being investigated by the NCAA and played professionally in Europe, was at the combine trying to show his worth to NBA clubs. Same goes for the 6-4 De’Anthony Melton, who left USC after not being able to play this past season because a family friend was linked to the scandal.

Melton said the interviews with teams at the combine had little to do with basketball and mostly centered on his side of the story.

“I just broke it down for them,” Melton said. “I told them from the very beginning to the very end. I know there’s a lot of reports out there about what happened and what was going down, I told them my feelings about everything and why I kept quiet through the whole situation. I gave them what they were asking for.”

Bowen