Former McNeese baseball athlete Brent Meaux now makes basketball calls
by Louis Bonnette
How’s this for a six day schedule to watch basketball?
San Antonio on Monday, Tulsa on Wednesday and Austin on Saturday.
That’s this week’s worksheet for McNeese State graduate and former Cowboy baseball letterman Brent Meaux.
He runs a State Farm Insurance agency in Jasper, TX but he is also one of the top basketball officials in the nation, calling games in the Big 12, the Southland, C-USA, Ohio Valley and Sun Belt conferences.
The Baton Rouge native was in San Antonio to call a game between UTSA and Texas Wesleyan, then will be in Tulsa for a bout between the Golden Hurricane and Southern Miss and in Austin for a televised game between Texas and Iowa State.
Basketball season has been like that for him for the past 13 years or ever since he made the jump to call Division I.
“Over 650 games,” he said of the contests he figures he has called since then, averaging about three per week.
“As an ex-athlete I’ve always loved the game,” Meaux said. “Now, I’m getting to see great basketball and get paid for it too.”
In the 13 years that he has been a collegiate official, he’s progressed all the way up the chart. He’s now the No. 1 ranked official out of the Southland Conference and last year was selected to call the NCAA tournament, working the Miami-St. Mary’s contest in Little Rock.
That game was a memory for him but so have been others.
His first game under the big top came six years ago. On a Friday he was called at home to be in Louisville for a 1 p.m. Saturday matchup between the Cardinals and Oklahoma.
Rick Pitino was in his second year at Louisville and Meaux wasn’t going to miss this game.
He’s also officiated games coached by Bobby Knight.
“I’ve bumped into him a few times,” Meaux said about Knight, who is now retired from coaching. “He’s really a good coach to work a game for. He will make you work, now, but the officials will not be a part of his strategy unless we screw up.”
Among all of the calls he has made, two he remembers well.
One was a charging call he made against Nebraska in a game with Baylor two years ago and the other was a three point goal he called in a Southern Miss ? Tulane contest.
“The game was at Nebraska and the charging call I made against Nebraska wiped off a game winning shot . They went on to lose in overtime.”
The three point goal came in a game six years ago before monitors had been installed to review plays. Tulane made the goal which Meaux credited as a three pointer and won the game by a point. It was later found that in a review of the tape of the contest the shot was only from two point range.
He calls last year’s finals between Northwestern State and UT Arlington as his most memorable Southland Conference game.
“Here was Northwestern State in the finals after having knocked off Stephen F. Austin which had been picked by everyone to win the conference tournament. The other team was UTA which had never been there before,” he said.
He calls McNeese games but only non-conference games in Lake Charles. Conference games involving McNeese he will call on the road.
“I think that it is just an understanding that we have in our association that we don’t call home conference games for schools from which we have graduated,” he said, adding that it was 10 years before he called any McNeese game.
The best collegiate player in a game he has worked thus far he said was Kevin Durant at Texas last year.
“Back when I was officiating high school games I called some games at the AAU tournament in Las Vegas when Kevin Garnett, Chris Paul and Alan Iverson were prep players and they were something to see, but the best collegiate player I’ve seen while working a game was Durant,” he said.
Meaux grew up in Baton Rouge and had been a standout athlete at Belair High School. He came to McNeese to play baseball and to also receive his degree, which he did in 1987, a marketing degree.
“I played for two different coaches at McNeese,” said Meaux who played both shortstop and second base. “The first year I played for Triny Rivera and the next year for Tony (Robichaux). We weren’t that good but we did have a good group of guys.”
His most memorable game was one against LSU at Alex Box Stadium.
“It was right there in my home town. I hit a triple and a single and then I was credited with the error that lost the game for us. It was a rock that hit off my shoulder and bounded into the outfield,” he said.
Serving as a referee at intramural basketball games during his school days at McNeese got him into officiating and he advanced from high school to college officiating in seven years.
He was a regular at the Texas state prep championship tournament and called his last one in 1996.
In his senior year at McNeese he also worked with local State Farm agent Dave McCarty and once he graduated he moved to Dallas where he served 10 years as a claims adjuster, getting his own agency 11 years ago.
?I’ve had a lot of mentors who have really helped me,” he said, noting McCarty and former Cowboy assistant baseball coach and now McNeese assistant director of recreational facilities Randy Cooper as well as former Northwestern State basketball coach Tynes Hildebrand who now serves as an observer of officials for the NCAA and eight conferences.
“Brent is one of our young officials who has a very good future. He’s very solid, his call accuracy is very good and he works at getting good position. It was a plumb for him to be one of 96 officials to call the NCAA tournament last year,” said Hildebrand.
“He’s an asset, to both the NCAA and McNeese State.”
Meaux is also one of the few former McNeese athletes to go into collegiate or professional officiating. Former collegiate football officials were Johnny Perrodin (track letterman at McNeese) and the late Enos Derbonne (baseball letter) while baseball standout Mark Chapman got as high as Class A as a professional baseball umpire.
