‘The clock is running out’: Cameron Brown reflects on a basketball journey at St. Joe’s

A question was being asked to Cameron Brown, and the asker of said question briefly forgot how many wins St. Joseph’s had during Brown’s freshman year on campus.

“Six,” Brown said fast enough that there was barely any silence.

Oh, he remembers. Earlier in the conversation Friday, an early afternoon practice was finishing up and Brown sat in a chair facing the court.

“The early days looked nothing like this,” Brown said. “We didn’t have this many people in the gym working out. We didn’t have this many support staff.”

Brown, a 6-foot-6 guard from Laurel, Md., was Billy Lange’s first high school recruit after taking over in 2019 following the firing of Phil Martelli. Lange had to rebuild a roster nearly from scratch, and a staff, too. He hired assistant coach Brenden Straughn, who coached Brown at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. So when Brown decommitted from William & Mary, St. Joe’s was a logical destination.

But Lange didn’t have a whole lot to sell. He couldn’t promise Brown any time frame on when the winning would happen, but he could promise playing time. Brown started 31 of 32 games during the 2019-20 season and 131 of his program-leading 143 games on Hawk Hill.

Five years later, time is running out on Brown’s playing days. The Hawks enter this week’s Atlantic 10 tournament seeded ninth. They open their tournament vs. No. 8 George Mason on Wednesday in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center (11:30 a.m., USA Network).

Brown’s career at St. Joe’s has been about waiting — the Hawks were 6-26 in his freshman year, 5-15 in a sophomore season heavily impacted by the pandemic, 11-19 in year three, and 16-17 last season — and also about loyalty and finishing something he started.

“I have a lot of mixed feelings about it,” Brown said. “I haven’t fully put it in perspective because we want to make a deep run into March, so I feel like we’re still going to be playing for a little bit.

“It’s just awesome to look back at all the memories I have and the time I’ve spent here. Internally I know that the clock is running out for me. So I’m just trying to give the team my best so I can say when I’m done, I gave it my all.”

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The 2023-24 season offered Brown a chance to see what winning feels like. But it’s also a reminder about how hard winning is, not that he needed one.

The Hawks went 10-3 in the nonconference portion of their schedule. They beat then-No. 18 Villanova on the road for the first time since 2004. They took Kentucky to overtime at Rupp Arena — and probably should have won. They beat Princeton, a Sweet 16 team last season, at Hagan. They also provided Brown with what he called the “highlight” of his career: a Big 5 Classic victory in the inaugural tournament.

But St. Joe’s will begin its run at an A-10 title at 19-12 overall after going 9-9 in the A-10, a conference record built on too many defensive lapses and some bad injuries.

Looking back, Lange said he had a pretty good idea of the player he was recruiting in 2019. Brown, Lange said, comes from a good family. He saw early how Brown picked up on everything the coaching staff threw at him.

“But you don’t realize the impact he’s going to have given everything that we were going to have to go through in this transition,” Lange said. “We couldn’t have been blessed with a better person than Cam Brown.

“I feel for him. We’ve been so disrupted by injuries in the latter half of our A-10 season. But I think if you look at it globally, from where we were and he was, to where we are and he is, this has been awesome for him. And we’re not done.”

Brown has been a steadying presence for the Hawks, who have an all-league caliber guard in Erik Reynolds and a bunch of young pieces learning how to win in college. Brown scored 10.9 points per game on a career-best 37.3% shooting clip from three-point range. Xzayvier Brown, one of those young pieces, said Brown “sets the standard.”

“He’s uplifting and has a great spirit and you can count on him every single day,” the freshman from Roman Catholic said.

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Asked about Cameron Brown’s leadership style, Lange pointed to his being faithful and loyal, traits exhibited in still being on campus.

He scored 13.3 points and grabbed six rebounds per game last season while shooting 36% from deep. A Power 5 conference could have used that from a graduate transfer in the portal. But Brown said winning somewhere else “wouldn’t feel the same.” He also said Lange was a big reason he stuck around.

“He’s been preaching the same thing ever since I’ve been here,” said Brown, who wants to play professionally and later coach. “I think that’s why I’ve stayed for so long because I respect him and just want to help him see his vision through.”

Lange, Brown, said, has taught him a lot about leadership, about learning that different people respond to things in different ways. Every Christmas, Lange gives his players a book. This year’s was Brian Tracy’s No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline.

St. Joe’s, Lange said, is a place that becomes part of you if you allow it. In other words, if you have the self-discipline to let it.

“The school is about resilience,” Lange said. “It’s about loyalty. It’s about faithfulness. It’s about grit. It’s about toughness. It’s about perseverance. And I think Cam has embodied all that because of all that we’ve been through. In the current landscape of college basketball, we’re not allowing young men to taste that and touch that, which is a setup for failure [in] their life, right? He’s embodied that.”