A coach from S.V. Marshall High School said reports in the Commonwealth about a scuffle that led to the cancellation of basketball games against Greenwood High School last week were inaccurate and unfairly blame fans from his school.
Altercations in the stands near the end of the Dec. 3 girls’ game in Tchula led officials to stop that contest and call off the boys’ game that was scheduled to begin immediately afterward. The incident is being investigated by Mississippi’s governing body of high school athletics.
Antwayn Patrick, head boys basketball coach at Marshall, claimed that a push from a Greenwood fan, which sent a female Marshall student tumbling down the stairs, touched off the brawl in the stands that led to the games’ cancellation.
Marshall had a 2-point lead in the girls’ contest when Greenwood’s Kelsey Brown hit a long jump shot as time expired. A number of Greenwood fans and players rushed the court, mistakenly believing they’d won the game on a buzzer-beating three-pointer. Officials, instead, ruled the shot a game-tying two-pointer.
During the confusion, a melee broke out in the stands between fans. Leflore County Supervisor Anjuan Brown, the father of Kelsey Brown, found himself in the middle of the altercation.
Brown said Marshall fans were yelling profanity and other insults at his daughter and the tussle touched off when a Marshall fan struck his older daughter, Brittany, who is pregnant, in the face. He said he got involved in an effort to break up the fight.
Patrick disputed that account. He said Brown’s family and a family of Marshall fans had been “trash talking” throughout the game.
According to Patrick, it wasn’t until an unidentified Greenwood fan, who Patrick said was seated with Brown, pushed a female Marshall fan down the steps that the altercation broke out.
“That’s what started the whole incident,” Patrick said.
When asked about that allegation, Brown denied that anyone had been pushed down the steps.
Patrick said he wasn’t absolving Marshall of responsibility but added he objected to what he saw as attempts to place the blame for the incident entirely on Marshall’s fans.
“Certainly, we at S.V. Marshall will take responsibility for the event that transpired ... ,” Patrick wrote in an email.
“Could the officers and officials have handled the skirmish better? Maybe,” Patrick wrote. “I don’t want to give the readers the impression that it was all Greenwood High’s fault, because it was certainly not.”
Still, Patrick insisted that the games had to be canceled only after things turned physical, something for which he said Greenwood fans were at least equally responsible. He also said officers asked Anjuan Brown to leave the game but Brown refused.
Brown said S.V. Marshall’s principal did ask everyone involved to leave, but at that point the game had already been called. Brown said he refused only because he didn’t want to leave his wife or daughter Brittany in the gym.
“I was not going to leave any of my family members in there,” Brown said. “I was trying to get everybody out.”
Patrick also asserted that Kelsey Brown attempted to leave the court to enter the skirmish and had to be restrained.
Anjuan Brown said Kelsey tried to leave the court to help her mother, who had fallen during the mayhem, but was stopped by both her coach and older sister before she even crossed the out-of-bounds line on the court.
“She never went into the stands,” Brown said.
Patrick also disputed the characterization — made by Brown and Greenwood Athletic Director Clinton Gatewood — that the atmosphere in Tchula was hostile.
“The environment at Marshall on the night of the game was high-spirited, not hostile,” Patrick wrote. “The assertion that Greenwood High fans and players were being harassed is a misleading statement at best and intentionally distorting the truth at its worst.”
Officials from the Mississippi High School Activities Association are reviewing film and reports from the game but have not yet issued the results of their investigation. Ricky Neaves, associate director of athletics for MHSAA, said last week that there was the possibility of sanctions against either school.
Greenwood school board member Bill Clay said the district is still conducting its own investigation and would not comment on the incident until that report was complete.
