Basketball: Forrest leaving Marlin’s staff

Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, May 12, 2013

It’s believed UL assistant basketball coach Shawn Forrest is leaving the program and has accepted a similar position at fellow Sun Belt Conference-member Western Kentucky.

WKU is expected to soon make the announcement, perhaps as early as Monday.

Forrest has spent just one season with the Ragin’ Cajuns, coming to UL after four seasons on the North Texas staff of current LSU head coach Johnny Jones.

Forrest becomes the second of head coach Bob Marlin’s assistants to leave UL in as many seasons.

The contract of ex-Cajun assistant Nikita Johnson was not renewed after the 2011-12 season, and Forrest was hired shortly afterward.

Meanwhile, the Cajuns are believed to have made a late-week addition to their roster, signing power forward Vieux Kande to a scholarship agreement.

Because the NCAA’s letter-of-intent signing period has already ended, UL cannot formalize or comment on the agreement until later this offseason.

Kande originally signed last fall with South Alabama, which had an in-season coaching change.

Listed as both 6-foot-8 and 6-9 and anywhere from 210 to 222 pounds, Kande played this past season at The Sagemont School in Weston, Fla.

When he signed with South Alabama, Kande was described by the Jaguars as a “Dakar, Senegal native … in his second year of playing basketball after attending SEEDS Academy in his home country.”

“Vieux is a high-energy, long, athletic post player,” Sagemont head coach Adam Ross said last November, after South Alabama signed him. “He’s a guy that plays with incredible intensity and loves playing the game of basketball. … His best basketball is in front of him.”

According to Sfhighschoolsports.com, Kande “runs the floor like a guard,” “has a nose for the ball that allows him to get back on transition defense and wreak havoc with monster blocks” and is “a little raw offensively, but … makes his presence known on the floor.”

Before signing with South Alabama, the website reported, Kande also had offers Florida Atlantic, Youngstown State, Stetson and Maryland-Baltimore County.