Brion Rush

Brion Rush
Player information
Full name	Lonniel Brion Rush
birthday	November 15, 1984
place of birth	Shreveport (LA), USA
size	186 cm
position	Shooting Guard / Point Guard
college	Grambling State
Club information
society	BG Göttingen
league	Basketball Bundesliga
Jersey number	15th
Clubs as active
2002–2006 Grambling State Tigers ( NCAA ) 2006–2007 Fileni Jesi 2007–2008 Chorale Roanne Basket 2008–2009 Strasbourg IG 2009–2010 Triumph Ljuberzy 2010–2012 Krasnye Krylja Samara 2012 Élan Chalon 2012–2014 BK Astana 2014–2015 al-Riyadi Beirut 2015 ratiopharm Ulm 2016 KK Sutjeska Nikšić 2016 Daneshgahe Azad Teheran 2016–2017 SLUC Nancy Basket Since 2017 BG Göttingen 00000 00000 00000 00000 0

Lonniel Brion Rush (born November 15, 1984 in Shreveport , Louisiana ) is an American basketball player . After studying in his home country, Rush began a professional career in Europe, where, after a stint in Italy , he played for French and Russian clubs in particular . In 2012, after winning the Russian Cup competition, he was named MVP of the finals. After a brief stint in Beirut , Lebanon , Rush, who has also had Montenegrin citizenship since 2012, also worked for the German first division club ratiopharm Ulm in the 2014/15 basketball Bundesliga . Since the 2017/18 season he has been playing in Germany again and this time in the service of the BG Göttingen .

Career

After finishing school in his hometown, Rush stayed in his home region and went to study at the African-American Grambling State University , where he played basketball for four years from 2002 for the Tigers college team in the NCAA's Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) . The successes of the Tigers basketball team were long ago, however, and the Tigers were able to qualify for a postseason tournament in Division I for the first time and last time in 1980, when they were eliminated in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament . Within his team, however, Rush was one of the strongest players and received in his senior year 2006 as a senior as the successor to Obie Trotter, the award of Player of the Year of the entire SWAC. However, this was not enough to recommend himself for a contract in the highest endowed professional league NBA .

Instead, Rush began a professional career in Europe in 2006, where he got a contract with Aurora Fileni in the second division Legadue in Jesi, Italy . The club retired as eighth of the main round in the play-off semi- final series and thus missed the remaining promotion place in the top division. Rush did well with more than 20 points per game in the regular season for a contract with the French champions Chorale Basket from Roanne in the top French league LNB Pro A . When the club participated for the first time in the highest-ranking European club competition ULEB Euroleague 2007/08 , the French champions won twice against the German champions Brose Baskets , but also retired after only four wins in 14 games after the preliminary round. At the end of the season they reached the final of the French championship again, in which they were clearly defeated by SLUC Nancy Basket with a difference of more than 30 points in a new edition of the previous year's final. In the following season, Rush played for the league rivals Illkirchen-Graffenstaden Basket in Strasbourg , Alsace , which he helped return to the play-offs for the French championship with over 20 points per game, in which the first round of the main round and later title winners ASVEL was defeated. Rush narrowly missed the position of top scorer in the French league with his individual points scoring in second place .

For the 2009/10 season Rush moved to Russia and played for the Moscow suburb club Triumph from Lyubertsy . In the Eurocup 2009/10 they only just failed to advance to the intermediate round. After the club had missed an improvement on the previous year's position in sixth place in the championship, Rush moved to the south of Russia to the former EuroChallenge finalist Krasnye Krylja from Samara , with whom he played in the preliminary round of the Eurocup 2010/11, among others, at the previous year's German finalist Alba Berlin failed. In the newly introduced PBL , Samara reached eighth place in each of the following two years. In the Russian cup competition, which was played without the participants in the supranational VTB United League introduced in 2009 , the young successor club to ZSK WWS was able to win a title for the first time in 2012, with Rush being named Most Valuable Player of the final round. At the beginning of the 2012/13 season he briefly returned to France, where he played again in the ULEB Euroleague 2012/13 with French champions Élan Sportif from Chalon-sur-Saône . Even with Élan Chalon, Alba Berlin proved to be too high a hurdle when it came to failing to advance to the second round. After only eight appearances in the French championship, Rush left the club again at the beginning of December and switched to the Kazakh champions BK Astana. However, the club from the capital Nur-Sultan (Astana until 2019) mainly plays with mainly Russian clubs in the VTB United League. While Rush was able to defend the Kazakh championship title twice with the club, they were eliminated in the VTB League twice in the pre-play-offs in the round of 16.

For the 2014/15 season, Rush's employer was located in Asia, but this time he played in the Lebanese capital Beirut on the Mediterranean for the master al-Riyadi together with his compatriot Jeremiah Massey . However, he stayed there only a few weeks before signing a contract with the former German cup finalist ratiopharm from Ulm in mid-February 2015 . The Ulm team narrowly defeated Telekom Baskets Bonn as fifth in the main round in the first play-off round , before losing to Brose Baskets Bamberg, first and later title winner, in the semi-final series. In the following season, Rush only signed at the turn of the year with the Montenegrin first division club KK Sutjeska from Nikšić . There he stayed only six weeks before he left the club and signed a contract with the sports club of the Islamic Azad University in the Iranian capital Tehran . With this team he retired in the Iranian Super League after the fifth main round place in the first play-off round for the championship in seven games. For the following season Rush returned to France, where he signed a contract with ex-champion SLUC Nancy in mid-December, who had prevented Rush's title win with Chorale Roanne nine years earlier. At last year's third-bottom from Lorraine , however, Rush could not prevent this time from being the bottom of the table in 2017 for the first time in 23 years and leaving the top division. In the 2017/18 basketball Bundesliga , Rush made a significant contribution to securing the relegation of his new club Göttingen . In this regular season Rush scored 97 three-point throws, making it the most successful three-point shooter in the league.

Web links

• easyCredit BBL - Brion Rush - player profile on the easyCredit Basketball-Bundesliga website
• RUSH, BRION - Profile on the website of the EuroLeague ( English )
• Brion Rush College Stats - Statistics from college seasons at sports-reference.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lonniel Brion Rush. FIBA , accessed on June 26, 2015 (English, player profile). 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Experienced man for the backcourt: Ulm signs shooting guard Brion Rush. Basketball Bundesliga , February 11, 2015, accessed on June 26, 2015 (media info ratiopharm Ulm in the news archive). 
3. ↑ Legadue: Brion Rush. Legadue , archived from the original on August 23, 2007 ; accessed on June 26, 2015 (Italian, player profile). 
4. ↑ Brion Rush - Joueurs - ProA. Ligue Nationale de Basket , accessed June 26, 2015 (French, player profile).