Breaking: Cincinnati’s Ge’Lawn Guyn Leaving Basketball Team

As has been rumored for weeks, if not months, Cincinnati Bearcats senior point guard Ge’Lawn Guyn has opted to leave the basketball team instead of attempt to gain a medical redshirt and return to UC for a fifth year. The Cincinnati Enquirer has broken the news.

"There has been some uncertainty regarding the status of injured University of Cincinnati basketball player Ge’Lawn Guyn, and UC head coach Mick Cronin said that Guyn probably will not return to the team.“I’ve given him his release,” Cronin said, in an interview with The Enquirer. “If he decides to graduate and transfer, that’s up to him.”"

Guyn played just two games this season before injuring a ligament in his right pinky finger. He’s been sidelined ever since.

While he was lost for the season due to surgery on that pinky, he could have applied for a medical redshirt and returned to the Bearcats next year. But he perhaps saw the writing on the wall that Troy Caupain, Farad Cobb, and Kevin Johnson were progressing beyond him, eating away at his already diminished playing time.

Or his handlers are telling Guyn that he’s better off elsewhere.

Either way, I think both parties will view splitting ways as a win-win. For Guyn, he will have a chance to take his excellent defensive skills (and they are out of this world) to another program. He’d likely earn 30-35 minutes at either point or shooting guard where ever he winds up.

For Mick Cronin and Cincinnati, they’ll be able to plan for next year with Caupain, Cobb, Johnson and new freshmen Justin Jenifer and Jacob Evans in the back court instead of trying to figure out how to get Guyn into the mix. I’d expect the latter trio will earn the major of minutes with spatterings of Jenifer and Evans along the way. That is, unless the coaches give Evans a shot at the three in smaller sets.

But back to Guyn, I wish him the best of luck. His efforts to rebuild the Bearcats as a defensive juggernaut paved the way for UC to land prolific scorers such as Caupain, Cobb, Gary Clark, and Evans, developing into a much more balanced and quite frankly dangerous team. I’ll never forget the ways Guyn completely shut down UConn and Louisville’s point guards Shabazz Napier and Russ Smith last season, helping Cincinnati win the first AAC regular season championship.

So good luck, G. I hope you land on your feet and thrive, where ever that may be.