Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
By Tom Archdeacon
When it’s comes to basketball, Brandon Noel always has tried to match his mom and then go a little bit farther.
That was always a good approach for the 6-foot-8 Wright State forward until this last time when it involved an ACL injury and what’s been a two-year recovery.
But to fully appreciate Noel’s return to the game this season — in his third year at WSU, this will be his first actually on the court — you need to know how it all began.
Melinda Noel raised Brandon, her only child, as a single parent, first on a 20-acre farm outside of Lucasville and then in Chillicothe.
A basketball standout at Lucasville Valley High who went on to play at Walsh College, she taught the game to her young son.
“We had a basketball court at our farm,” she said. “We concreted the driveway and we’d play out there all the time.”
