Roger Powell (basketball)
Roger Powell ( born January 15, 1983 in Joliet, Illinois ) is a retired American professional basketball player. The 1.98 m wide Powell played in the position of power forwards and the Small Forwards.
While his father Roger senior graduated from Illinois State University and where he successfully played for the Redbirds basketball, Roger Jr. was active during his studies at the University of Illinois for the high school team Fighting Illini in the NCAA Division I. With the team he reached in his senior year along with the future NBA star Deron Williams and Dee Brown, the final game in the national championship finals, which and against the Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to Raymond Felton, Sean May, the later NBA & BBL player Reyshawn Terry was lost.
After a vain effort to get a contract in the NBA, he played a season for Rockford Lightning in the Continental Basketball Association. For the 2006/07 season, he managed to jump into the squad the Utah Jazz in the NBA, where he played again with his former teammate Williams and Brown together. During the season he moved to the Arkansas RimRockers in the NBA Development League. After the season he continued his career in Europe, and first played in the Italian Teramo in Serie A. After one season, he moved to Israel and played for Hapoel Jerusalem and in the following season in the Spanish ACB League for the club from Murcia. At the bottom team relegated and later he was released from his contract in January 2010 and joined the French LNB Pro A club for Jeanne d' Arc Dijon, which had recently been taken over as coach by former German national coach Henrik Dettmann. Powell was able to complete only two games for the club, who also descended analogous to Murcia in Spain at the end of the season as Table.
In October 2010 he was awarded a three month contract with the German vice-champion German Bank Skyliners Frankfurt, which was extended in spite of a temporary knee injury Powell. After a cheekbone fracture Powell played the season with a mask to an end. The main round Second eventually lost in the deciding game of the play-off semi-final series at home against Alba Berlin and thus missed a renewal of the previous year's final series against the eventual champions Brose Baskets in Bamberg. Powell even missed a rematch against his compatriot Reyshawn Terry wearing the jersey of Bamberg, which he had left six years earlier in NCAA finals, the championship. After the end of the season Powell ended his playing career and pursued a coaching career. His first coaching position is a job as assistant coach at the Crusaders at the Valparaiso University.