The call came unexpectedly.
"I'm betting everybody's probably questioning what happened at the end of the year," Deven Simms said a week ago. "My numbers were good, but I didn't finish out the season.
"Nobody wants to be a guy who's not a good character, not coachable, not a good teammate. That's not who I am. That's not how I am defined. I'm praying someone will take a chance on me and overlook some of those things."
The former leading scorer for Arkansas State University men's basketball team continued.
"I wanted to set the record: Me and Coach don't have any problems," Simms said.