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Evansville sports legend Clint Keown dies in Illinois car wreck

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Evansville sports legend Clint Keown dies in Illinois car wreck

Clint Keown, who starred as an athlete at Memorial High School and the University of Evansville, died Sunday in a car wreck in Crawford County, Illinois.

Crawford County Sheriff Bill Rutan told the Courier & Press details about the wreck were still sparse, but he could confirm that it was a one-vehicle incident, and that the driver had died.

Keown’s family confirmed his death on social media Sunday afternoon.

A passenger in the car − whose identity has not been released by the office − suffered serious injuries.

Rutan said emergency crews tried to get the passenger taken from the scene by helicopter, “but weather didn’t cooperate,” so the passenger was taken to an Evansville hospital by ambulance.

The wreck was reported shortly after 12 p.m. and happened on Illinois 1 − a “very straight stretch,” Rutan said. “There are some hills, but no curves. There’s a flashing red light along the road, and this took place about a mile south of the flashing red light.”

Keown was returning from Robinson, Illinois, when the wreck happened, a family friend told the Courier & Press. Robinson is about 90 minutes north of Evansville.

Rutan said Keown was driving a Tesla, and that the sheriff’s office has reached out to the company to try to obtain information from the car releated to the wreck.

“We’re not sure if it was in self-driving mode at the time,” Rutan said.

Keown made a name for himself in the 1990s as one of the most accomplished athletes in the history of the Southern Indiana Athletic Conference, starring in basketball, baseball and football.

He amassed 1,766 points in basketball at Memorial, and is still among the top five in scoring in the city all time.

As a freshman at UE, Keown was a top reserve on the school’s 1999 NCAA tournament basketball team. He later transferred to Division II South Carolina-Aiken, where he finished second in the nation in scoring (24.7 ppg) in basketball in 2002, and in baseball set a conference record with 52 stolen bases in 56 attempts in 53 games in the spring of 2003.

He later signed a minor league contract with the Cincinnati Reds and played for one season in Class A ball before retiring from the game, citing burnout, according to Courier & Press archives.

After college, Keown became an accomplished golfer and professional poker player.

He played golf professionally on minor league tours before regaining amateur status in 2020. Keown finished second that year to David Mills in the Evansville Men’s City Tournament, his final round at Evansville Country Club featuring a hole in one at No. 11. He finished one shot out of a five-person playoff the following year.

In 2018, Memorial inducted him into the school’s hall of fame. A few days before the ceremony, he walked onto the Tigers’ gym floor for the first time in years and shot a few baskets as part of a fundraiser. 

“I have so many memories,” he told the Courier & Press at the time. “When I was 7 years old, I lived right across the street from the gym doors.”

His father, Rick Keown, once told the Courier & Press that as a kid, Clint would sleep with basketballs, baseballs and bats nestled with him in bed.

Keown was married and had a son and two stepchildren. He and his wife Hannah had recently celebrated their third wedding anniversary.

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