NCDS: Dustin Kerns, Assistant Coach - Santa Clara

By: Dustin Kerns, Assistant Coach - Santa Clara

First of all, I am very excited about being involved with College Chalktalk's National Coaches' Diary Series and want to personally thank Chris DiSano for the invitation. We are approaching the final two weeks of practice before we all start playing games and get our season going. It is an exciting time here at Santa Clara as we have young team filled with no seniors, three juniors, three sophomores, and five freshmen.

We are excited about returning All WCC sophomores Kevin Foster and Marc Trasolini. Kevin stayed on campus all summer to improve his body and use our resources to work on his game. Marc, who is from Vancouver, went to New Zealand with the Canadian National Team to compete in the U-19 world championships. Kevin broke Steve Nash's season three point record with 85 as a freshmen and we are expecting even bigger things from him as a sophomore.

It is also refreshing to know we have a school record 18 home games this season. We have worked hard on balancing our schedule in our first two seasons and we hope that translates this season. All of our games will be against competitive programs which will provide us with a challenging schedule. Some of the highlights of our schedule include games against UNLV, San Diego State, Fresno State, Rice, Northeastern, Harvard, Pacific, and UC Santa Barbara.

Some exciting off the court news for our team is that we currently boast a team GPA of 3.3 and we are very proud of that achievement. We have an excellent academic institution and our team has been working extremely hard in the classroom along with our academic coordinator. In addition, we have a new court design with a new logos and colors which should show up great for our televised games.

We welcome five newcomers to our team including four freshmen and one junior college player. One of our freshmen is a local player who played at a high school about five minutes from our campus. An interesting inside story about him is we actually offered him a scholarship in our first summer as a staff and before he ever played a high school varsity basketball game. His name is Niyi Harrison and we are expecting big things from him along with all of our newcomers. We are counting on all of our newcomers to contribute and have an immediate impact on our team.

This season we have adopted a team phrase for the season and it is WE., which stands for Win Everywhere. Coach Keating came up with the phrase and it means we have to win everywhere in life. Each class our players go to is a game and they have to win there by being prepared, have a relationship with their professor, sitting up front, getting there early, etc. They need to win every practice, individual workout, weight lifting session, study hall, family, training room, etc. Everything they do we are teaching them to "win" and hopefully it carries over to every aspect of their lives. Each member of our coaching staff, players, and support staff wear maroon wristbands that have WE on one side and Win Everywhere on the other so they are reminded every second of their commitment to our family. It has united us and is a constant reminder of what we represent and trying to accomplish as a program.

Our staff returns for our third season here at Santa Clara and we are looking forward to it! We love our players as people. They all have great attitudes and bring great energy to the court. Have to go, heading to the practice floor early to get some extra passing and ball-handling in with some of the guys.

In hoops,

Dustin