Slappin’ Glass is joined this week by Appalachian State Head Coach, Dustin Kerns! Coach Kerns is known as one of the great program builders in the game and the trio dives headfirst into his learnings on taking underperforming programs to the next level, teaching position-less offense, and talk defending Ghost Screens and “Paint to Great” threes during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Inside the Episode
Dustin Kerns has been at the helm of two significant program turnarounds in recent years (Presbyterian & Appalachian State), so we were excited to have him join us on the podcast this week to dive into his learnings and takeaways from those years. Coach Kerns still currently leads App State and has enjoyed success with helping them reach the NCAA tournament in year two of his takeover. This is a highly entertaining conversation as Coach Kerns shares his thoughts on:
- Program Turnarounds: As mentioned, we spend a good amount of time discussing all things related to taking a historically losing program and turning it into a winning one. At both Presbyterian and App State Coach Kerns took over programs that had suffered multiple years of losing seasons, so we had fun hearing his thoughts on the requirements in getting the ship righted.
- Teaching “Position-less” Basketball: Baked into our conversation about program turnarounds was a discussion about playing “position-less” basketball. Coach Kerns loves to teach an open-style offense where players learn to play to their strengths instead of a more rigid system. Not only is this fun for the players to play, but it also helps create buy-in when turning things around. This was another interesting segment with Coach Kerns.
- “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”: We returned to this always fun segment to talk about not switching on defense, defending ghost screens, and searching for great threes.