Marching to Madness

Appalachian State lost five of its last six games to end the season, so Coach Kerns will want to see ASU start at a high level when November rolls around. Kerns enters his seventh season in Boone, NC, where he has built the Apps into a contender. Just a year ago, App State won the Sun Belt regular season with 27 wins and won the league tournament in 2021. The Mountaineers' opponents shot only 39.1 percent from the floor during the '24-25 season, ninth in college basketball.

Topic of Discussion:

• The challenge of the transfer portal in the Sun Belt Conference
• Developing the backcourt as Alonzo Dodd returns as a shooting guard
• How the Mountaineers' defensive approach might change from season to season
• Transfers who will appear on the new App State roster

Coach Martin is a proven winner who analyzes the depths of college basketball when we discuss the Minutemen's move into the MAC. He has turned his roster over with 10 new players for the 2025-26 season, which allows the program to look for only its second NCAA Tournament appearance since 1998. Martin has 335 career wins. He took Kansas State to the Elite Eight in 2010, and the Wildcats appeared in four NCAA Tournaments in his five years at KSU. He led South Carolina to the Final Four in school history in 2017.

Topics of Discussion Include:

• Psychological analysis of situations that can permeate across college basketball
• Philosophies of how he approaches many different game circumstances
• Transitioning the program into the MAC as it has spent the past 49 seasons in the Atlantic 10
• Developing a team identity with 10 incoming players

Coach Phil Cunningham assumes the head coaching position at UL Monroe as the Warhawks come off a 7-25 campaign. They finished the season with only eight scholarship players while trying to navigate the difficult waters of the Sun Belt Conference. Phil discusses the transition into the head coaching chair as he was the associate head coach in '24-25. Let's not forget, he won the Sun Belt Tournament in 2017 at Troy, where he led the Trojans into only their second NCAA Tournament appearance in team history.

Topics of Discussion Include:

• Opportunities, as most of the roster is intact
• Building players' skills
• Presiding over an offense that will attack in transition off of a miss
• How to build the Warhawks to compete and rise in the Sun Belt

Coach Martin Ingelsby has built Delaware into a solid program; after a tough regular season, the Blue Hens moved into the Coastal Athletic Association Tournament and won four games in a row before losing a tough 76-72 decision to UNC Wilmington in the championship. Delaware moves into Conference USA on July 1. Coach Ingelsby discusses his ideas on how to rebuild as the Blue Hens are a program that builds quality players.

Topics of Conversation Include:

• Winning the 4 games to get into the CAA Championship Final
• The impacts of the move to Conference USA
• Bringing over Providence transfer Justyn Fernandez and former Temple Owl Jameel Brown
• The return of Cavan Reilly for a fourth season

Coach Senderoff returns to Marching to Madness after the Golden Flashes finished third in the MAC and took two wins over St. Bonaventure and Stanford in the NIT. Kent has won over 20 games in nine of Coach Senderoff's 14 seasons, and the program continues to have a tough defensive mindset. Kent State and Akron have become a major basketball rivalry in northeast Ohio as the Zips won the MAC this season while Kent finished third in the league.

Topics of Discussion include:

• A deep upcoming roster, although the Golden Flashes lose leading scorers Jalen Sullinger and VonCameron Davis
• Building a ball screen offense
• Two quality incoming transfers in Robert Whaley, Jr., from UNLV and former Cincinnati Bearcat Rayvon Griffith
• How the MAC has changed in Coach Senderoff's 14 seasons

Coach Chris Beard is back on MTM as the Rebels picked off 24 wins and made it to the Sweet 16 and they were a key competitor in the SEC. Coach Beard was named the Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year and led four teams into the NCAA Tournament in his nine seasons as a head coach. This was the Rebels second appearance in the Sweet 16 and the first time since 2001.

Topics of Discussion Include:

• Challenges in the SEC, which had 14 NCAA Tournament entrants after a record-setting regular season
• How players' individual improvement works positively in the recruiting cycle
• The expansion of Sean Pedulla's game as he was an excellent scorer and leader last season
• Raising the perception of the program inside the game, on campus, and in the Oxford community

Coach Josh Pastner visits "Marching to Madness" once again as he is the first-year head coach at UNLV after two years at ESPN, where he was a solid color analyst in the studio and on the sidelines. Coach Pastner brings 276 career victories to the Thomas & Mack Center as he rebuilds the roster, where he added 13 new players to his first squad. He brought three CUSA Tournament championships and two regular season conference championships to Memphis when he placed the Tigers in four NCAA Tournaments. He moved to Georgia Tech and worked on a monumental rebuild of the Yellow Jackets, and led GT to the 2021 ACC Tournament championship.

Topics of Discussion Include:

* Leading UNLV Basketball forward * Bringing Top-150 prospect Tyrin Jones to Vegas * Developing philosophy and a basketball culture * The sustainability of playing in the tough Mountain West Conference

Coach Bryan Hodgson comes to Tampa to lead the USF Bulls after spending two years as the head coach at Arkansas State, where the Red Wolves obviously played his up-tempo style and averaged about 63 field goal attempts per game in those two seasons. Coach Hodgson worked with one of the best offensive coaches in the game as he was Nate Oats' assistant at Alabama and Buffalo for four years each.

Topics of Discussion Include:

• Building the transition game into a lethal offensive attack
• Adding post Izaiyah Nelson and guard Joseph Pinion who were key leaders at Arkansas State
• Returning CJ Brown, who was a key contributor in averaging 22.5 minutes per game
• Idenitfying the three-point attempt in transition

Coach Ali Farokhmanesh will begin his first season at Colorado State after he worked as Coach Niko Medved's assistant for the past seven seasons. We get into lots of excellent analytical and philosophical discussions and chat about players we will see with the Rams. Coach has been key in his development of players and orchestrating in-game situations, which helped post Colorado State win the Mountain West Tournament as well as post CSU in three of the last four NCAA Tournaments.

Topics of Discussion Include:

• Winning 11 in a row and 19 of 22, going into the Round of 32 matchup with Maryland
• The returns of Rashaan Mamba and Kyle Jorgensen
• Upgrading players' confidence and positivity in transferring to Colorado State
• How the defensive approach has been an important part in the rise of the program

Coach Chris Mooney joins us once again on "Marching to Madness," where we discuss his general ideology of the Spiders and the college game. Coach Mooney started 107 games in four years as a guard at Princeton for Coach Pete Carril. He still ranks 20th in points scored with 1,071 while he was a captain of the Tigers for two seasons. Richmond will work its way back into the Atlantic 10 mix as its offense will improve, and the return of guard Mikkel Tyne offers experience and efficiency as he averaged 31.5 minutes in 2024-25.

Topics of Discussion Include:

• Different coaching strategies and philosophies in his 20 seasons in the A-10
• Strategies and fundamentals to improve the team offensively
• Players' development in summer practices
• Maintaining sustainability in the program as the transfer portal and NIL are now key recruiting mechanisms