By Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) – Basketball Beat Reporter / Photo via Titus Wilkinson of The Spear
As San Jose State men’s basketball’s historic rebuild took shape last spring, so did fears of Cal Berkeley poaching second-year head coach Tim Miles.
Miles previously interviewed to be the Golden Bears’ head coach back in 2019, but Cal AD Jim Knowlton went with Mark Fox instead. What resulted were four straight losing seasons and Fox’s dismissal in 2023 following a disastrous 3-29 finish.
With Miles leading SJSU to its first 20-win season since the Carter Administration and its first postseason win in program history, could Knowlton poach Miles to cultivate a similar program revival an hour up north?
Nope. Knowlton went with Utah Valley’s Mark Madsen and while Miles stayed at SJSU, his staff saw three changes:
The hiring of assistant coach Ed Gipson, promotion of Austin Sleight from video coordinator to recruiting coordinator and hiring Jared Swanson to take over as director of basketball operations.
An analysis of each move and what it means heading forward:
Ed Gipson steps in
The most notable and intriguing of the three moves is the hiring of assistant coach Ed Gipson.
SJSU marks Gipson’s first time coaching at the Division I level and his only prior college experience came as an assistant head coach at NAIA Robert Morris University in Illinois from 2009-14.
Nearly a 20-year difference in experience compared to who Gipson’s replacing in Ben Johnson, who’ll fulfill the same role at Northern Arizona.
But what Gipson does have is coaching experience and connections to elite high school talent.
As the head coach of AZ Compass Prep in Phoenix, he coached multiple four-star and five-star prospects, from 2017 to 2023. Recent alumni include recent NBA draft picks in TyTy Washington, Jabari Walker and Joshua Primo.
Gispon’s preps connections could help SJSU replace recently departed seven-footer Ibrahima Diallo — now at UCF — with seven-footer Adrame Diongue. Diallo finished last season as the conference leader in blocks (1.7) and top-10 in total rebounds (6.0).
Diongue developed into a four-star standout at AZ Compass Prep in 2022 before signing on with Washington State. But Diongue’s time in Pullman was short-lived and non-impactful. He played just 23 games and averaged 1.3 points, .8 rebounds and .5 blocks per contest.
If SJSU could land Diongue and develop him into a bonafide threat, it would lift Gipson’s hire to home-run status. It shows he can capitalize on his blue-chip ties, help establish SJSU’s status on the west coast and in the transfer portal. It’s been reported that Alabama, Villanova and Kansas have also reached out to Diongue.
Austin Sleight climbs the latter
There was a stretch in time during last year’s off-season when SJSU was down a recruiting coordinator and assistant coach. First sparked by David Miller, leaving SJSU after one season to rejoin Sean Miller at Xavier and ended when Miles hired Jeff Strohm to take on both duties.
But that gap in between Miller’s departure and Strohm’s arrival allowed video coordinator Austin Sleight to get his feet wet in the recruiting world and made a major splash, landing grad transfer and premiere posterizer Sage Tolbert.
Tolbert’s 7.4 rebounds per game were fourth-best in the conference and he was one-third of a rebound battery that lifted SJSU from the 330th rebound margin a year ago to sixth nationwide.
While Sleight veered back to video coordinator duties after Strohm entered last July, it gave Miles the confidence to upgrade his duties once again. Sleight previously spent four seasons as a team manager for Miles at the University of Nebraska.
In Sleight’s new role, he’ll be dealt the unenviable task of helping replace three members of last year’s starting five. Diallo and Tolbert is already a headache, but finding a way to replace Omari Moore upgrades it to a migraine.
Moore’s the reigning Mountain West Player of the Year and was the team leader in points and assists for the last two seasons.
Jared Swanson: The two-fold reunion
Jared Swanson, SJSU’s newly hired Director of Basketball Operations, is Miles’ first move that’s tied to his deep Mid-Western roots.
Amidst Miles’s rebuild of Southwest Minnesota State in the late 90s, Swanson was dominating Minnesota’s community college scene before going on to play for North Dakota and Concordia College (Moorhead, Minn.). While the two have never been on the same roster, Miles said he’s known Swanson for “over 25 years and watched him grow as a player, as a coach and in support staff roles.”
Swanson will be filling in for Trent Miyagishima who’s been at SJSU since 2011 and climbed the ladder from student manager to head manager to video coordinator and to director of basketball operations in 2018. Compared to Miyagishima, Swanson has playing and coaching experience and comes to SJSU after three seasons as an assistant coach at Green Bay.
It’ll be interesting to see how Miles bringing in quote-unquote ‘one of his guys’ will shape the Spartans. Some questions to think about moving forward:
If Miles stays on, will he bring in more Mid-West affiliates? Will SJSU target the Mid-West heavier compared to other California based schools?
Swanson also spent one season as SJSU’s Director of Basketball Operations in 2013-14, but the focus point should be the Miles connection.