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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Ernie Kent’s Midwest ties pay off

Ernie Kent's NCAA coaching career has been spent entirely on the west coast, yet some of his best team have had a distinctly Midwestern accent.

Kent grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and leveraged those ties into high-profile signings when he was at Oregon, pulling players like Malik Hairston and Tajuan Porter out of Detroit, and signing Illinois natives Joevan Catron, Michael Dunigan among others.

When Kent became the Washington State coach in the spring of 2014, he specifically noted those Midwestern urban centers as places where he could find talent to bring to Pullman.

On Monday, he announced that Keith Langston, a Chicago guard who played a year at California's Chabot College has signed financial aid papers with WSU, making him the team's second Midwestern big-city recruit to sign under Kent. Ny Redding of Cleveland signed in 2014 and has since left the program.

Chabot, a 6-foot-5, 190-pound guard, played most of his prep ball at Chicago's Whitney Young High, transferring within the city to St. Patrick for his senior season. He then played at Victory Rock Prep in Bradenton, Florida for a year, before transferring to Pasadena City College, where he averaged 13.3 points and 5.7 rebounds per game.

He spent last season at Chabot college, where he redshirted. Langston will have three years of eligibility at WSU.

“We have continued to build our program around skilled basketball players, and Keith is another one of those,” Kent said in a statement. “Going into this off season, we knew we had to help strengthen our perimeter game. Keith is a good shooter with a great basketball IQ and will do just that for us.”



Jacob Thorpe
Jacob Thorpe joined The Spokesman-Review in 2013. He currently is a reporter for the Sports Desk covering Washington State University athletics.

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