WSU’s Ernie Kent adds gem to coaching staff

PULLMAN – Ernie Kent added yet another talent collector to his basketball staff, announcing that Elwyn McRoy has been hired as the Washington State men’s basketball team’s recruiting coordinator.

“Elwyn is a seasoned, dedicated, passionate student of the game of basketball,” Kent said in a press release. “In this role, he will allow us to be very effective and efficient as we move forward as a staff.”

The position, which is not one of WSU’s three on-court assistant coaches, is an obvious role for the man that Basketball Times Magazine in 2008 ranked one of the top-10 junior college recruiters in the country. Next Up Recruits once ranked McRoy the No. 2 recruiting coach in the Western Athletic Conference.

Kent has revamped his staff this offseason, with an emphasis on finding assistants who are adept at bringing in talented players. He hired former Garfield High coach Ed Haskins in part for his connections to talented players in the Seattle area, and shortly after received a commitment from Tacoma’s Robert Gittens, who is the first four-star player to sign with Kent’s program.

In 2013, the Chronicle of Higher Education profiled McRoy, who at that time had held 12 different coaching positions in 16 years.

In that article, Rollie Massimino, for whom the 5-foot-5 McRoy started at point guard at Cleveland State, said “Not too many people work harder than (McRoy). He’ll drive 10 or 15 hours, sleep in his car, and get up the next day and go.”

“He does not have hobbies, he does not have interests – it’s basketball, that’s it,” his wife, Carmen McRoy, told the Chronicle of Higher Education. “From the moment he picked up that ball, it was over. It’s the only thing he ever cared about, and it defines who he is.”