Illinois State University Men's Basketball

Announced on March 7, 2022, former Ohio State assistant coach Ryan Pedon was named as the 20th head coach in Illinois State men’s basketball history and is in his fourth season in leading the Redbird program. Last season his squad won 22 games - the most overall wins since 2016-17 - a seven-win improvement from the year before, and the team won 4+ games more than the previous season in back-to-back years for just the second time in program history. The team's 22-19 record included a championship in the 2025 Purple CBI. Chase Walker was named First Team All-MVC, ISU's first first-team award winner in seven seasons, while Johnny Kinziger was named to the All-MVC second team. Walker was named the MVC Most IMproved Player, while freshman Jack Daugherty was named to the MVC All-Freshman and All-Bench teams, with point guard Dalton Banks earning a spot on the MVC All-Defensive Team.  In 2024-25 the team's KenPom offensive rating was the highest in program history, and the team set school records for most total points and most three-pointers in a season. The team's field goal percentage of .482 is the highest in 28 years, and the team's effective field goal percentage was 14th nationally and the highest in program history. His second season saw a four-win improvement, and the team had its highest assist-to-turnover ratio for the season since the 2016-17 season, and freshman Johnny Kinziger earned a spot on the All-Freshman and All-Bench teams during the year. In his first season as head coach of the Redbirds, ISU finished the season 11-21 while setting a new program record for free throw percentage with .793 (was .775 from the 2001-02 season). He inherited a roster that had saw five of his top six scorers coming in to ISU for their first season, and had four players average at least nine points per game. Pedon had spent the last five seasons at Ohio State after joining the staff in the summer of 2017. In his time with the Buckeyes, OSU has a record of 106-53 with an NCAA tournament berth during each of his seasons in Columbus, with two trips to the NCAA second round.  In 2021-22 while with the Buckeyes, he helped lead two players – E.J. Liddell and Malaki Branham – to All-Big Ten honors, in addition to being drafted in the 2022 NBA Draft (Branham with the 20th pick to San Antonio and Liddell with the 41st pick to New Orleans. That season the Buckeyes went 20-12 during the season, and advanced to the second round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament. During the 2020-21 season the Buckeyes finished with a 21-10 record – including a win over Illinois State in the season opener – before falling in the NCAA Tournament opener. During the season he helped lead an offense that finished third in the conference in scoring offense and put two players on All-Big Ten teams including a second-team placement to Liddell, as Duane Washington Jr. was named to the All-Big Ten Third Team. A pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season saw the Buckeyes were 21-10 and had a projected berth into the NCAA Tournament before the team’s Big Ten Tournament appearance – and subsequent NCAA Tournament appearance – was canceled because of the pandemic. During the 2018-19 season the Buckeyes put together a 20-15 record during the season with a first round NCAA Tournament win over Iowa State. In his and head coach Chris Holtmann’s first season in Columbus, 2017-18, the Buckeyes finished with a 25-9 overall record with an appearance in the NCAA Second Round. During the season, Pedon helped mentor consensus All-American and Big Ten Player of the Year Keita Bates Diop, who was eventually selected with the 48th pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, while Holtmann earned Big Ten Coach of the Year honors. Jae’Sean Tate – also a member of Pedon’s inaugural season with the Buckeyes – ended up as an undrafted free agent who has played the last two seasons with the Houston Rockets. He made the transition to Columbus alongside Holtmann from Butler, where he had helped the Bulldogs tally a 47-20 record in two seasons with two NCAA Tournament berths in Indianapolis. In the 2016-17, the Bulldogs cruised to a 25-9 record, advancing to the NCAA Sweet 16 where they were ousted by eventual National Champion North Carolina in the opening game of the South Regional. Two players – Andrew Chrabascz and Kelan Martin earned All-BIG EAST honors during the season, as Holtmann was named the conference’s Coach of the Year. Martin went undrafted before spending parts of the last three seasons in the NBA with the Indiana Pacers and Minnesota Timberwolves. The season prior, the Bulldogs finished the season with a 22-11 overall record, including a 10-8 mark in BIG EAST play. The team advanced to the NCAA Tournament, topping Texas Tech in the opener before falling to a Malcolm Brogdon-led Virginia squad in the second round. That season two Butler players – Roosevelt Jones and Martin – were named to the All-Conference second team, with Kellen Dunham earning honorable mention honors. Prior to joining the Bulldogs he spent two seasons at Illinois as an assistant to the head coach for former Illini head coach John Groce. In his two seasons in Champaign the Illini twice advanced to the NIT. He has also spent time as an assistant coach at Toledo (2010-13) and Miami (Ohio) (2005-10), was director of basketball operations at Kent State from 2002-05 and was a graduate assistant at Miami (Ohio) from 2000-2002. Pedon played college basketball at the College of Wooster, where he was a three-year letterwinner and helped the Fighting Scots to three NCAA Tournaments and three North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) regular-season championships. In 2000, he won Wooster's prestigious "Bear Award". He received his bachelor's degree in communications from Wooster in 2000 and a master's degree in sport organization from Miami (Ohio) in 2002. He and his wife Stephanie have a son, Maddox.

Jason Slay enters his third season at Illinois State, and the second as associate head coach. He came to Normal after spending two seasons at the University of South Florida as an assistant coach with the Bulls. From 2017-21 he was the associate head coach at Youngstown State, helping guide the Penguins to the first back-to-back winning seasons in almost a decade, while setting Horizon League-era records for total wins. In 2019-20 YSU accepted a bid to play in the CollegeInsider.com postseason tournament; however, the tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In his first season in northeast Ohio, Slay helped YSU to a program-record 266 steals, breaking the 27-year-old record, while the offense scored the fifth-most points in school history. Prior to his stint at Youngstown State, he was an assistant coach at Virginia Military Institute (2015-17), East Tennessee State (2014-15), Tennessee State (2013-14), and was the director of basketball operations at Georgia Southern (2012-13). He also spent time as the top assistant coach at Hargrave Military Academy after starting his coaching career at his alma mater of West Virginia State after he graduated with his undergraduate degree in general education in 2008. As a student-athlete at West Virginia State, and as a four-year captain, he helped guide the Yellow Jackets to the NCAA Division II Sweet 16 in 2004, 2006, and 2007. Slay comes from a basketball family, as his older brother Tamar played at Marshall and in the NBA for the New Jersey Nets after being drafted in the second round, and his cousin, Ron, played for Tennessee and made a trip to the NCAA Sweet 16 as a freshman in 2000. Jason and his wife, Brittany, have a daughter, Kaylyn, and a son, Kobe.

Dakich enters his fourth season as an assistant coach with the Redbirds in the 2025-26 season. He joined the staff in 2022-23 after spending the previous two seasons as director of basketball operations at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina. Prior to moving to North Carolina, he spent three seasons at Ohio State University, the first as a graduate senior with the men’s basketball program and the last two as a graduate assistant and then a program assistant. In his season as a student-athlete in Columbus playing for Holtmann and Pedon, Dakich played in all 34 games during the season, averaging 19 minutes while dishing out 72 assists on a 25-9 Ohio State squad (15-3 in the Big Ten) that advanced to the round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament. Prior to his time in Columbus, the Zionsville, Indiana, native spent four years on the basketball team at the University of Michigan. He was a three-time All-Big Ten Academic Award winner with the Wolverines (2015, 2016, and 2017). In his four seasons with the Wolverines, the team was 93-50 with three trips to the NCAA Tournament including an Elite Eight appearance in 2013-14 and a Sweet 16 appearance in his redshirt season in 2016-17. He holds his undergraduate degree in history from the University of Michigan, and a master’s degree in sports coaching from Ohio State University.