App State Basketball HC Dustin Kerns Interview

It really does seem like App State has become this school of giant killers, but usually that's limited to one sport. We saw Sean Clark's program beat Texas A&M earlier this year and we know the history of App State football, but Dustin Kearns, the head basketball coach got that feeling last night when the Mountaineers advanced to 3-0 with a win against the Louisville Cardinals at the Yum Center in dramatic fashion and Dustin Kearns joins us on WSJS back in the triad right now.

How does it feel to get your first of what we hope is many Power Conference scalps in Boone? Well Josh, I mean I give our guys great credit because we went into what I think is a blue blood. I think anytime you've had multiple national championships in a program, and there's probably 10 of those programs in college basketball, but Louisville is one of those. They've got like eight final fours, three national championships, and so to go on the road there against a storied program with their back against the wall, they were 0-2 now, they were two points away from being 2-0, but like their backs against the wall and for our program to go in and lead for 40 minutes I thought was very impressive. Once again that's hard to do to go in the ACC team and lead for 40 minutes, wire-to-wire, and I thought that that showed a lot about ourselves in the sense of there was a big challenge for Louisville to kind of break their quote skid. Their back was against the wall and for us to go in there and just set the tone and lead wire-to-wire I was very impressed with our guys for that. According to ESPN stats and info, Louisville you mentioned how close they were to being 2-0 or even 3-0. They are the first team since 1980 to lose their first three games by one point in each of them, and at the end you talk about two points away from being 2-0, they were two tenths of a second away from being 1-2 and beating your team last night. It was called a bucket on the driving layup at the end but then overturned clearly on the kids' hands and you guys win. Take me onto the floor in that moment, Coach Kearns, when did it dawn on you that you guys just won this basketball game? Well thank God for instant replay, right? And so I didn't know live, I thought the shot was probably good, right? I thought I knew it was very very close.

It kind of dawned on me when I was watching their coaches watch the monitor and seeing their reaction and their reaction was not good. Whose face? Kenny's face? Danny's face? Nolan Smith's face?

Whose face did you look at and think, oh no? I'm not gonna say any names, but I could see their face when they were watching the monitor because it was close to them and I could see that they knew, right? It was in his hands. So that's when I kind of thought and then I saw the officials, they bring in another official and usually it's pretty clear-cut like, hey that's out of his hands, that's ballgame, right? But when they started bringing the other official and I was like, okay, well maybe this thing's not as close.

But that was a high-level officiating crew and I knew at the end of that I knew they'd get it right and they did. It was balls in his hands and we won the game. App State head coach Dustin Kearns with us on WSJS. That was App State's first ACC win, where Power Conference went all together, in seven years.

This is App State's first 3-0 start in 25 years and this comes a couple of seasons after you snapped a two-decade-long NCAA tournament drought. What fills you with satisfaction as a coach when you hear those milestones that you continue to hit? Yeah, I think there's probably pride in our staff and administration. It's a lot of people and administrators, fans, they're a big part of this. They've helped us in recruiting with the support. Our students have been incredible at games. It's just a lot of people have helped move the program forward.

Like I said, our coaching staff, our players, administration, athletic director Doug Gillen. A lot of people have moved the program forward. I think it's just a lot of work by a lot of people and we've got more room for growth. In a sense, our team can play better. Our team can be better. We've got to turn the page and move on and enjoy the moment.

But now it's time to, you know, today at five o'clock we get the other for film. It's we're moving on. Extreme pride and proud moment for our program and our former players. You know, once again, we didn't, I'm not going to name any other schools as an example, but Louisville is a storied program. Louisville is a high-level basketball tradition and for us to go in there and on the road and leave for 40 minutes and win is a big deal and certainly just proud of our program and our players and our coaching staff and support staff. Once again, a lot of people.

You'll enjoy this. Last night I was at the Smith Center watching North Carolina hold on against Gardner Webb and I didn't pay attention to anything that happened in the first half of that game because I was watching you guys and right when you guys won, a Carolina fan walked behind me, saw the score and said, I swear this happened, and said, take the stairs. They knew what take the stairs meant that you guys have created. Yeah, you guys created this mantra. I was explaining to my wife, I don't know if it's related to the Rory Vaden book or not, but it's one of my favorite books, Take the Stairs.

I have it in my car and I just got a new car and I was moving it into my house at Sarah Bradford's like, what is this, my wife, and I had to explain to her what Take the Stairs was about. It's a great book, but for those who do not know what Take the Stairs and Rory Vaden is about, why is that the mantra for rap state basketball? Well, that was the origin of our mantra. When I became the head coach of Presbyterian in 2017, I had just read that book earlier that spring. It was just very, not only inspiring, but just hit home in a lot of ways. I think in the sense it's a mentality.

Nothing's easy and you can't want it easy and winning is hard and so you can't really skip steps. I know that sounds cliche, but what we try to do is roll our sleeves up and work the old-fashioned way and that's how you take the stairs mentality. After Presbyterian, when we came to App State, certainly we brought that with us and the fan base here is really taken to it, our players and everybody. That's pretty cool to hear that.

They're even selling shirts and bumper stickers and things downtown now. I think that you've got to create a identity. When we came here, late straight losing seasons, before you just kind of change that, you've got to change the identity and the perception first. Sometimes you can do that, but just a little by a mantra that catches on.

It becomes contagious and it becomes like you said last night, the guy said it. It becomes an identity and then you've got to go on the court and back it up with a blue-collar style of basketball and toughness and 50-50 plays and taking charges. We took seven charges last night, seven.

So that's a take the stairs mentality. Obviously we try to have that mantra, but we also try to carry it over to the court, which once again, it's a blue-collar mindset that we don't want it easy and we're willing to roll our sleeves up and work for it. Dustin Kearns with us here after the win against Louisville last night. App State's basketball coach.

A couple of quick things here. When you win a game like that, how many text messages are on your phone when you get to it? Well, fortunately a lot.

When you lose, you get like one from your wife and maybe your parents. I was in the three four hundreds. How many people have you not gotten to? How many people have you not responded to yet? I responded to all of them.

I'm the type of guy, obviously we all have our little pet peeve stuff, I do not like seeing unread. So I was able to respond a lot. I'm on the plane last night and then on our bus ride back from Charlotte and I take a lot of pride into getting back to people and obviously that's a good problem. Last thing for you, you're from Tennessee. I think specifically Kingsport. I have family that's in Kingsport.

Do you really? Oh yeah. Grandmother, grandparents that went there. Kingsport Mets games used to go there all the time.

It's great fun. You're from Tennessee, you went to Clemson. So I got to know growing up, were you more of an ACC or SEC guy? You know growing up I grew up 70 miles from Knoxville and so we don't really follow Tennessee. So our high school team went to a team camp at Clemson before my senior year. They were recruiting one of my teammates. I'd never been to Clemson and just went down there and with team camp and just kind of really liked it and wanted to do something different. I kind of went to Tennessee and then my high school coach knew one of the assistant coaches well and told them I wanted to get into coaching and just kind of it just felt right and obviously met my wife there and things like that but probably growing, you know I think as a basketball guy you love ACC basketball but you know as a football guy you know I was cheering for Tennessee at the time and you know you're at SEC. But I wouldn't say I was an allegiance to either one growing up.

Just a fan of the good. The 90s weren't a bad time to be rooting for Tennessee. Last senior year in high school, 98 won the national championship. Yeah and they showed me around the works. I went to my first game about a month ago in Knoxville. It was a good bit of fun. Not a bad time to go either. Dustin Kearns, congratulations on the win last night. We will have to catch up again sometime soon. Always great being on and as always go Bountaineers, take the stairs.