Dino Presley, a veteran of 21 years as a college basketball coach, including 10 in the highly-competitive Atlantic 10 and Conference USA, has joined the NJIT men’s basketball staff as an assistant, Highlanders head coach Jim Engles announced.
Engles also announced the appointment of Jared Czech as Director of Basketball Operations.
Presley comes from Marshall, where he was an assistant coach from 2010 until earlier this year with the Conference USA program. Included in his time at Marshall were back-to-back 21-win seasons and Marshall’s first postseason tournament appearance in 24 years, a spot in the 2012 National Invitation Tournament.
A graduate of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, Presley was a student assistant at the Division II school before landing a spot on the staff of Division I Hampton for the 1994-95 season.
The Philadelphia product then went home to coach at Parkway High School in the city and also in the renowned Sonny Hill League in the mid and late 1990s.
8966Dino Presley
Staying in Philly, he returned to the Division I ranks, coaching at Drexel for four years before heading south to Towson University in Maryland.
By then, Presley had forged a reputation as a strong recruiter, with Drexel’s recruiting classes named best in the America East (Drexel’s conference home at the time) his last two years with the Dragons.
He was recruiting coordinator at Towson and held the same title at his next stop, East Carolina, where he coached for two seasons before returning to Maryland in the same role at University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Moving to upstate New York and St. Bonaventure of the Atlantic 10 Conference, Coach Presley had a hand in the recruitment of Andrew Nicholson, the star player on the Bonnies’ 2011-12 Atlantic 10 champions and NCAA Tournament qualifiers. Nicholson, who was A10 Freshman of the Year and later conference Player of the Year, was taken 18th overall by the Orlando Magic in the 2012 NBA draft.
After four years in Olean, NY, with the Bonnies, Presley went to Marshall in West Virginia, where he worked from 2010 to 2014.
Jared Czech joined the NJIT men’s basketball staff after working as a graduate manager at the University of Denver in 2013-14. At Denver, he worked on the coaching staff headed by former Air Force and Princeton head coach Joe Scott.
Czech, a resident of South Plainfield, NJ, is a 2013 graduate of Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY.
First involved with coaching as a high school student at Rutgers Prep, Jared entered college coaching as a student assistant at Manhattanville, which plays in NCAA Division III. He was also a member of the men’s lacrosse team during his undergraduate days at Manhattanville.
He also coached AAU basketball with the NYC Gauchos, an organization that has sent countless alumni into college basketball and some who have gone on to play in the NBA, including emerging superstar Kyrie Irving.
Beginning in May 2012, when he was an intern, Czech has worked for the Hoop Group, the world’s largest basketball instruction organization.
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