Ball State men’s basketball head coach James Whitford has announced the hiring of Jaron Henry as the Cardinals’ director of basketball operations.

Henry comes to Ball State after spending the past two years as a graduate assistant at fellow Mid-American Conference program Kent State. While he was there, the Golden Flashes posted back-to-back 20-win seasons and participated both years in the postseason CollegeInsider.com Tournament.

“Jaron is extremely organized, very bright and a terrific human being,” Whitford said. “He is going to be excellent working with our players, monitoring them academically and contributing to our staff from an organizational and administrative standpoint. Jaron has a really bright future in this business, and we are excited to add him to our staff.”

Henry served as a student manager for the men’s basketball team at the University of Arizona from 2009-11 while Whitford was an assistant coach with the Wildcats. In his final season as a manager, Arizona won the Pac-10 Championship and reached the Elite 8 of the NCAA Tournament.

Henry has spent time as an assistant coach with the Maryland Flames AAU program (2008-09) and the Academy of the Holy Cross (2007-08) in Maryland, and he is also an experienced camp instructor.

Originally from Washington, D.C., Henry earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Arizona in 2011.

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