New coach Rashon Burno, returning players building new system, trust, heading into season

DeKALB – When he took over a 3-16 Northern Illinois University men’s basketball team from a season ago, coach Rason Burno said the first thing he had to do was win the trust of the six returning players from last year’s squad.

Senior guard Trendon Hankerson, who averaged 13.9 points a game for the Huskies last season, said Burno is making him and the other returners feel like one of his guys.

“I think he’s done a great job trying to gain the trust of all of us, being honest with us and things such as that,” Hankerson said. “But as far as the old unit, me and the guys kind of rallied and took time to focus on buying into the new system and the new coach, and to be a part of a winning program.”

Hankerson, Kaleb Thornton, Chinedu Kingsely Okanu, Zool Keuth, Adong Makuoi and Anthony Crump return from last season, where Mark Montgomery was fired in his 10th season as coach of the Huskies after a 1-7 start. The team finished the season with assistant Lamar Chapman as the interim coach.

Montgomery is back as an assistant at Michigan State under Tom Izzo, and Chapman is an assistant at Central Connecticut State.

Burno said he’s spent the summer building trust with the returning players.

“The difficult part when you’ve inherited a team is the trust factor,” Burno said. “I’m a new coach. They probably have people in their ear, in their circles, saying ‘Hey, he’s not your guy. He’s going to bring his guys in.’ I’ve tried my best, and my staff as well, to break down that. To garner trust by action. Crump and Trendon and Adong and Zool and KT, those guys are my guys. I said that to them the moment when we had that introductory meeting.”

Crump said any doubts that existed at first disappeared after he got to know his new coach.

“At first it’s tough because you never know,” Crump said. “But as you spend more time with him on the court, and I spent a lot of time with him off the court. I talk to him a lot, and he cares for us and genuinely wants the best for us. That trust has been building a lot. I trust him, I trust he wants me to be a really good player, and I trust he wants us to have a good year.”

Burno said the team will be a much faster-paced club. He said he likes giving his players freedom on the court.

He said he thinks the system will lead to a big year for Hankerson.

“He’s a guy that you’re going to see not only statistically take a jump, but he’s going to have a larger impact,” Burno said. “The way we play is going to free him up to not just be the primary scorer.”

Hankerson said Burno is making the adjustment easy.

“It is a completely new system, but the adjustment is not too hard because he makes things as simple as possible,” Hankerson said. “It’s either you’re going to work hard, or you’re not. You’re either going to play, or you’re not. ... I like everything ’cause he shoots it straight to keep it simple with you. I like that because there’s nothing complex in what we do.”

Crump said the new system is different from last season but he’s excited to see it in action when the season opens Tuesday at Washington followed by a trip Friday to Indiana.

“We’re playing more free. There’s a lot more freedom for all the positions,” Crump said. “It’s a lot more free, a lot more fast. It’s just different from last year. There are not as many play calls. He wants us to be a player-coached team. He doesn’t want us to go to certain spots or be like robots. He wants us to be able to make reads and just play freely.”

Crump said last year’s record, along with the team being picked to finish last in the conference, are motivating the team.

“It’s a motivator for all of us,” Crump said. “They’ve got us placed 12th in the MAC, and I mean we just want to prove everyone wrong. We want to go completely different from last year. We don’t want to go 3-16 anymore. He says it a lot. We just want to change the culture of how it was.”