TicketsCINCINNATI — The Cincinnati men’s basketball team has added Jason Slay as assistant coach, first-year head coach Jerrod Calhoun announced Monday. Slay comes to Clifton from Illinois State, where he served on staff for the last three seasons.
“I am really excited that Jason Slay will be joining our Bearcats’ staff,” Calhoun said. “He brings a wealth of knowledge and familiarity to our system. Jason has a tremendous motor and really cares deeply about developing student-athletes on and off the floor.”
In those three years in Normal, the last two of which Slay served as associate head coach, the Redbirds won 60 games and advanced to the semifinals of the NIT this past season. Under his tutelage, Chase Walker was a two-time First Team All-Missouri Valley Conference selection, while Johnny Kinziger earned Second Team All-MVC honors in 2024-25 in addition to Jack Daugherty being named to the MVC All-Freshman and All-Bench teams and Dalton Banks picking up MVC All-Defensive Team laurels.
Prior to his time at Illinois State, he was an assistant at USF for two seasons, and served on Calhoun’s staff at Youngstown State from 2017-21, 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 his first season at Youngstown State, 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.
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