Cade Knutson recalled sitting in the athletic director’s office at Crater High in Oregon when he received a phone call from an unknown number. On the other line was former Nevada head men’s basketball head coach Eric Musselman.<\/p>\n
“I spoke with him for 5 minutes on the phone,” Knutson said. “He kind of gave me a little bit of a rundown of what the (graduate assistant) position looked like, and so I’m, like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty cool,’ and then at the end of the conversation, he’s, like, ‘So, do you want it?’ And I’m, like, ‘Yeah, I do. I do want it.’ So just a crazy opportunity.”<\/p>\n
Knutson grew up in Boulder City in Southern Nevada and moved to Fernley when his dad, Jeff, accepted the head football job with the Vaqueros. Knutson was a standout basketball player for the Vaqueros, setting the Fernley scoring record with 1,479 points when he graduated. He attended Southern Oregon University and coached the freshman team at Crater High while attending college. He was working out former Oregon standout E.J. Singler in the Medford area when the future NBA player suggested to Knutson he should become a graduate assistant. <\/p>\n
Knutson admitted he didn’t know what a graduate assistant was at the time, but with some help from his dad and Ellis Dawson, who Eric Musselman worked with on the Orlando Magic staff, Knutson was hired as a Nevada grad assistant shortly after. He contributed to film analysis, scouting and player development and helped the Wolf Pack reach back-to-back NCAA Tournament berths, including a Sweet 16 run in 2018. <\/p>\n
“The guy’s unbelievable, No. 1,” Knutson said of Musselman. “He’s the biggest grinder I’ve ever met. We worked every single day. There were no days off, even in the offseason. Just watching him run practices, I remember the first practice I got to be a part of over the summer, he was just kind of one of those wow moments. ‘I’m here.’ He breaks down the five guys that are on defense and talks in-depth about what each guy should be doing when the ball’s here, and the attention to detail at this level is not like other levels. So, a lot of it had to do with that and scouting opponents in film breakdown. There’s nobody that does it quite like Coach Muss.”<\/p>\n
Knutson’s passion for basketball stems from his youth and Boulder City High’s head coach, John Balistere. A trip to Duke University in middle school with Balistere led to a chance to meet legendary head coach, Mike Krzyzewski. That would soon turn into a once-in-a-lifetime experience working with USA Basketball training camp in Las Vegas for more than a decade. <\/p>\n
“Coach Balistere started kind of running some youth clinics and things and kind of took me under his wing and became a second father to me,” Knutson said. “Through that, I was in middle school and he flew us back to the Duke camp, we got A-plus treatment. We got to go into Coach K’s office and hang out with him and really get a behind-the-scenes look of Duke and their program.”<\/p>\n
Knutson’s experiences working with Team USA and Nevada helped prepare him for his 8-year stint at Fernley, including the last four as head coach of the Vaqueros. Under his leadership, Fernley captured three regional championships and earned four state tournament berths with runner-up finishes each of the last two seasons. Knutson led Fernley to a 97-21 record, including a 38-2 league mark, and was named the 3A North coach of the year during three of his four seasons at the helm.<\/p>\n
“I was just unbelievably lucky to take over a program that has had a tradition of being in the playoffs and being successful,” Knutson said. “Just had an opportunity to coach really good players there. At the end of the day, players are the ones that are winning games for you. In our four years there, we were fortunate enough to have coached the league MVP in all four years. We won the league all four years. It really just boils down to having really good players that are basketball-first guys. We were really proud of what we were able to do in Fernley.” <\/p>\n
Knutson was named Bishop Manogue’s head coach in April, taking over a program led by former Galena High and Nevada star, Luke Babbitt, who played eight seasons in the NBA. The Miners were ranked fifth in the state of Nevada last season and finished the year 26-3. Bishop Manogue won the 4A North regional championship and finished runner-up in the 4A state championship. <\/p>\n
Knutson said he’ll look to build off the strong foundation set by Babbitt and will also serve as Bishop Manogue’s Dean of Students.<\/p>\n
“I made it very clear in my interview with Manogue this is not a rebuild,” Knutson said. “This is an opportunity to build on a culture that’s already really strong. I have a ton of respect for Luke Babbitt. That was No. 1. I’ve made that clear with the administration, with the school, with the players. So, the way we go about it might be a little different. The terminology may be a bit different. But at the end of the day, we were both winning and it’s us coming together to figure out what it’s gonna look like with me leading it and trying to figure out how to utilize what those guys have already done really well, build on it and then how to make it a little bit of my own.”<\/p>\n
You can watch the interview with Cade Knutson at the top of this page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cade Knutson recalled sitting in the athletic director’s office at Crater High in Oregon when he received a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-755650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}