Joey Cantens is coming home. Sources have told the Miami Herald that Cantens has been hired as FIU\u2019s new men\u2019s basketball coach.<\/p>\n
Cantens, a 40-year-old Miami native, played his first year of college basketball at FIU as a 6-foot point guard before transferring to Eckerd College and reaching the NCAA Division II national playoffs.<\/p>\n
Since then, Cantens has crafted an eclectic career that has included two years coaching pro ball in Germany. From 2011 to 2014, he helped coach the Dominican Republic\u2019s national team, working under Hall of Famer John Calipari and current Illinois assistant Orlando Antigua. In 2018, Cantens worked as a guest coach for the San Antonio Spurs\u2019 Summer League team.<\/p>\n
On the college front, Cantens is in his fifth season as the head coach at Daytona State. The Falcons (26-7) are set to compete in the national junior-college playoffs on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Prior to Daytona State, Cantens was Florida Gulf Coast\u2019s director of basketball operations during that school\u2019s famous 2012-2013 \u201cDunk City\u201d season. That year, the Eagles became the first No. 15 seed to advance to the Sweet-16 round, defeating San Diego State and Georgetown along the way.<\/p>\n
When Florida Gulf Coast coach Andy Enfield bolted to Southern Cal, Cantens joined the Trojans as their director of scouting and video operations.<\/p>\n
Cantens has a Master\u2019s degree in Sports Management from Florida State University, which is where he worked as a video coordinator for the Seminoles during that squad\u2019s run to the 2011 Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
A married father of two \u2013 daughter Camila, 4, and son Luca, 2 \u2013 Cantens made sure he found a partner who shares his love for basketball. After all, his wife is Mel Thomas, a former McDonald\u2019s All-American.<\/p>\n
Thomas, a 5-foot-9 point guard in her days, starred at Connecticut and was the 2006 Big East Conference Most Improved Player of the Year. She scored more than 1,000 career points at UConn, and she won a gold medal with Team USA at the 1987 Pan American Games.<\/p>\n
Besides his own year with FIU, Cantens has another tie to the school. His uncle, Bernie Cantens, was a four-year letter-winner at FIU from 1984 to 1987.<\/p>\n
Once Joey Cantens is officially hired, he will become the 10th coach in FIU men\u2019s basketball history. He replaces Jeremy Ballard, whose contract was not renewed following last season (15-17 overall record, 8-12 Conference USA).<\/p>\n
Ballard had a strong start at FIU \u2013 a combined 39 wins in his first two years. However, FIU then endured six straight losing seasons before Panthers athletic director Scott Carr decided to find a new coach to lead the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joey Cantens is coming home. Sources have told the Miami Herald that Cantens has been hired as FIU\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3108,10634,92428,2845,92429,92430,123,125,124],"class_list":["post-199946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-basketball","tag-coach","tag-daytona-state","tag-fiu","tag-hired","tag-joey-cantens","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}