Ed Haskins hired as WSU basketball assistant

Ed Haskins has been hired as an assistant coach by WSU basketball coach Ernie Kent, the school announced today.

Haskins, 44, was the head coach at Seattle powerhouse Garfield High School for the past nine years and is a fixture in the area’s hoops community, having also been an assistant at Rainier Beach High School. He won two state championships at Garfield.

He also has ties to WSU, as his late brother, Aaron, played for George Raveling in the early 1980s. This positions him as pretty much exactly what Kent needs on his staff right now: Someone who (a) should be able to get Kent’s foot in the door with elite recruits, and (b) can extoll the virtues of WSU to skeptical city kids with some credibility.

“Since the first time I came over to Pullman when I was around 8 or 9 years old and I watched my brother step on the court when he played for Coach Raveling, I wanted to be a part of Washington State basketball,” Haskins said via news release. “It was a dream of mine and from that time, around 1980, to now, this is a dream fulfilled for me. I am passionate about Washington State, and always have been, even on the other side of the mountains.

“I am extremely grateful to Coach Kent for the opportunity that he’s afforded me to fulfill a life-long dream. At this point he renewed that passion for Cougar basketball when we sat down and talked about his vision and where he hopes to take the program. To be a part of that is monumental. He can coach and I believe we’ll turn the whole program, town and Pac-12 around.”

This hire, which was originally floated by Cougfan a couple of weeks ago, might not be a home run — WSU was never going to land any of the truly great recruiters out there — but this is about as close as Kent could get to one under the circumstances. He deserves a lot of credit for wooing Haskins away from a pretty cherry gig and into the unpredictable world of college basketball assistants.

With the change in coaches at UW, now might be the perfect time to try and get a player or two from the talent-rich Seattle area.

Haskins joins Curtis Allen on Kent’s staff, which still has one vacancy left to fill. Additionally, WSU still has three scholarships it can hand out.

It’s going to be interesting to see what impact Haskins can have on those over the next couple of months. Kent made a habit in his first two classes of taking flyers on kids late in the cycle, only to see them transfer. He seemed to change course last year;