Galesburg – Carl Sandburg College men’s basketball coach Ryan Twaddle has added a familiar face and a new face to his coaching staff. Former longtime assistant Jeff Thurman has returned to the program, and Knoxville native Kane Mastin also will be an assistant for the Chargers for the 2017-18 season.
Thurman, an assistant for Twaddle from 2007-15, was the women’s basketball coach at Black Hawk East during the 2015-16 season before that program was disbanded. He spent the past two years as a graduate assistant with the Western Illinois men’s basketball team and rejoins the Chargers on a volunteer basis.
During the 2013-14 season, Thurman helped Sandburg win its first Region IV tournament championship and reach the NJCAA Division II national tournament for the first time in program history. A Sandburg alumnus, Thurman was part of the Chargers men’s golf and men’s basketball teams from 2005-07.
Mastin, a 2004 Knoxville High School graduate, currently teaches history at United High School, where he had been the JV girls basketball head coach and varsity assistan
t coach since 2015.
Prior to United, Mastin taught in the Catlin school district and was the Salt Fork co-op’s girls basketball coach during the 2014-15 season. The Storm finished that year 25-5 and were rated sixth in the final Class 1A regular season poll and while winning the Vermilion Valley Conference championship, Blue Devil Classic and Vermilion County Tournament. One of the players Mastin coached with the Storm, Morgan Kirby, is a sophomore guard with the Chargers women’s basketball team.
Mastin earned a bachelor’s in history from Bradley in 2009 and his teaching certification from WIU in 2011.
The Chargers, who finished last season 18-15 and reached the Region IV tournament championship game, open the 2017-18 campaign at 8 p.m. Nov. 1 against St. Ambrose JV at John M. Lewis Gymnasium.
