Jerrod Calhoun's First Cincinnati Coaching Staff Reportedly Finalizing Ahead of 2026 Transfer Portal Frenzy

Things are all set up for the new Cincinnati Bearcats men's basketball roster to hit the ground running and grow this offseason quickly. Who all those players will end up being is a mystery, but we do have a coaching staff finalizing around one head coach, Jerrod Calhoun.

Reports previously surfaced that chief of staff Paul Molinari (a 30-year coaching veteran who started with Calhoun at Fairmont State) and assistant Mantoris Robinson were on the way with Calhoun, and The Enquirer's Scott Springer dropped a report with the other coaches as well.

Four more names are joining the aforementioned pillars in Max Bent, Curran Walsh, Johnny Hill, and Ben Asher. They are set up and ready to attack the transfer portal when it opens tomorrow.

Calhoun's Crew

Cincinnati head coach Jerrod Calhoun speaks during a press conference announcing him as the head men's basketball coach at Fifth Third Arena in Cincinnati on Wednesday, March 25, 2026. | Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Check out more information on the new names' careers below:

Hill: The rising assistant is re-joining Clahoun's staff after spending the past two seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He was heavily involved in their defensive and scouting efforts and came there after coaching at USU in 2023-24, the year before Calhoun arrived from Youngstown State.

“Johnny is another Chicagoland native who has played a key role in building NCAA Tournament teams as a player at Purdue and then as an assistant coach at Montana State and Utah State,” UIC head coach Rob Ehsan commented about Hill when he was hired by the Flames. “He knows what it takes to be successful at the highest levels of our sport, whether that be in recruiting, scouting, or developing our young men on and off the court.”

Asher: A Calhoun guy through and through. Asher has been on his staff since 2021 as an assistant. Before joining that Youngstown State group, Asher rolled through five campaigns at Rutgers (2016-21), including a role as the director of basketball operations and recruiting for two years.

He has won multiple rising-coach awards this decade while sharpening his craft under Calhoun.

Walsh: The USU director of player personnel and analytics last season, Walsh rejoined the program after serving as an assistant coach at Denver in the 2024-25 season, where, prior to that, he spent three seasons as the director of men's basketball operations at Utah.

He also worked for USU from 2019-21 as the director of player development.

Bent: A first-year assistant coach for Utah State last season, Bent joined the Aggies after spending three seasons (2021-24) as an assistant coach and the recruiting coordinator at the University of Charleston, a Division II program in Charleston, West Virginia. He was the USU video coordinator in 2024-25 before rising to assistant.

Check out the full list from Springer here.

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