Women's Basketball Adds Assistant Coaches Kianna Ray and Shawn Faust
4/21/2023 1:50:00 PM | Women's Basketball
MALIBU, Calif. — First-year Pepperdine head women's basketball coach Tim Hays took significant steps to completing the Waves' coaching staff with the hires of Kianna Ray and Shawn Faust, as announced on Friday.
"We feel incredibly blessed to have both Kianna and Shawn with us," Hays said. "These are two very passionate, driven coaches who value relationships and development as top priorities."
Ray and Faust are the first hires Hays has made since taking over the Pepperdine women's basketball program on April 4. Hays and Pepperdine will fill the remaining two positions in the coming weeks.
Boasting several decades of personal training experience, Shawn Faust comes to Malibu after spending the past 13 years founding iHandle Basketball, a skill and game enhancement training service. Faust has served in a variety of consulting, personal training and development roles across all levels of basketball, ranging from high school and grassroots teams, to NCAA programs and all the way up to professional clients from the NBA, WNBA and a myriad of overseas leagues.
Based out of Lakeland, Fla., Faust has served as a player development coach for recent NBA clients including Killian Hayes, Dwayne Bacon, Tony Bradley and Devonte Graham. Faust also serves as a player development consultant for several NBA teams, as well as his individual clients. Internationally, he has also run player development camps overseas for the Icelandic Federation Basketball Camps, the NBA Dongguan Basketball School, based in China, and the Glo-Ball Basketball Academy in Denmark, amongst others.
Collegiately, Faust has eight years of experience working as a consultant for four different teams. His most recent collegiate consulting endeavors include serving as a player development consultant for the University of Charleston's women's team, Polk State College's men's team and both basketball teams at Southeastern University, an NAIA school, this past season.
Prior to his time as a player development coach, Faust played basketball in over 90 countries worldwide as a member of the Harlem Globetrotter/Washington Generals organization from 2004-14. He played professionally in Switzerland, France, and Brazil after playing at the University of West Florida, a Division II institution in the Gulf South Conference. Faust started his collegiate career at Bevill State Community Colleges and Wallace Community College, where he was a two-time NJCAA All-Conference selection, before graduating from the University of West Florida with a bachelor's degree in psychology in 2003. He and his wife Tiffany have one son, Nash.
"I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with Shawn for many years," Hays said. "I've watched him bring the best out of players at all levels. He brings unique experience developing some of the best players in the world, and that will help us elevate every player's skillset and knowledge of the game."
Bringing several years of Division I coaching experience to the Waves, Ray's most recent stop was at her alma mater, Texas Christian University, where she served as a graduate assistant in 2021-22 before being elevated to the Coordinator of Video Operations and Analytics during the 2022-23 season. Last season, Ray was responsible for compiling scouting reports, tracking analytical trends for the Horned Frogs, assisting with recruiting and helping run practices — specifically with developing TCU's guards. Additionally, she monitored the academic progress of three of her players.
"Kianna is an elite young coach who is far beyond her years in maturity and IQ," Hays said. "She will be a fantastic mentor both on and off the floor for our team."
A four-year varsity letter winner and graduate of Texas Christian University, Ray was a two-time All-Big 12 selection. She helped the Horned Frogs reach the WNIT semifinals in consecutive years as a sophomore and as a junior. Ray already has ties to Pepperdine, as she was teammates at TCU with current Pepperdine graduate senior forward Becky Obinma (Menifee, Calif.) during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.
All told, Ray scored 1,170 career points, 466 rebounds, 401 assists, 205 steals and 133 blocks in 124 games during her collegiate career. She was not the first player in school history with these totals, but also only one of 14 players in Division I to score at least 1,000 points, dish out 400 assists, tally 200 steals and register 100 blocks in a career since 1999-00.
In the classroom, Ray was a four-time Academic All-Big 12 award winner. She graduated from TCU 2020 with a bachelor's degree in strategic communication, and she is on track to receive her masters in educational leadership from TCU in May 2023. Outside of her endeavors at TCU, Ray was a youth basketball coach and skills trainer for Texas Elite, a club team for players aged 6-13 based in her hometown of Austin, Texas.
Pepperdine is coming off a season in which it went 11-19 and made the second round of the West Coast Conference Championships.
