Bob Dunn didn’t want a job.
As an entering freshman at the University of Dayton, his parents gave him a choice: find employment, or become involved with an organization on campus. They didn’t care which, but it had to be one or the other.
He picked basketball. On move-in day, he parked himself outside the office of Brian Gregory, then the head coach of the Flyers’ men’s team, waited until Gregory showed up, and talked his way into a student manager role. Those humble beginnings served as a launching pad for subsequent stops at Kentucky, Wagner, George Mason, Miami, Penn State and, of course, Cleveland State.
“For the past 20 years, I’ve been choosing basketball over getting a job,” Dunn quipped.
The irony of Dunn’s entry into the college basketball world becomes obvious when considering the magnitude of the job in front of him after being hired as CSU’s new head coach this week, even if he’d protest using that word to describe his chosen career.
For one thing, he has to follow the highly-successful eight-year run of Chris Kielsmeier, which produced six 20-win seasons, six postseason appearances, and a pair of Horizon League titles, on the way to Kielsmeier becoming the first coach in program history to leave for a higher-profile position.
“The standard of this program will not change, but the ceiling and expectations have been raised,” Dunn acknowledged. “We know what can be accomplished here with the championship culture, and we’ll take extreme pride in building and protecting that.”
He inherited a roster that presently includes just one player, freshman guard Sur Lozano, as the other six 2025-26 Vikings with remaining eligibility now reside in the transfer portal. Beyond the portal, live viewing periods for the summer grassroots circuits are also imminent, and Cleveland State’s eighth head coach will need to assemble a staff quickly if he has any hope of recruiting those events thoroughly this spring and summer.
The Bay Village, OH native is acutely aware of the importance of the seemingly-unending search for the right student-athletes.
“From being here before, I know the recipe to winning in the Horizon League: Get really good players,” he said. “But more than that, it’s about empowering them with confidence to go out on the court and make split second decisions without second guessing, to play free, play together, and create beautiful basketball with that same CSU aggressiveness, toughness, and championship mindset.”
On top of all of that, there’s the matter of building on those previous successes and producing something that, somehow, transforms the mostly-apathetic Cleveland market into an engine for a program with long-term sustainability. That’s been a decades-long issue at CSU, a thorny problem that not even Kielsmeier was truly able to solve.
Still Dunn, with full knowledge of each of the situation, thanks to being a local native who spent three total seasons on Kielsmeier’s staff, attacked the abruptly-vacant Cleveland State job with that same day-one enthusiasm that earned him a place in Dayton’s storied program two decades earlier. He first re-connected with Vikings athletic director Kelsey Gory Harkey on April Fool’s Day, less than 24 hours after his former boss’ departure for Texas State.
Gory Harkey felt that passion from the beginning of her search.
“He’s incredibly genuine when he shares that he is ready to be Cleveland State’s women’s basketball head coach,” she said. “I don’t know that he’s out there looking for any head coaching job. He [cites] the alignment with the department, the City of Cleveland, and how he aligns with those areas and wants to make it better and grow, I think he’s very genuine with that.”
Ten days after throwing his hat into the ring, and with his first head coaching role secure thanks to beating out what Gory Harkey called a “very deep” pool of candidates, Dunn began attacking his numerous new challenges. Many, of course, depend on his phone, though not every incoming notification involved a text from a prospective Viking.
“About five minutes before I came up here, my iPhone told me that my resting heart rate was much faster this week than it was last week,” he said. “So that’s how it’s been the last few days.”
Dunn is often cited as a relationship builder, and that helped result in a well-attended introductory event in the Wolstein Center on Wednesday, including several current and former Vikings that he recruited, coached, or both. Alumni Amele Ngwafang and Nadia Dumas posted up near the back of the room, while Jada Leonard, Paula Pique, and Queen Ruffin – each of whom entered the portal upon Kielsmeier’s exit – assembled nearby. Assistant coaches Shelby Zoeckler and Chenara Wilson, along with other staff members, were also on hand.
Could a few of those relationships last a little longer? Dunn sees ensuring that they do as his first task.
“We’d love as many of them to come back as we can, and that’s what I’ve been working on, and I feel like we’re making progress,” he said. “But just to have that carryover that they know the standard, they know the culture, and they know me. I recruited them all, and coached Sarah [Hurley] and Macey [Fegan], and feel positive with what we’ve accomplished this last couple days. I would love to have them back in this program.”
Should that goal be met, what he – and the rest of the Cleveland State community – hopes follows should sound familiar to those who have watched the Vikings this decade.
“Our vision is to cut down nets,” Dunn declared. “Our vision is to graduate at the top of our class. Our vision is to be active members of the community and one with the city. And to do all this with a smile, being grateful and proud of who we represent.”
If he can pull all of that off, he won’t just have a job, he’ll have the job.
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