Why the stability Kenton Paulino brings to Wichita State basketball coaching staff matters

After 15 years of grinding to move up in the coaching world, Kenton Paulino has received his biggest break yet when he came to Wichita State.

Since retiring from his playing career, Paulino began his coaching career as a special assistant for Rick Barnes at Texas, his alma mater. Up next was an assistant job at Lamar in the Southland Conference. Stops at Fresno State, Tulsa, UTEP and Oral Roberts followed.

When Paul Mills was hired as the head coach of the Wichita State men’s basketball team in March, Paulino said he showed no hesitation in accepting his bosses’ offer to follow him.

That loyalty meant a lot to Mills, who reciprocated by naming Paulino the associate head coach on his debut staff in Wichita. It’s the highest title an assistant can hold before sitting in the first seat on the bench.

“That meant a lot to me. And I’ll be honest, I was kind of surprised by it,” Paulino said. “But when you think about it, Mills, he’s a loyal guy. If you’re loyal to him, he’ll look out for you. Obviously my duties won’t change and I’m still going to be who I am, but I’m extremely grateful for that.”

Mills comes from a coaching tree where loyalty and stability are valued highly.

At Baylor, Mills worked with Jerome Tang on Scott Drew’s staff for 14 years. When he became a head coach at Oral Roberts, Mills only had two assistant coaches leave during his six-year tenure — Talvin Hester (Louisiana Tech) and Solomon Bozeman (Arkansas-Little Rock) both did so to become head coaches.

Beginning a turnaround project with Paulino, who spent the last two seasons working for him, has been invaluable to Mills in the lead-up to his first season with the Shockers.

“One thing I realized during my time at ORU is that what you need is continuity,” Mills said. “I think that has a lot to do with our success is we had stability in our coaching staff and the same goes for us at Baylor.

“To have KP, who has been with me and seen that success and played such a huge part in us winning 30 games, I know he’ll be a head coach before long. And that’s what you want: You want assistant coaches who want to be head coaches. To have somebody like Kenton Paulino, who is going to be a head coach in the very near future and is very familiar with my style of play and me, that really helps.”

Not only does Paulino bring experience with Mills, he is also familiar with the Wichita State program from his two seasons under Frank Haith at Tulsa from 2017-19.

In WSU’s first season in the American Athletic Conference, he remembers being stunned when Shocker fans showed up in droves to Tulsa and forced the Golden Hurricane to call a timeout to silence the raucous crowd on their home court.

“I remember the games in Tulsa would feel like a home game for Wichita,” Paulino said. “I saw WSU when they were top 10 in the country, so I know what it can be like here and playing in that type of environment at Koch Arena. So it was a pretty easy decision for me because I knew all about Wichita State and their fan base and the talent that they are able to bring in.”

Paulino, a former guard himself, worked closely with the guards at Oral Roberts, namely Max Abmas, who attained All-American honors.

He will do the same at WSU, which has quite a strong history of producing standouts at the guard position in the past decade alone with NBA talents Fred VanVleet, Ron Baker, Landry Shamet, Austin Reaves and Craig Porter Jr.

“We’re going to be looking to recruit guys that fit what coach Mills does,” Paulino said. “Character is a big plus. He’s huge on character and what guys bring to the table in that regard. It matters how hard you work and I think that’s going to be one of the things we look for in recruiting.”

Another thing Mills learned from Drew during his time at Baylor was empowering assistant coaches and allowing them to lead during practice.

With his new title, Paulino has been given a few new responsibilities during practice. Mills will step in only when necessary with comments directed at players during drills, but it is Paulino who is leading the drill.

That’s just part of the reason why the decision to follow Mills to Wichita State was such an easy one for Paulino.

“WSU is getting a fiery coach in (Mills) and somebody who has a good balance working with players on and off the court,” Paulino said. “He is always about the players and about their development and getting them better as players and people. I’ll tell you this, he’s a great guy to work for.”