While the sun of summertime continues to shine bright outside, Minot State head men’s basketball coach Matt Murken continues to prepare for another exciting season of Beaver basketball on this coming fall and winter in the indoor hardwood at the Minot State Dome.

One of the tasks in preparation for tip-off in November is assembling a staff to help lead the Beavers and Coach Murken is pleased to introduce three new assistants who will join him, and returning assistant coach H Hendrickson, on the bench this season.

Joining the Minot State men’s basketball staff are former Beaver basketball players Jeremy Brandt and Joshua Johnson as assistant coaches, along with along with recent University of South Dakota graduate Nathan Derner, who will be a graduate assistant as he pursues his master’s at Minot State.

Brandt is a seasoned high school head coach with almost 500 career wins coaching in Sherwood, Bottineau, and most recently at Beulah High School. Winning the state title in 2012, his Miners finished third in the Class B State tournament this past winter as Coach Brandt was named Class B Coach of the Year. He has guided teams to the state tournament 8 times recently in his nearly 30 years on the sidelines, which includes the last 15 seasons at Beulah where he also taught Business Education.

A graduate of Newburg High School where he played basketball and baseball, he played one season of basketball at UND-Williston, played his second collegiate season at NDSU-Bottineau where he earned Second Team All-American honors and was named to the All-Region 13 team, then finished his playing career at Minot State, earning All-NDCAC honors in 1994 while earning his bachelor’s in Business Education.

Jeremy and his wife Heather have been married for 27 years and are teachers at Minot Public Schools. They have two kids, Hanah who is employed at Trinity Health in Minot as an RN, and Trey who is a red-shirt freshman on the Minot State men’s basketball team.

Also returning to Minot State is Johnson who played professionally with the Jacksonville Giants of the ABA in 2016, and with the Kentucky Mavericks of the PBL in 2016-17, and TBL in 2017-18, and also played semi-pro basketball tournaments in China, Germany, and Lithuania with Worldvision Sports.

A product of Lufkin, Texas who started his collegiate career at Cedar Valley College (Texas), Johnson played two seasons at Minot State (2011-13) averaging 13.3 points, 6.1 rebounds, and 1.1 assists per game with 37 blocked shots and 53 steals.

Stepping off the court and into a coaching role, Johnson has experience with AAU basketball in Phoenix, Arizona with Zone6 on the Adidas Circuit, as well as experience coaching at the middle school and high school levels and was Director of basketball Operations for JustHoop Basketball based in Phoenix for three years while running his basketball training business JoshCJohnsontraining.

Johnson also was head girls basketball coach at North Valley Christian Academy (Arizona) in 2019-20 and assistant coach for the boys team, which was 20-1 for the season and NVCA 2020-2021 AIA State Champion.

And joining the Beavers staff after earning his Bachelors in Sport Marketing & Media from the University of South Dakota in May is Derner, a native of Coon Rapids, Iowa who graduated from Coon Rapids-Bayard High School.

Derner spent four years as an undergraduate manager for South Dakota under former Coyotes head coach Todd Lee and current head coach Eric Peterson where he assisted with team travel preparation, practice and game preparation, and academic monitoring. Derner also took care of film exchange, helped break down game and practice film, and created player development edits and highlight packages of players and recruits.