The 2022-23 athletic cycle will be Dan Priest's 13th as head coach at Kenyon College. Prior to coming to Gambier, he spent seven seasons as coach at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas.
Three seasons ago, before the pandemic wiped out the 2020-21 season, Kenyon put together a 6-19 campaign and saw junior guard Ugnius Zilinskas earned All-NCAC Honorable Mention accolades.
Priest carries with him a resume with extensive Ohio basketball ties. In 2004, he inherited a 0-23 team at Hendrix and within three years had the Warriors boasting a 15-10 mark. During a three-year stretch from 2007 through 2009, his Hendrix squads posted three straight winning seasons and made three consecutive trips to the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference postseason tournament. In 2008-09, the Warriors rang up a program best 19-7 overall record.
During the 2015-16 season, Kenyon posted an 11-15 record before bowing out in the quarterfinal round of the NCAC Tournament. Under Priest's leadership, senior Tim Connolly led the league in scoring and made the all-conference first team. In 2012-13, Priest was named NCAC Coach of the Year after guiding Kenyon to its best season since 2008-09, while matching program's best single-season win total since the 1994-95 season. Since stepping on campus, he has had 15 players named to All-NCAC teams and two to the All-Great Lakes Region Team.
Prior to his six seasons at Hendrix, Priest spent five years as head coach at Ohio Dominican University, in Columbus, Ohio, where he took a Panther program that averaged seven wins in the previous three seasons and converted it into a program that averaged 18 wins a season during his tenure. His time at Ohio Dominican also included three runs in the American Mideast Conference tournament, three appearances in the NAIA's Top-20 polls, and an overall record of 90-71.
Priest's past coaching experiences also cover seven years as an assistant at Hanover College and brief stints as a graduate assistant at both Indiana State University and Miami (OH) University.
A native of Oxford, Ohio, Priest earned his master's degree in sports studies from Miami in 1997 and completed his bachelor's degree at Ohio Northern University in 1990. He was a three-year letterman at ONU and helped lead the Polar Bears to the NCAA Tournament in 1988. He still holds the University's career three-point field goal percentage record (.486).
