City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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West Catholic Prep made a splash with its coaching hire, bringing over a young coach from New Jersey with an already-impressive resume.

The school announced the hiring of Jason Hasson as its new boys' basketball head coach on Friday, a little more than two months after letting go of former coach Jasmine "Jazz" Williams.

An Altoona, Pa. native, Hasson has a bachelor's degree from St. Vincent College (Pa.) and a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Manhattanville College (N.Y.). The 34-year-old and his wife, Hannah, have a 13-month old son, Ira, and one more on the way.

“It was just a family decision, we wanted to kind of move closer to my family, we have one young son and another baby one on the way, so that definitely played a role,” he said. “(And) definitely the intrigue of trying to build another program.”

Hasson comes over after a successful five-year run at Pope John Sparta (N.J.), where he went 108-37 and won the NJSIAA Non-Public 'A' state championship in 2015. Prior to that, he was an assistant coach at St. Anthony (N.J.) for three years, working under Hall of Fame head coach Bob Hurley Sr.

“That was part of the conversations, competing in the Catholic League and getting to the Palestra and competing for state championships,” Hasson said. “And I guess my track record of building something from the ground up was something that they found intriguing.”

Five years ago, Hasson was put in charge of a Pope John XXIII program that hadn’t previously been worth tracking on the New Jersey prep hoops scene and turned it into one of its biggest draws.

“When I took over Pope John five years ago, they hadn’t been very successful in basketball either, so going through that challenge again was definitely intriguing to me,” he said. “They had never won more than 15 games, they had never won a county championship, they had never won a league championship. They had never had a Division I player and they’d only had a handful of Division II players.”

Now he'll take over a West Catholic program that has a long road ahead to rise up through the PCL heirarchy and compete with the likes of Roman Catholic and Neumann-Goretti at the top of the 14-team league.

The program hasn't had a non-losing record in league play or overall since going 10-6 against PCL opponents and 16-11 overall in 2008-09.

Hasson has some familiarity with the best hoops league in the state, but there’s much to learn.

“We played some of the top teams, we’ve competed against them, but from top to bottom I’m not real familiar with it,” he said. “I’ve just got to hit the ground running and start doing my homework really quickly.”

Last year, the Burrs finished 6-17 overall, including a 4-9 record in Catholic League play. That team graduates Mansfield-bound guard John Herndon but is slated to return high-scoring senior Jeohnni Moore and talented sophomore Imere Harris.

It might not be a group that’s ready to make the league semifinals at the Palestra right away, but that’s not the immediate goal for the new head coach.

“I think the biggest thing is setting the culture,” Hasson said. “Not just a team but building a program and I think it starts with, you’ve got to start with the team that’s coming back and get them to buy in, and start with some young kids that are coming to the school and build it from that group up with a real, solid foundation; I think that’s what we did in my first year at Pope John, we set a real solid foundation for the years to come.”