Safet Kastrat and Justin Cousin have joined the staff of the Radford University men’s basketball team as announced Wednesday by RU men’s basketball head coach Darris Nichols.
Kastrat has been named Director of Player Development, and Justin Cousin has returned as a graduate assistant.
A native of Trenton, N.J., Kastrat comes to Radford from Rider University where he served as a special assistant to Head Coach Kevin Baggett for two seasons. He was involved in nearly every aspect of the program from working on scouting reports with assistant coaches to helping evaluate prospective recruits to handling day-to-day operations duties.
Kastrat also co-directed one of the best high school team camps in the country during his time at Rider. He led efforts to organize a 72-team event on campus that hosted teams from all over the East Coast. More than 25 national talent evaluators/scouts were in attendance including outlets such as ESPN, 24/7 Sports, and Phenom Hoops Report.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kastrat orchestrated the Who Knows You and Two Sides to the Game networking platform which served as a zoom seminar for college, high school, and AAU basketball coaches. The event involved over 1,000 coaches from all over the country.
Prior to his time at Rider, Kastrat was a member of the Hun School of Princeton’s boys’ varsity basketball coaching staff. His duties included on-court coaching, preparing film and scouting reports, serving as an assistant liaison between student-athletes and college coaches, working as a study hall monitor, assisting in practice planning, and coordinating summer camps.
While at Hun, Kastrat traveled all over the country to work summer basketball camps at universities such as Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, Seton Hall, Rider, and Columbia. He was also the lead skills instructor and one of the all-star game coaches at the prestigious Jim Couch National Training Showcase in the Bronx with more than 65 Division I prospects from across the nation.
Kastrat graduated from Rider in December of 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a concentration in sports management and leadership. He is of Albanian and Bosnian descent with strong roots to Eastern Europe.
Cousin returns to his alma mater where he was a member of the Radford men’s basketball team from 2013-2018. He currently ranks seventh in program history for games played with 127 and was a key piece of the 2017-18 Big South championship squad that topped LIU Brooklyn for the first NCAA Tournament victory in school history.
The son of former Highlander standout Rod Cousin, he averaged 4.9 points, 1.3 rebounds, and one assist per game for his career. His best season came as a junior in 2016-17 when he contributed 11 points, 2.5 rebounds, and two assists per game.
After graduating from Radford in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in business management, Cousin played professionally in New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand. There, he averaged 11.3 points per game and was named the Team Man of the Year, an award voted on by coaches and teammates for exemplifying many of the qualities of a team leader. While in New Zealand, he also served as a volunteer youth coach at Stratford Primary School.
Following his playing career, Cousin returned to his hometown of Burlington, N.C., to work as a counselor for at-risk youth in the area. He made a living as a fifth-grade teacher and middle school basketball coach at Positive Day School while applying his basketball knowledge as a trainer for kids 5-18 years of age.
The Highlanders kick off the 2021-22 season on Monday, Nov. 1, when they host Eastern Mennonite for an exhibition contest at the Dedmon Center. Then, on Nov. 9, the regular season officially begins with a game against Emory & Henry.
