Ke'Sha Blanton enters her fourth season as an assistant coach for the women's basketball team in 2016-17 and is the longest-tenured coach on the Titan women's basketball staff.
Last season, as part of head coach Bernard Scott's staff, Blanton helped coach the Titans to a 15-15 record and a fourth-place finish in the Horizon League at 11-7. She mentored First Team All-League guard Rosanna Reynolds, who was among the league leaders in points and assists and was named the Co-Scholar Athlete of the Winter in the Horizon League.
The 2015-16 campaign was the first winning season for Detroit since 2012-13 and the best conference record since 2011-12. The Titans also had a school-record 7-2 mark in league road games.
Detroit Mercy, which primarily played the season with eight players, broke school records for 3-pointers made in a season and set a new program mark in free-throw percentage. Detroit also led the Horizon League in league games in field goal percentage and 3-point field goal percentage.
On March 16, 2015, she was named the interim head coach serving in that capacity until May 5, when Detroit Mercy named Bernard Scott head coach. One of his first moves was to keep Blanton on the staff as an assistant.
Blanton joined the staff in the summer of 2012 as an assistant coach and her time has proved to be a successful one with Detroit winning 21 games and capturing the 2013 Women’s Basketball Invitational (WBI) championship in her first season as an assistant.
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In that first year, Detroit Mercy finished 21-13 with 16 home wins – tied for the most in the country – and earned the top seed in the WBI’s East Region – the second-straight year in which the Titans made the postseason. She helped coach three players that earned HL honors as well as a team that finished in the top three in the Horizon League in 10 different statistics, including leading the conference in scoring (70.2).
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In 2013-14, Blanton helped steer a young team into hosting a home playoff game for the sixth-straight year as she also took over recruiting coordinator and travel duties.
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During the 2014-15 season, Blanton helped a team that was picked to finish last in the Horizon League preseason poll to a fifth-place finish in the standings and six more wins than the previous year. She also recruited Darianne Seward who would go on to earn Horizon League All-Freshman Team accolades.Â
Blanton came to the Titans after serving as a graduate assistant coach at Florida State, where her responsibilities included assisting coaches in practice, recruiting, player development, scouting, community relations and extensive film breakdown of opponent’s players, plays, and defenses.
During her time with FSU, she helped the program to 38 wins, including a 24-8 campaign in 2010-2011, when the Seminoles earned a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament and advanced to the second round. Florida State players also earned six ACC honors, while Cierra Bravard was named Honorable Mention All-American and Natasha Howard a Freshman All-American in 2011.
Prior to her arrival in Tallahassee, she attended the University of Toledo while starting her coaching career with elementary, high school and AAU teams. She was an assistant coach at Gesu Catholic School for four years, primarily working with the boy’s seventh and eighth grade team. She served as the summer coach for Central Catholic High School's junior varsity and varsity teams for two years and was also an assistant coach for three years for Team Unity (AAU). She spent her last two years in Toledo as the junior varsity coach at Notre Dame Academy, helping the squad go undefeated in the city league for the first time in school history.
She also gained experience in coaching by working at the Jimmy Jackson and Todd Mitchell Basketball camp for three years.
Off the court and while pursuing her undergraduate degree, she did her internship at WTOL 11 in Toledo and continued to work for them after her internship was completed. While working in television, she was in charge of shooting sports film, editing video and writing scripts. Blanton was also a reporter for UT 10 News and in her senior year became the news producer.
Blanton graduated Magna Cum Laude in communications with a concentration in broadcast journalism from Toledo in 2009. She then earned her master’s in sports administration from Florida State.
