Former Drury basketball standout Steven Gum enters his second season as the Panthers assistant coach.
Gum, 26, helped the Panthers to their only Great Lakes Valley Conference championship in 2007-08, the last of his four seasons in a DU uniform.
Upon graduation from Drury with a degree in Exercise and Sports Science in 2008, he spent two seasons at Missouri-St. Louis - another GLVC school - as an assistant for coach Chris Pilz before returning to the Ozarks for the past two years as an assistant coach at Republic High School under former Panthers' head coach Gary Stanfield.
The former Willow Springs standout scored 1,205 points in his Drury career from 2004-08, ranking 24th on the school's all-time scoring list. His 277 made 3-pointers in his career are second in the books behind only the 351 by Matt Miller from 1998-2002.
"Drury is a special place to me and I'm excited about the opportunity to work with and give back to a university and basketball program that has given me so many great memories," Gum says. "Coach Hesser is a great basketball mind and I look forward to learning more from him."
The Panthers finished 88-31 and made three NCAA-II tournament appearances in Gum's four seasons, including a 25-6 overall mark his senior campaign that netted a GLVC title.
"We're very excited to have Steven return to our program," Hesser said. "Not only is he a winner, but he knows the ins and outs of how we want to play and he picked up valuable recruiting experience in our league in his time at UMSL. Just as he was as a player, he'll be a tremendous asset for us going forward."
Gum and wife Lauren reside in Republic.
