STATESBORO – Georgia Southern men's basketball coach Brian Burg announced changes to his 2021-22 coaching staff today.

Rusty Grafel has been promoted to Director of Development and Recruiting, and longtime Georgia High School coach Eddie Martin has been named Special Advisor to the Head Coach. Cavel Witter (assistant coach), Jack Keller (graduate manager) and Adam Gage (director of operations) have also joined the staff.

Grafel is in his second season on the Eagle coaching staff.  He earned 104 victories as the head coach at Colby Community College from 2012-19 before joining the Texas Tech staff, where he served in a support staff role in 2019-20.

A member of the Gwinnett County Sports Hall of Fame, Martin has amassed a career record of 852-263 and won nine state championships in his head coaching career. He coached 39 seasons, and his teams won 16 region titles and made 26 state tournament appearances. He went 139-36 with two state titles in six seasons at Buford.

Witter spent the last three seasons at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. In his first year with the program, Witter helped lead Lincoln to 18 victories and a fourth-straight postseason appearance, as the Blue Tigers advanced to the semifinals of the MIAA Men's Basketball Championship. Witter worked with four players who earned all-conference recognition.

Witter played three seasons at Creighton from 2007-10 and holds the program record for consecutive free throws made with 32. He was named to the MVC All-Bench team in 2008 and averaged eight points, 2.1 assists and 1.5 rebounds a game in 101 career contests. He helped the Blue Jays win 67 games and make three-straight postseason appearances, including two trips to the NIT. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in public relations from Creighton in 2010. Witter also played seven years of professional basketball in Europe.

Keller comes to Statesboro from Cincinnati, where he served as the head manager under head coach John Brannen from 2019-21. He was a student manager at Northern Kentucky under Brannen from 2017-19 and was elevated to head manager prior to the 2018-19 season. Keller earned his bachelor's degree in sport administration from Cincinnati in 2021 and is pursuing his master's in sports management at Georgia Southern. 

Gage spent the last two seasons as a graduate assistant on the Morehead State men's basketball coaching staff, where he helped manage the program's budget by coordinating team travel in addition to assisting in on and off-court development and supervising the student managers. Last season, Gage assisted in leading Morehead State to the program's first Ohio Valley Conference Tournament championship in 10 years as the Eagles advanced to the NCAA Tournament, finishing the campaign with a 23-8 record. 

The Eagles open the 2021-22 season Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. against Ball State in Hanner Fieldhouse.