Whitesell out as Loyola coach
To say Jim Whitesell didn’t foresee Monday’s news would be an understatement.
He spent Sunday night talking on the phone with recruits. He had plane tickets Tuesday to attend the national junior-college tournament in Kansas.
Then Whitesell met with new Loyola athletic director M. Grace Calhoun on Monday morning and learned he wouldn’t return for an eighth year as the Ramblers’ coach.
Whitesell, who rebuilt Division III Elmhurst College and Division II Lewis University before climbing to Division I, finished with a 109-107 record at Loyola.
“I’m really proud of what we did at Loyola,” Whitesell said. “We had a winning record. We graduated a lot of guys. Heck, we graduated all of them.”
Loyola finished this season at 16-15 — the program’s first winning season since 2006-07. However, the Ramblers finished eighth in the Horizon League for the fourth consecutive year.
That lack of progress, when combined with the timing of Calhoun’s hiring and Whitesell’s contract, led to a change in Rogers Park.
“After extensively assessing the future of the program, including input from student-athletes and other key stakeholders, I felt a change was in the best interest of the program,” Calhoun said in a statement.
“Allowing Coach Whitesell to coach in the last year of his contract would prevent him from recruiting effectively, while extending his contract would send a false signal of the level of competitive success that will merit a contract extension going forward.”
Calhoun, hired by Loyola in February, has been splitting time between the Ramblers and her job as Indiana’s associate athletic director.
In a Daily Herald interview March 3, Calhoun offered her take on basketball’s importance at a non-football school like Loyola.
“I think one of the things the Indiana experience taught me is that you don’t need to apologize to say that basketball is our flagship,” Calhoun said. “That having a healthy, successful basketball program is going to help all sports.”
Calhoun said in her statement Monday that Loyola wants “a person of high integrity, experience, and will have either Midwestern roots or a proven track record of effectively recruiting the Chicago area.”
If Loyola looks locally and likes coaches who understand private schools, Northwestern assistants Mitch Henderson and Tavaras Hardy could be candidates.
Loyola also could battle Bradley and Northern Illinois for other rising assistants. Of the three schools, the Ramblers have the advantage of the best location, the best league and the newest facilities.
The $26 million Norville Center opened Monday with a beautiful locker room, weight room and sports medicine facilities, among other amenities.
This summer, Loyola plans to renovate Gentile Center by turning the court 90 degrees and installing plush seating on the lower level.
Oh, and the Ramblers return four of the seven guys who averaged at least 22 minutes per game this season.
“The program’s in a great situation,” Whitesell said. “For seven years, we’ve given our all to Loyola. We appreciated everything about the place.”