Loyola’s Drew Valentine doesn’t grow tired of hearing he’s the youngest coach in this year’s NCAA Tournament.
The 30-year-old first-year coach of the Ramblers takes his 10th-seeded team into Friday’s first-round game against Ohio State hoping to motivate other young assistant coaches, just as current Marquette coach Shaka Smart inspired Valentine when Smart burst onto the scene 13 years ago at Virginia Commonwealth.
“It’s just something for people to talk about or have a connection with,” Valentine said Tuesday as the Ramblers prepared at Gentile Arena for their NCAA Tournament opener. “I think it’s motivating for the next generation. Somebody like Shaka was a young minority coach for me when I was first getting started in this profession, somebody to look up to.
“I don’t get tired of it because I want the younger coaches on my staff to strive to do this. I want the next generations of players who are ending their playing careers and entering coaching to have that confidence and ability, like, ‘Man, if he did it, I can do it if I just lock in.’
“We’ve got (102-year-old) Sister Jean to talk about and we’ve got the youngest coach in the country to talk about, so we’ll take it.”
Loyola has come a long way since the 2018 tournament, when the Ramblers shocked the college basketball world by advancing to the Final Four, making Sister Jean an international celebrity. Last year’s Sweet 16 run proved it was no fluke, and coach Porter Moser used that success to get a higher-profile job at Oklahoma.
Instead of searching for a bigger name or a more experienced coach, Loyola athletic director Steve Watson promoted Valentine, then 29, who joined the staff in 2017-18 and whom Moser called the Ramblers’ “defensive coordinator.” Valentine previously was a graduate assistant under Tom Izzo at Michigan State and an assistant coach for two years at Oakland, his alma mater.
Was there anything Valentine wanted to do immediately to put his stamp on the team and separate him from Moser?
“I just think we have different backgrounds and we’re different people,” Valentine said. “We’ve got a different presence. We dress different, look different, so it just creates a different energy, a different vibe. I felt like that was going to take care of itself as long as I stuck to what has gotten me to this point.
“I really didn’t try to overthink it. My players would be asking me: ‘Coach, are we going to change this? Are we going to change that?’ I’m like: ‘It’s just going to be a different feel. You guys know me and our relationship and how I communicate, and this is how he communicates.’ The music that I listen to… like, we were chopping it up about the Lil Durk album that came out Friday.”
So Moser wouldn’t talk to the kids about Lil Durk?
“Nah, he ain’t doing that,” Valentine said with a grin. “It’s just different. Is it better? No, it’s not better or worse. It’s just different.
“I’m me. He’s his own person. I wouldn’t be here without him, so I’m grateful for all the lessons that he taught me. I’m grateful he brought me here as an assistant. He didn’t have to do that. He believed in me and thought I was prepared to be a head coach.”
Forward Chris Knight, a transfer from Dartmouth, said Valentine is easy for the players to relate to because they’re part of the same generation.
“It’s different,” Knight said. “You usually grow up playing for older coaches. He’s 30, so he’s really relatable. You can have conversations. There are a lot of times where you have coaches that might not get what you’re talking about in the locker room, and he’ll come in and jump in the conversation. So it’s nice to have a strong connection.”
Despite being the lower seed, the Ramblers head into the matchup with seventh-seeded Ohio State as slight favorites according to most betting lines. Led by returnees Lucas Williamson, Braden Norris, Aher Uguak and Marquise Kennedy and transfers Ryan Schwieger and Knight, they have enough talent to beat a Big Ten team with a pedigree like the Buckeyes.
Valentine joked that it “sucks” not to be the underdog for once, though he credits the players and program for making believers out of Las Vegas.
“You don’t want to create any unnecessary bulletin-board material if you don’t need to,” he said. “But I do think it’s a compliment to the guys and the players that came before these players that they think highly enough of our program to have us favored in an NCAA Tournament game, which is wild to me, considering where we’ve come the past five years.”
Age doesn’t always matter come March. Legendary DePaul coach Ray Meyer took his team to the 1943 Final Four in his first season at age 29, then waited 36 years until his second Final Four team in 1979. It’s doubtful Valentine will be coaching the Ramblers in 2058, but hopefully he will have left his mark on the program by the time he moves on to bigger things.
“I might not be great at a lot of things, but I think I’m pretty good at winning,” Valentine said. “So I expect, as crazy as that sounds, to have the opportunity to compete for championships. Whether that results in an NCAA Tournament every year, I don’t know. But the opportunity to play for championships is something I put a lot of pressure on myself to be able to do.”
It all starts Friday in Pittsburgh. The tournament’s youngest coach and oldest nun are ready to do their thing.
