Orange County Prep Review : Ex-Loara Coach Is Pleased With Detour From Iowa to San Diego

Brian Daly, who once coached at Loara High School, returned to California with the intention of being the assistant basketball coach at USC, a college team looking for help.

Instead, he became head coach at San Dieguito, an inexperienced, last-place San Diego County high school team looking for help.

Guess which team has vastly improved?

San Dieguito, which was expected to finish at the bottom of the Palomar League, is tied for second place. USC is one of the Pacific 10’s worst teams.

Last season, Daly, 30, was an assistant to George Raveling, Iowa’s coach. When Raveling accepted the coaching job at USC, Daly planned to work as an assistant. But soon after Daly arrived in Southern California, he was offered the San Dieguito job.

“Everybody looks at the college level as the top of the ladder,” Daly said. “But coming to San Dieguito, I think, is really a move up for my particular career interest because I like the interaction with the student athletes. I like the teaching (history) and coaching combination.”

San Dieguito finished last in the Palomar League last season. After losing 11 seniors, including the starting five, this season didn’t hold many promises. But the team is challenging for the league title.

“This is the finest group of young men I’ve been associated with,” Daly said. “Sometimes, as human beings, we have a tendency to believe what we are told. These kids didn’t do that. To their credit, they felt they were better than what they were predicted to be.”

This is not the first time Daly has coached an inexperienced team. In 1982, he took over a young team at Loara, which finished 12-12 and was considered one of the county’s most improved teams.

At the end of that season, Raveling, who coached Daly at Washington State in the late 1970s, asked Daly to be his assistant at Iowa.

“George Raveling was probably the only person who could have gotten me out of Loara,” Daly said. “It was a tough decision to leave there, but George told me that that opportunity (at Iowa) may not exist in the future.

“George sold me on the virtues of the Midwestern wheat field. Going back (to Iowa), I thought George was going to be there for a while, especially with the young team he had recruited.”

Daly’s duties at Iowa including recruiting and scouting. He also worked on the floor as a defensive coordinator. He said that some of the techniques he stressed at Iowa also work for San Dieguito.

“In a lot of ways, the fundamentals are much the same (as at Iowa),” said Daly, who was also a student assistant with San Diego State Coach Smokey Gaines. “I break down the fundamentals in every aspect of the game, and I think that is a strength of mine.”

Prep Notes

Former Corona del Mar basketball Coach Jack Errion will be honored Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. in the Sea Kings’ gymnasium. Errion coached 10 seasons at the school, compiling a 199-60 record. He won six league titles, two Southern Section 3-A championships and qualified for the playoffs nine times. He also coached 22 seasons at St. Anthony in Long Beach and had a career record of 571-328. Former players, parents and friends are invited to attend. . . . Dan Clark, an internationally recognized speaker specializing in peak performance and motivation, heads the list of speakers for the Southern Section’s Athletic Symposium scheduled for Feb. 10 in the Anaheim Convention Center. Other speakers include Dr. Richard Borkowski, who will discuss athletic liability, and Lew Pebbles, consultant for the state Department of Education, who will discuss the “C-Average” legislation. Cost of the symposium is $15. . . . Former Cypress football Coach Geoff DeLapp has been retained on the University of Hawaii coaching staff by new Coach Bob Wagner. DeLapp will continue to coach the wide receivers. . . . Esperanza offensive tackle James Rae made his final visit over the weekend to Cal and will decide between Arizona State, USC, UCLA and Cal. The first day a high school player can sign a national letter of intent is Feb. 11. Denise Ogburn of Edison made a verbal commitment Saturday to play basketball at Cal Poly Pomona.