Loyola Marymount : Though Basketball and Baseball Programs Show Promise, Lions Are Not Out to Grab National Spotlight, Says School President

First, let’s get the monkey off Loyola Marymount’s back. The Rev. James N. Loughran, the school president, says he never promoted the little Westchester university as the potential “Georgetown of the West” when he took office in 1984.

When that oft-repeated comment was brought up recently, Loughran, an East Coast native, said: “I never said that. I said reporters seem to want to hear me say we’ll become the Georgetown of the West. We don’t want to be Georgetown athletically or in any other fashion.”

Schools Similar

However, that begs the question: As Loyola enters a period of improved athletic optimism and stability, is it capable of becoming the Georgetown of the West? And does it want to? Certainly there are alumni who would be pleased--make that ecstatic .

The schools are remarkably similar. Both are Jesuit institutions with solid academic reputations in major metropolitan locales. They offer about the same number of athletic scholarships. Both were once football powers but dropped the sport in the early 1950s. Both offer a fairly well-rounded program of intercollegiate sports.

The big difference may be in the person of Georgetown’s massive basketball coach, John Thompson. The 6-foot-10, 275-pound Thompson took what was an unremarkable program not unlike Loyola’s (“They were just kind of there, like Loyola,” Lions Coach Paul Westhead remembers) into his large hands in 1972 and by the force of his personality--and with school backing--forged the Hoyas into a perennial NCAA Tournament contender within three years.

Brian Quinn, in his third year as athletic director at Loyola, considered the Washington school that has become synonymous with basketball excellence and said: “We’re probably across-the-board better than them in sports. We just don’t have the national recognition.”

In separate interviews, Quinn and Loughran both said a program of national significance is not a goal and may not even be realistic, given the recruiting competition in Los Angeles.

“We don’t have aspirations of being the best basketball team in the West,” Quinn said. “The idea is, if we do something and invest money, we should do it well. We do expect to have an excellent basketball program. What I mean by excellent is we are very competitive within our conference, we graduate our athletes and we do everything by the (NCAA) law. If we go to the playoffs, that’s a bonus.”

Two years ago, in Quinn’s first season as athletic administrator, Westhead’s team was invited to the postseason National Invitation Tournament and Coach Dave Snow’s baseball team reached the College World Series.

2 Teams Faltered

Last year, the basketball and baseball teams faltered in conference play but the women’s volleyball team qualified for NCAA playoffs.

“We’d love to” return to the World Series, Quinn said, “but . . . that’s a bonus. When we set up the year we don’t say, ‘Let’s do everything to get to the College World Series.’ Some schools cheat to do that, to get to the Final Four. We don’t want to do that. Let’s do the best we can and play by the rules.”

Said Loughran: “You play to win, but winning isn’t the only criterion, maybe not the most important criterion. What happened with the baseball (World Series appearance) . . . was good. (But) if people started evaluating us--the school or the coaches--like that, I would pull back. That’s not what we’re about.”

That attitude rankles some Loyola athletic observers, who say that despite the presence of such top-notch coaches as Westhead, who led the Lakers to a National Basketball Assn. championship and two straight appearances in the finals, and Snow, who was pitching coach on two NCAA champions at Cal State Fullerton before going to the College World Series in his second season at Loyola, the school does not do what it could to be a strong Division I program.

“It’s a small-time mentality trying to compete in big-time athletics,” said one former athletic department employee. “You just can’t do it.”

Another person familiar with the behind-the-scenes situation said that despite the stated aim of being competitive in the school’s showcase sports, the administration offers neither the necessary guidance nor funding. “The attitude has always been, ‘God will look out for us,’ and it still is,” he said.

Indeed, when asked about the direction athletics are taking, Loughran said, “I’d rather not talk about direction. . . . What happens happens.”

Loyola offers 16 intercollegiate sports and three club sports. Six sports--men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s volleyball, baseball and tennis--have athletes on full or partial scholarships. Only men’s basketball and baseball carry full scholarhips for players and coaches with full-time assistants. The school has about 300 athletes and grants about 50 athletic scholarships. The yearly cost of attending Loyola is nearly $12,000, putting the scholarship budget at more than $500,000. The entire athletic budget is about $1.5 million.

By comparison, Georgetown offers 23 sports, several of them on the club level. It currently has 54 athletic scholarships and also grants scholarships in six sports--men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women track/cross-country, women’s tennis and volleyball. School officials declined to reveal the athletic department budget.

However, thanks to Georgetown’s success in basketball and the lucrative Big East Conference’s television contract and NCAA tournament appearances, basketball virtually pays for sports there, though an athletic department spokesman said all profits from basketball go to the school’s general fund.

There’s no such gravy train for Loyola or the West Coast Athletic Conference, which not only plays in the shadow of the Pacific-10 Conference but has trouble holding its own with the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. as well.

Quinn makes no bones about that. The WCAC is composed of eight member schools in California, Oregon and Washington, most of them with small to medium enrollments. All of them have religious affiliations. “Our conference is not the Big East. For us to get into that war . . . wouldn’t make sense,” Quinn said.

“The presidents of our conference don’t see that as a goal,” he said. “Our conference is very good, for us. We can compete in that conference with the funding we have.”

Even in the WCAC, Loyola ranks near the bottom in athletic funding. Asked the similarities between his program and Georgetown, Westhead grins and says: “We’re both Jesuit.”

Loyola programs traditionally have suffered because part-time coaches offering few or no scholarships have trouble going up against well-funded league rivals like Pepperdine and Santa Clara. Only the men’s basketball and baseball teams and women’s volleyball have avoided frequent coaching turnovers. Nancy Fortner brought the women’s volleyball program to Division I respectability over the course of seven years but resigned last summer when Loyola still couldn’t find the funds to make her a full-time coach. This year’s team has faltered.

So Quinn, who played basketball and baseball for Loyola in the early 1960s, is establishing a scholarship endowment fund and hopes to raise the level of play--especially in women’s sports--for the teams competing against rivals with scholarship programs.

“It’s a money deal. It’s that simple,” Quinn said. “If Pepperdine and Santa Clara offer scholarships and we don’t, we can’t be competitive. My plan is we will eventually bring scholarships up (to full rosters) in men’s volleyball, women’s volleyball and tennis. My goal is to establish a fund. If we don’t go the next step--after making a real investment--it’s like buying a house and putting no furniture in it. It’s my job to bring in the funds to take it to the next step, run a really classy program, especially within those six scholarship sports.”

Westhead and Snow are two of the biggest reasons for optimism at Loyola. Westhead is nationally respected, and not just in basketball circles. He taught English while coaching NCAA playoff contenders at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, his hometown, and teaches a writing course at Loyola. As a Shakespearean scholar, Westhead projects a witty and urbane manner and can toss out the colorful quote.

He took the Lions to 18 wins including a victory over UC Berkeley in the NIT in his first season, but last year a young team minus two graduated NBA draftees struggled in last place in the WCAC. Westhead’s team is expected to be a contender again this season, but he has found it much tougher to build a program in Los Angeles than Thompson did in Washington.

When Thompson was establishing Georgetown basketball, the only recruiting competition in the neighborhood was nearby Maryland.

Westhead not only has to butt heads with UCLA, USC and other Pac-10 schools, as well as rival Pepperdine, but is finding that Big East, Big 8, Big 10 and Atlantic Coast Conference schools developing recruiting pipelines into the Southland.

“We have to go in stages and steps,” Westhead said. “We’re primed to moving up the ladder. It’s gradual. We have better players, we’ve improved our image. The players feel like they’re in a good basketball situation. The next process is some good, steady winning, two or three winning seasons.”

In the last two years Westhead has recruited players from Chicago, Washington and Northern California. But he has been unable to persuade any true blue-chip Los Angeles players to attend.

“That’s the slow part. We’re getting in some homes, but I don’t know if we’re getting them out,” Westhead said.

Quinn said, “It’s a tough recruiting market in Los Angeles. Paul’s getting in some homes he wouldn’t have (in past years), but when Syracuse and Georgetown and (North Carolina Coach) Dean Smith are coming out here, it’s tough. I don’t think the public realizes how hard it is to recruit.”

The rise has been a little quicker for Snow, who had recruiting inroads in the area when he took over a moribund baseball program. He finished 27-28 in his first season, then produced a 50-15 record--the best in school history--on the way to the World Series. Last season the Lions won 36 games but were not invited to the regionals, probably due to a league record that was below par.

Snow, an intense coach who engenders fierce loyalty in his players, was wooed by Cal State Fullerton over the summer but decided to stay at Loyola after he got several contract concessions. Among other things, he cited the belief that he can now recruit against other top programs for top players, that Loyola can have a perennially competitive program--and his own code of loyalty.

“When it finally came down to it, I realized I liked it here and if I left there would be some unfinished business for some of the goals I’ve got here,” he said.

Quinn was especially pleased. “Dave turning down Fullerton makes a statement. What a boost for me,” he said. “Dave staying assured us continued success. We have a top coach, an outstanding program and we’ve made a real investment.”

Baseball may be the only sport in which the Lions have a fiscal as well as physical advantage over some opponents. “In basketball, everybody in Division I” spends large amounts, Quinn said. “In baseball there are schools in our conference with only four scholarships and one coach. We’re fully funded, we have two full-time coaches. Dave can go head-to-head with anybody (in recruiting). He has built a first-class program. He is top drawer.”

Under Quinn, Loyola athletic facilities have been improved. Albert Gersten Jr., a major supporter of the basketball program, donated a high-tech scoreboard for the gym last year. The baseball team will have a new scoreboard next spring. There’s a new trainer and a new line of state-of-the-art exercise machines and weights for the athletes. Quinn started an athletic Hall of Fame a few years ago and has made strides in re-establishing ties with alumni.