St. Mary’s Fehte Is Named Loyola Marymount Assistant : Basketball: He guided Gaels to West Coast Conference tournament final after taking over for Paul Landreaux in mid-season. His appointment ends a 10-month search.

After nearly a year of feelers and near-misses, Coach Jay Hillock’s search for an assistant is a fait accompli.

Dave Fehte, who did one of the masterful coaching jobs in the nation last season at St. Mary’s College, will become the No. 1 assistant for the Loyola Marymount basketball team. The job has been open since September when Hillock was named to replace Paul Westhead, who left to become coach of the Denver Nuggets of the NBA.

Fehte, who served as interim coach at St. Mary’s last season, is finishing a camp in Moraga, Calif., this week and will report to his new job next week. He joins Loyola in time for a recruiting evaluation period that starts July 5, when coaches are allowed to scout high school prospects.

“I’m really happy about (his hiring), I’m very pleased,” Hillock said Thursday. “I’ve known Dave the last four, five years. He’s good, bright, young, full of energy. It became evident he would like to make a move . . . he was the obvious choice.”

Said Fehte: “I was real happy (at St. Mary’s), but it’s a better opportunity in L.A. I can’t wait to get there.”

Fehte will join a staff that includes Bruce Woods and part-timer Mark Armstrong. The Lions return 11 lettermen and have added three recruits.

Fehte, 30, served as an assistant at Cal State Northridge for five seasons before joining Paul Landreaux’s staff at St. Mary’s last season. When Landreaux resigned 13 games into the season, Fehte was named interim coach.

The Gaels were 9-8 under Fehte, including a 7-7 West Coast Conference record. They advanced to the WCC tournament final, but lost to Pepperdine in overtime.

“He did an outstanding job last year, one of the best coaching jobs in college basketball,” Hillock said. “The situation was in disarray and they came within about 30 seconds of going to the NCAAs.”

Hillock, Westhead and Fehte were at a camp last summer when Fehte was named an assistant at St. Mary’s.

“He’s worked Paul’s camps for years, and me and Paul had dinner with him in Lubbock (Tex.) when he got the (St. Mary’s job),” Hillock said.

Fehte also showed that his team could play the upbeat style preferred by Loyola, as his team defeated the Lions, 103-101, in January.

“I’m very much” comfortable with the running style,” Fehte said. “I’ve always been a big believer in that.”

Hillock was set to hire Dick Fick in May. Fick, a long-time assistant at Creighton, was ready to accept the job, but received a last-minute call from Morehead State and went there as coach.

Fehte, meanwhile, was apparently not a candidate for the St. Mary’s coaching job until after the Gaels’ late-season surge.

Mazzuto eventually hired Ernie Kent, an assistant at Stanford, and Fehte was asked to stay as an assistant.

“I had a job, I wasn’t pounding the pavement,” Fehte said. “I was not really looking, but if something came along . . . I was disappointed (in not remaining coach) but I felt I did everything I possibly could and the decision was out of my hands. Coach Kent made a smooth transition here and I took it in stride.”

Fehte, a native of Camden. N.J., graduated from Northridge in 1986. He began coaching as an assistant at Cleveland High, held similar positions at Pierce College and Chatsworth High before joining Pete Cassidy’s staff at Northridge.

Among the players he helped develop in high school was a future Loyola standout, Mike Yoest.

Fehte and his wife, Martha, never sold their Chatsworth townhouse, making for a quick transition back to the Southland. But he won’t get to see much of it for a while.

“I’ll probably move most of my stuff when I get off the (recruiting) road in August,” he said.