Guru's Collegiate Report: Former La Salle Coach Tom Lochner Heading To Delaware

(Guru’s report: This are two posts below this -- one immediately below on the WNBA and Candace Parker's injury and other items, and one below that previewing Tuesday night's summer league action in Hatboro. If you are reading this in melgreenberg.com, you should know the drill by now -- click on Mel's blog on the left side and you will be taken to blogspot to access the other posts and the rest of the archives.)

By Mel Greenberg

PHILADEPHIA _ When you can’t beat a team containing acclaimed basketball talent Elena Delle Donne, then you might as well join it.

That is the situation with former La Salle coach Tom Lochner, who will soon be officially announced as a new assistant on Delaware coach Tina Martin’s staff.

Neither Martin nor Lochner were available for comment but a source familiar with the negotiations confirmed that he would join the Blue Hens for next season.

Lochner was a longtime assistant to former La Salle coach John Miller and then was promoted to head coach succeeding Miller in August 2004 and continuing to guide the Explorers until the end of the 2010 season when his contract was not renewed.

His six-year record with the Explorers was 72-102.

However, he was retained by the university and given a new job as director of adult education last winter. He also served as an assistant to former Penn star Diana Caramanico, the all-time Big Five women's scorer and Quaker leading rebounder, coaching the Penn Charter girls team.

“Tom Lochner knows more about basketball in his little finger than I do in my entire being,” Caramanico said last winter in a conversation with the Guru when she mentioned he had joined her staff.

Delle Donne, the 2008 national high school player of the year out of Ursuline Academy in Wilmington, Del., was a freshman who helped lead the Blue Hens to a win over La Salle early in Lochner’s final season in November, 2009.

In a few weeks she will return to Colorado Springs, Colo., when USA Basketball finishes naming the participating 12 players for the World University Games competition in China.

Delle Donne is among the 14 finalists and is expected to survive the final two cuts and make the roster, which would lead to her first international competition in five seasons.

She missed 12 games last season battling what eventually was determined to be Lime Disease but returned near the end to lead Delaware on a run to the Colonial Athletic Association title game before losing to James Madison.

Along the way the Blue Hens upset longtime CAA power Old Dominion in the quarterfinals and N.C. Wilmington in the semifinals.

The Blue Hens finished 20-14 after losing the first round of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament at Toledo, the eventual winner of the 64-team field.

Next season Delaware is expected to be a favorite to win the CAA title, as is Drexel, which lost only Belgian Jasmine Rosseel and will be adding some talented newcomers.

It is not known what vacancy Lochner is filling on Martin’s staff. Associate head coach Jeanine Radice has been with Martin 15 seasons while assistant Tiara Malcom, a former Blue Hens all-timer, has been at her alma mater on the staff for five seasons beginning a year after her graduation.

Mark McCaleb, who had been head coach of Division II Bridgeport, joined the staff last season.

Martin, whose teams have regularly played La Salle over the years, has always had deep respect for Lochner as a coach and individual.

St. Joseph’s Ellen Ryan Heading For Retirement

Longtime Hawks associate athletic director Ellen Ryan, the first in a long list of successful women’s basketball coaches at St. Joseph’s University of the Atlantic 10 conference, is heading for retirement next month.

A celebration to mark her career on Hawk Hill will be held in the fall.

Ryan recently began spreading the word in emails to colleagues throughout the Big Five.

The school is expected to make the official announcement momentarily and the Guru will repost it here as well as begin to offering reaction after the announcement is made.

Those who want to weigh in feel free to email the Guru with comments.

Among the coaches Ryan was instrumental in hiring after her departure were Theresa Grentz, Rene Portland, Jim Foster, Stephanie Gaitley, and former Hawks player Cindy Griffin, who currently has the reigns on the program.

One of Ryan’s players was Muffet McGraw, the longtime coach at Notre Dame who was recently inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville.

It is not known who will replace Ryan, but speculation is centered on former Hawks star Renie Shields, currently the school’s director of compliance and who does color commentary on Hawks women’s broadcasts.

One daughter Erin was a star freshman at St. Joseph’s last season, while another Kerri is at Boston College.

If Shields is named, she would join Lynn Tighe (Villanova) and Kristin Foley (Temple), who are senior women’s administrators at Big Five schools and former basketball stars.

Penn’s associate athletic director Mary DiStanislao is a former Immaculata assistant and former head coach at Northwestern and Notre Dame.

Doty Set To Return to Full Time Competition

Germantown Academy graduate Carolina Doty of Doylestown, who missed another season at power Connecticut with a second ACL injury since joining the Huskies and third overall, will be cleared July 1 for full competition, according to John Atavilla’s blog at the Hartford Courant website.

Doty said from her point of view she would play a fifth redshirt season with the Huskies and not take off early for the WNBA which others have done when their class has graduated though they still have remaining collegiate eligibility.

Ironically, Doty would then land in the same WNBA draft class as her former AAU teammate Elena Delle Donne of Delaware, assuming the Blue Hens star does not head to the WNBA after next season.

They both played for Fencor.

Delle Donne missed her natural freshman season when she enrolled at Delaware in 2008-09 but to play volleyball after returning a basketball scholarship to UConn.

Incidentally in an interview with Connecticut media by Huskies coach Geno Auriemma, he mentioned that the Big East tournament had a chance of not returning to the XL Center in Hartford, where it has been held in recent seasons.

However, several knowledgeable sources with Big East connections told the Guru during the recent Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame induction weekend in Knoxville, Tenn., the tournament was heading back to Hartford.

But the Guru cautions the comments were made in a social setting and considering the hour they were made it does not mean the site was set in stone.

Coaches vs. Cancer Women’s Basketball Clinic Set For Fall

The date for the annual clinic featuring the entire coaching staffs and rosters of Big Five schools and Drexel has been set for Sunday, October 16, at Villanova, a change of venue from its traditional site in the past at St. Joseph’s.

A registration form can be found on the Hawks women’s basketball website at St. Joseph’s.

The Guru will repeat this near the end of the summer and in early fall but since the date is known, there’s nothing like an early heads up.

The clinic, which will run from 10 a.m. until noon, is open to 300 girls from first to eighth grade. Student-athletes and coaches from Saint Joseph's, La Salle, Penn, Temple, Villanova and Drexel will be on hand to provide helpful tips and drills, as well as provide insight in how to balance academics and athletics.

A coaches clinic is also available for AAU, grade school, and high school coaches.

The cost for the clinic is $25, with the proceeds going to benefit Coaches vs. Cancer. Registration begins at 9 a.m. and runs until 9:45 a.m.

For more information, contact Briana Weiss at 610-519-3527 / briana.weiss@villanova.edu; or Mary Anne Gabuzda at 610-519-3535 / mary.anne.gabuzda@villanova.edu.

The clinic is sponsored by Sports Specialties.

Inside Women’s Basketball Wins Grant

Congratulations to Kelly Kline, who has just been announced one of four recipients to win a special grant from the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative, which is in its fourth year.

Kelly, who runs the overall site of which your Guru is allied under melgreenberg.com, is one of four award winners selected from 378 proposals.

She is has been doing photograph work for the WBCA and on several Nike projects.

The grant will enable her to jump-start and move ahead on an ultimate goal of building out the website and in the process your Guru’s blog will feature a whole new and more robust look.

There are other potential future events to be announced down the road off of quiet discussions about rolling out the best WBB coverage possible on the Internet, which is not to preclude existing efforts that continue elsewhere.

Stay tuned but here is the release, hopefully, and link on the announcement and if you get there, click the sub-link to learn more about the organization that awarded the grant.

The Guru had to call off a Tuesday trip to Mohegan for the WNBA game and thus will be at the summer league both Tuesday night and Thursday this week.

-- Mel