Her Team Not Only Wins, It Wins With a Lot of Class

The point guard on the coolest college basketball team in Southern California is walking off the gym floor with a large object deftly palmed in her right hand.

It’s not a ball, it’s a book.

A biochemistry book.

“I have a big test today, so I had to get a little last-minute studying,” Raelen Self says. “I put the notes on the floor, looked at them during stretching.”

You want a real stretch?

How about a college athletic program that, in the last nine years, has graduated every player who has finished her career here?

How about a college basketball program that has won 13 consecutive games, gone 22-5 overall, and could be going to the NCAA tournament for the first time?

How about both being the same program?

Introducing the Loyola Marymount women’s team, nerd smart and nasty good.

In a college environment polluted by Colorado strippers and Georgia multiple-joke tests, they could also be defined as hope.

The best player on the Lions is not headed to the WNBA but to the completion of her MBA.

“I love basketball, but I’ve already started my job hunt,” says Kate Murray, the West Coast Conference player of the year with a 3.85 GPA.

The coach of the Lions gets called for technical fouls -- during commencement ceremonies. Julie Wilhoit stands on the chairs and hollers as her players cross the stage.

“I know I embarrass them sometimes,” Wilhoit says. “But to me, graduation is the biggest deal of all.”

It’s difficult to tell what is more impressive this season, the Lions’ first WCC regular-season championship, or that none of the players has had an unexcused absence from class.

It’s hard to know what part of their bulky playbook is more effective, the designs of floor-burning defenses that have held opponents to 39% shooting, or the pages that chart their daily academic progress.

“I don’t believe that it’s only about winning,” Wilhoit says. “I believe it’s about six or seven things in your life -- things like respect and pride and desire. I believe if you do those things, winning will follow.”

Even if it takes nearly half of your adult life. That’s what Wilhoit has devoted to LMU since coming here as a small-town Indiana gym rat in 1995.

Bringing in rules that even govern where the students should sit in class -- “She wants you in the first rows, being the first to learn,” Murray says -- the coach initially struggled, trying to match her goals and good players.

She won 29 games -- over her first four seasons.

I wrote a column several years ago about her insistence on community service as part of her team’s practice schedule. I was enamored of her approach. And I thought she was certain to be fired.

“Yeah, I felt a little pressure,” Wilhoit says. “But this was why I got into coaching in the first place, and I couldn’t change.”

LMU always being a different sort of athletic environment, officials allowed her to stay until she finally had a winning season in 2000-01. The recruits took notice, the program grew, and today they are two victories from making school history.

The WCC tourney started Thursday in Santa Clara, but because LMU has drawn a bye to the semifinals, Wilhoit’s team won’t fly there until tonight.

“Schoolwork,” she says unapologetically. “You come to our program, it is all about going to class.”

Turns out, that’s almost the least of her requirements.

Wilhoit asks that players show up five minutes early for class, sit in the front rows, introduce themselves to the teachers, and ask two questions a day.

She also wants the players to keep records of how many days it takes before the professors are calling them by their first names.

“She is teaching us about how it works in life,” says Murray, who averages 16 points, six rebounds and has had internships at Sony and Raytheon.

Records of every test and quiz are kept in books that are consulted during weekly one-on-one meetings with the coaching staff.

Students are not allowed to miss class for anything but basketball games, and even then they must show they have made up the lost work.

“Julie feels like she doesn’t have to sacrifice academics or character for success,” said Bill Husak, LMU athletic director. “Her philosophy is similar to our philosophy.”

Is it any wonder that, during a Sunday morning flight shared with another Southland basketball team this winter, only one of those teams was studying on the plane?

Is it any wonder that all 27 players who remained in her program during Wilhoit’s tenure have graduated, and that all five seniors on this team will graduate?

In fact, only one player under Wilhoit has not graduated in four years, a woman she inherited from a previous program, who graduated in five.

The largest poster in Wilhoit’s office features not a basketball player, but Albert Einstein.

Among this year’s starting five, forward Murray will receive her master’s degree this spring, Self has applied to medical school to become a cardiologist and forward Mary Turner wants to be a surgeon.

“It’s not easy to play here,” says Murray, who is in her fifth season after a medical redshirt year. “We take full class loads and you cannot miss class. But the experiences we have had, it’s so worth it.”

Wilhoit has never put a player in the WNBA. The thank-you calls from former students have a different theme.

Taryn Reynolds, a star in the late 1990s, recently phoned to thank Wilhoit for making players show up at practice 15 minutes early. Reynolds, an engineer, said this had helped her make a good impression at company meetings.

Erin Caviezel, who played in the mid-1990s, phoned to thank Wilhoit for making her sit in the front of class. She said it had bolstered her confidence as she studies to become a chiropractor.

“Coach will fight to the death for us, and we’ll do the same for her,” senior Adrianne Slaughter says.

This weekend, that fight could be the school’s finest basketball moment since the end of the late Hank Gathers era, more than a decade ago.

And if it’s not, well, Wilhoit is also prepared for that.

In 2001, thinking her 21-10 team might qualify for an at-large berth in the NCAA tournament, Wilhoit gathered the team and boosters into a campus meeting room to watch the selection show.

When the Lions weren’t picked, some players began crying. Wilhoit ran to the front of the room and asked for quiet.

“This can be the greatest moment of our life,” she told them. “This is the moment that tells us a lot about who we are.”

Three years later, Loyola Marymount is back, with five of the players from that team leading them.

Even if they are disappointed again, they know who they are. That’s the sort of thing colleges used to teach our young athletes, and maybe still can.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.