{"id":2155,"date":"2022-08-30T18:16:57","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T18:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/?p=2155"},"modified":"2022-08-30T21:05:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T21:05:40","slug":"life-lessons-on-and-off-the-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/life-lessons-on-and-off-the-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Lessons on and off The Court."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Coach<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ryan Looney\u2019s, \u201998, skill at building teams has proven successful\u2014and those successes culminated into an opportunity to be the head coach of an NCAA Division 1 basketball team. There were a lot of stops along the road to the Division 1 job, but that was never the plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach time we moved, there was an opportunity that presented itself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first opportunity was a graduate assistant coaching position at University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, where he earned a master\u2019s degree in athletic administration. When he graduated, he was asked to follow his boss to Minnesota State, Morehead, to be the full-time assistant coach. It wasn\u2019t long before he was back in La Grade as head coach at his alma mater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 27, Looney wasn\u2019t far removed from being a player on EOU\u2019s basketball team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing a head coach and running my own program where I played was a dream come true,\u201d Looney said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he learned quickly that hard work and passion pay off. His first year with the team, 2004, the Mountaineers didn\u2019t have a lot of wins, but the team\u2019s breakout season of 2005-06, produced the best record since 1969. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the 2006-07 season the Mountaineers finished with an overall record of 23-8, advanced to the finals of the 2007 Cascade Collegiate Conference Tournament, and were ranked as high as No. 17 in the NAIA national poll. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2007-08 the Mountaineers finished with an overall record of 26-6, won the school\u2019s first conference championship in 38 years, advanced to the NAIA National Tournament for the first time in school history, and were ranked as high as third in the NAIA national poll. That year, Looney was recognized as the Cascade Collegiate Conference<\/a> Men\u2019s Basketball Coach of the Year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the 2008-09 season, the team finished with an overall record of 25-8, won the Cascade Collegiate Conference Championship, advanced to the Elite Eight of the NAIA National Basketball Tournament, and were ranked as high as No. 6 in the NAIA national poll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then spent seven years at Seattle Pacific, an NCAA Division II school. Looney led the Falcons to a 22-6 record in 2009-10 and became the school\u2019s first coach to earn a conference championship spot in their inaugural season. The Falcons compiled a 20-10 record in 2010-11 en route to an NCAA Division II Tournament. In 2011-12 the team reached the Sweet 16 of the Division II Tournament. During the 2012-13 season the Falcons finished with the best overall record in program history at 27-4, won the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Tournament Championship, reached as high as second in the NABC national poll, and advanced to the NCAA II West Region Final. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the 2013-14 season the Falcons finished with an overall record of 26-6, won the Great Northwest Athletic Conference<\/a> Championship, won the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Tournament Championship, reached as high as second in the NABC national poll, and advanced to the NCAA II Tournament. Looney was recognized as the 2014 GNAC Coach of the Year and the 2014 NABC West Region Coach of the Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
After winning records at three universities, multiple trips to national championship tournaments, and Coach of the Year awards, Looney is set to lead the ISU Bengals success on the court.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Looney and his family then headed south to Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego where the wins kept coming. Looney spent three seasons at Point Loma, leading the team to its first Division II National Championship game. The Sea Lions won their first regular season conference title in 2019. In three years, Looney finished with a 69-28 record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His continued success caught the attention of Idaho State University, a Division I program and a job Looney said he couldn\u2019t turn down. Unfortunately, his first few seasons have been constantly interrupted by the COVID-19 virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy first season COVID hit,\u201d Looney said. \u201cIt\u2019s been an interesting time. Everything about coaching basketball is totally different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 15 months he wasn\u2019t allowed to leave campus to recruit or to bring students to Idaho State for a visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt can be difficult to build a program until we start to resume some sort of normalcy,\u201d Looney said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The success has been up and down, Looney said. The 2020-21 was the best season the school had in 30 years, but this year they are struggling with injuries, COVID infections and quarantines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, things are loosening up. Looney said this past fall his staff was allowed to start in-person visits with potential recruits, most he brings in from the Pacific Northwest, but he\u2019s had experience with players from Spain, Denmark and countries in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe foreign students add a different dynamic,\u201d Looney said. \u201cIt\u2019s fun for those guys to come to college in America and learn a different culture, as it is for the Americans to learn about where those guys come from as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coaching college ball requires early mornings, late nights and a lot of time on the road, but Looney said there are plenty of rewards and benefits\u2014like when a former player yells his name from the stands at a game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about the relationships built that go well beyond playing the game,\u201d Looney said. \u201cThe most <\/p>\n\n\n\n

satisfying things are when a former player sends a wedding invitation or an email about a promotion, or a note that a baby is coming\u2014those things bring a smile to my face.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Looney\u2019s, \u201998, skill at building teams has proven successful\u2014and those successes culminated into an opportunity to be the head coach of an NCAA Division 1 basketball team. There were a lot of stops along the road to the Division 1 job, but that was never the plan. \u201cEach time we moved, there was an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":541,"featured_media":2159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,32,156],"tags":[25,6,158,48,9],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-highlight1","category-summer-2022","tag-athletics","tag-basketball","tag-biography","tag-faculty","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/541"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2232,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions\/2232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}