Able to Draw Srong Recruiting Helps Dunlap Bring Respectability to CLU Basketball

Twenty-eight barren years of Cal Lutheran basketball preceded Coach Mike Dunlap’s arrival in 1989. With only three winning records in more than a quarter-century, the school was a basketball wasteland.

But with nine years of assistant coaching experience, Dunlap veered off the beaten path to Thousand Oaks. For Dunlap, who assisted George Raveling for four years at USC and Iowa, Cal Lutheran resided in the basketball boondocks. What he found there might have turned others away.

“I can remember parents coming into this office and staying five minutes and getting up and leaving,” Dunlap recalled. “They figured that it wasn’t going to happen or that we didn’t have a good product, and I knew we did.”

Dunlap’s prophecy took a step toward realization this season when Cal Lutheran finished 16-12, posting its first back-to-back winning seasons in school history in the process. Since the program began in 1961, Cal Lutheran has enjoyed only five winning seasons. In three years as coach, Dunlap has produced two.

Cal Lutheran won the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference this season in its first try. And in their inaugural postseason appearance, the Kingsmen upset third-ranked UC San Diego and advanced to the final 16 in the NCAA Division III tournament before losing to Otterbein, Ohio, 82-78.

Much of the credit belongs to senior guard Jeff deLaveaga, the leading scorer in Division III with a 29.5 average. DeLaveaga is one of only two players on the 15-man roster not recruited by Dunlap (the other, guard Syd Thwaites, averaged four points a game). DeLaveaga will play professionally in Australia next season.

DeLaveaga, whose older brother Steve is Cal Lutheran’s all-time leading scorer (2,549 points), played at Southern California College in the 1987-88 season before transferring to Cal Lutheran. After redshirting the next season, deLaveaga sparked the Kingsmen for three seasons.

Some of Cal Lutheran’s struggle in recent years was linked to its anticipated move from the NAIA Division II to the NCAA Division II. Although the school never made the move, NCAA Division II opponents already had been scheduled and the Kingsmen were overmatched.

So, Cal Lutheran was bound to fare better in 1991 when it finally joined Division III, which prohibits athletic scholarships. Still, Dunlap, 34, an ambitious coach and a persistent recruiter, played a major role in the Kingsmen’s upswing.

But with the departure of deLaveaga, Cal Lutheran is at a crossroads. Without their star player, the Kingsmen might return to mediocrity. It is Dunlap’s challenge to sustain the success of the program in the post-deLaveaga era.

Dunlap jumped back into the recruiting race after returning from the NCAA tournament last week. Cal Lutheran’s most successful season has enabled him to make inroads with some of his best recruiting prospects.

Dunlap’s recruiting has improved each year; 13 players came aboard in 1991.

“You look at our school . . . there are no scholarships, and (Dunlap) is bringing in 13 kids that obviously could play somewhere else (on scholarship),” deLaveaga said.

“It’s amazing what he can do. I think that as long as he is here this program is going to be solid.”

Dunlap’s resume, boasting the names of Division I basketball programs, highlights his recruiting pitch.

After playing two years at Loyola Marymount, where he participated in the 1980 NCAA tournament as a senior, Dunlap coached for five years as a graduate assistant for the Lions.

Raveling took Dunlap under his wing for one season as an assistant at Iowa. Raveling was impressed with his young assistant and brought him to USC, where Dunlap remained for three seasons.

When Dunlap moved from one of the most powerful athletic departments in the nation to Cal Lutheran, the disparity was almost embarrassing. “When you call and you’re from USC, people listen,” Dunlap said, “and when you call and you say you’re from Cal Lutheran, they want to know when you’re going to get off the phone.”

Rejection from potential recruits frustrated the intense Dunlap. The magnitude of the rebuilding task he faced seemed daunting. Just three returning players met Dunlap his first season. Without the aid of assistant Steve Spencer, who joined him in September that year, Dunlap scraped up just five players to form the 1989 recruiting class. Only one, Omar White, is still on the roster.

The 1989-90 season began with 13 consecutive Division II opponents that remained on the schedule even though Cal Lutheran had decided to move to Division III. After 13 losses in a row, Cal Lutheran finished 5-21. Nice introduction.

The 1990 recruiting class featured Simon O’Donnell, a 6-foot-6 center from Lassen College. He combined with deLaveaga to help the Kingsmen to a 14-12 record in 1990-91, averaging 15.4 points--second to deLaveaga--and a team-high 7.5 rebounds.

Encouraged by the improvement, Dunlap landed five junior college transfers and four freshmen for his 1991 recruiting class. Junior college transfers Andy Beltowski from Oxnard and Kelly Crosby from Glendale started at forward this season. Also, all four freshmen saw substantial playing time.

Dunlap’s recruiting included a long-term plan to replace deLaveaga. Sophomore Paul Tapp and freshman Dewayne Chatman, each of whom averaged six points this season, will try to fill the void.

Despite recruiting success, Dunlap still struggled to attract local players. O’Donnell is one of two Australians on the roster, and almost half of the 13 Dunlap recruits currently on the roster are from outside the area.

Although Dunlap aims to garner support from the community by stocking his roster with local players, he has run into a paradox.

“It’s a Catch-22,” he said. “They tell you to win and they tell you to draw the local kid. Well, you’re trying to win, but you can’t get the quality local kids to win, so I said that the next best thing is, let’s go outside the area, attract them, and then we can go after the local kids.”

Dunlap’s plan seems to have worked. With the team’s success, local interest rose. Tapp, from Burbank High, joined the roster in 1990, and Royal’s Jared Byrne followed in 1991.

“We’re not the girl next door any more,” Dunlap said in November after the high school teams from Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley visited Cal Lutheran to watch practice. “Two years ago, we could have put a for sale sign on our gym and they wouldn’t have come.”

Still, Dunlap’s job remains unfinished. “By no means do we think we have arrived,” he said.

But at least now when Dunlap calls, people are not in a hurry to get off the phone.