Drew Valentine enters his fifth season as head coach of Loyola men’s basketball in 2025-26 and ninth overall year with the Ramblers, having spent the four seasons prior as an assistant coach.
During his tenure as head coach, the Ramblers have a Missouri Valley Conference Tournament Championship, a NCAA Tournament appearance, an Atlantic 10 Regular Season Title, and back-to-back NIT appearances.
Valentine piloted the Ramblers to a NIT semifinal run and a program record 17 home wins in 2024-25. Those were two accomplishments to come out of a 25-12 overall finish. Loyola earned a double-bye in the A-10 Tournament with a 12-6 record that claimed third place.
For the second straight season, Valentine was named an Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Collegiate Coach of the Year and guided Jayden Dawson to A-10 Second Team and Miles Rubin to A-10 All-Defensive Team honors. Rubin's defensive efforts were once again seen around the rim, breaking the single-season block record for the second consecutive year with 85 total blocks. He also landed in the record books with a program-best 71.4 field goal percentage on the year.
Valentine's squad also saw the single-season three-point record shattered by Sheldon Edwards Jr. with his 86th made three of the year. He went on to total 106 before the season ended.
In 2023-24, Valentine piloted the Ramblers to one of the NCAA’s best turnarounds with the fourth highest win improvement from the 2022-23 season. Loyola increased its win total by 12 wins, going from 10-21 to 22-10 against Division I opponents.
Loyola finished with a 23-10 overall record and 15-3 finish in the A-10 in 2023-24. The Ramblers took home a share of the league’s regular season title, ultimately earning an NIT bid.
Valentine was named an Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Collegiate Co-Coach of the Year, while guiding Des Watson, Braden Norris, and Miles Rubin to All-Conference honors. Watson was tabbed to the A-10 Second Team, Norris to the A-10 Third and All-Academic Teams, and Rubin to the A-10 All-Rookie and All-Defensive Teams. Watson also earned NACB All-District Second Team accolades.
Rubin made a statement in his freshman campaign, breaking a 40-year-old single-season block record after finishing the season with 76. He ranked first in the country in block percentage (14.1 percent). Rubin was the driving force behind Valentine’s squad that also set the single-season team block record at 166 that stood for over 40 years.
Valentine also saw four of his 2023-24 graduates sign professional deals, highlighted by Philip Alston who inked a contract with the Milwaukee Bucks in August 2024. Norris, Dame Adelekun, and Patrick Mwamba all signed overseas.
The Lansing, Mich. native made his head coaching debut in the 2021-22 season and was the youngest coach in NCAA Division I hoops at the age of 30. Valentine made quite a splash in his first season as Loyola’s head coach setting a program record for wins by a first-year Rambler skipper (25), while also becoming the only first-year coach in program history to lead Loyola to a NCAA Tournament appearance.
One of only three first-year head coaches to steer his club to 25 or more wins in 2021-22, Valentine also became the youngest head coach since Todd Bozeman in 1993 to lead his team to a national ranking. Loyola earned a No. 22 ranking in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll in mid-January.
Valentine put his twist on the Rambler program in 2021-22 and once again Loyola ranked among the nation’s top offensive and defensive teams in the nation, while also establishing a single-season school record by knocking down 293 three-point field goals. Under Valentine’s tutelage, five Ramblers collected All-Missouri Valley Conference accolades, including guard Lucas Williamson, who was tabbed MVC Defensive Player of the Year for the second straight season, and also garnered first team all-league recognition.
In four years as an assistant coach on Porter Moser’s staff at Loyola, Valentine played a pivotal role in the program’s ascension to national prominence, helping the Ramblers to a 99-36 (.733) overall record and a 56-16 (.778) ledger in MVC action, and trips to the NCAA Final Four in 2018 and Sweet 16 in 2021.
During his tenure as an assistant coach in Rogers Park, Valentine, whose brother, Denzel was the National Player of the Year at Michigan State in 2015 and has played in the NBA, helped Loyola produce three MVC Player of the Year award winners (Clayton Custer in 2018, Marques Townes in 2019 and Cameron Krutwig in 2021), two MVC Defensive Player of the Year selections (Ben Richardson in 2018 and Lucas Williamson in 2021), a MVC Sixth Man of the Year (Marquise Kennedy in 2020) and a MVC Freshman of the Year (Cameron Krutwig in 2018).
In addition, both Custer and Townes collected Associated Press Honorable Mention All-America distinction, while this year, Krutwig became Loyola’s first AP Third Team All-America selection since 1985, and in 2018, Custer was tabbed Third Team Academic All-America.
Valentine served as the de facto defensive coordinator for a Ramblers unit that ranked 21st in the nation in scoring defense in 2019-20 (62.7 ppg) and first in the country (56.1 ppg) in 2020-21.
During his four seasons on the Loyola staff as an assistant, Loyola ranked in the top six in the nation in scoring defense three times and helped lead Loyola to five consecutive seasons with at least 20 wins, including a school-record 32 victories in 2017-18 during a magical run to the NCAA Final Four. Loyola is 6-3 in NCAA Tournament games since Valentine joined the Ramblers’ staff in 2017-18.
On top of that, Loyola has earned five wins over nationally ranked opponents since the start of the 2017-18 season, including a pair of victories over teams ranked in the top five in the AP Top 25 Poll (No. 5 Florida in 2017-18 and No. 2 Illinois in 2020-21).
In 2020-21, Valentine’s influence was evident as Loyola posted a 26-5 overall record as well as a program-record 16 conference victories, while capturing the MVC regular season and tournament championships. Earning the No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the Ramblers reached the Sweet 16, picking up wins over the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament champion, Georgia Tech, as well as the top seed in the Midwest Region, Big Ten Tournament champion, Illinois.
Valentine also spent two seasons as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Oakland University, where he helped the Golden Grizzlies to 48 total wins and a pair of postseason appearances from 2015-17. While there, he played a crucial role in the development of Kay Felder into a second-round selection of the Atlanta Hawks in the 2016 NBA Draft. Felder earned Horizon League Player of the Year and AP Third Team All-America recognition.
Before returning to his alma mater, Valentine spent two seasons as a graduate manager at Michigan State, where he helped coach Tom Izzo’s Spartans to a 53-21 record, two Sweet 16 appearances and a berth in the 2015 NCAA Final Four.
As a player, Valentine, whose father, Carlton, was a standout player at Michigan State in the 1980s, was the heart and soul of an Oakland program that notched 87 victories and a pair of NCAA Tournament berths in his career, and he graduated as the winningest player in school history.
Valentine and his wife, Taylor, have two children, Hayden and Kellan.
