The final interviews for the University of San Diego’s basketball coach took place in Las Vegas two weeks ago, not on campus.
Iowa State assistant JR Blount flew out, met with USD athletic director Kimya Massey and President James T. Harris III, and flew back to Ames, Iowa, ahead of the Big 12 Tournament. He never walked across the campus with Spanish Renaissance architecture and sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean, never toured Jenny Craig Pavilion, never poked his head inside the Immaculata.
But he’s been to Alcala Park before, eight games into his freshman season as a 6-foot-1 point guard at Loyola Chicago. The 7-1 Ramblers came west for a pair of nonconference games in December 2005 and got absolutely boat raced by the Toreros, 90-57 in what would be the most lopsided loss of Blount’s four-year career.
Two nights later, they drove north and beat a good UC Irvine team.
“I don’t know what it was,” says Blount, who had 14 points and five rebounds but committed four of Loyola’s 20 turnovers against a USD team that would finish fifth in the West Coast Conference. “I’m sure we were probably all out at the pool, chilling, the day before, but, like, we were horrible. Yeah, it was a bad one.”
Loyola of Chicago’s J.R. Blount, left, and Princeton’s Michael Strittmatter, right, chase after a loose ball during the second half of a BCA Classic basketball game Friday, Nov. 10, 2006, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Terry Gilliam)
He’ll return to campus again Tuesday — a quick trip before rejoining Iowa State for the Sweet 16 against Tennessee on Friday in Chicago — as the Toreros formally introduce him as the 15th head coach in program history and eighth since elevating to Division I in 1979.
“When I step into the gym, initially I’m going to have some bad feelings coming back,” Blount says, “but we’ll make some better memories. That’s what I’m gonna do.”
On the surface, it seems like a curious hire — an assistant who has spent nearly his entire career in the Midwest and none of it west of Colorado. The first time Blount’s name surfaced publicly as a candidate was the night before USD announced him. Several veteran head coaches from Southern California were finalists.
On another level, it makes perfect sense.
Blount attended Catholic school from first grade through college, at Mother of Good Counsel in Milwaukee, then Dominican High School in the suburbs, then Loyola Chicago. He also spent three seasons as an assistant at Division II St. Leo University in Florida.
“I’ve been around it, I understand it,” he says. “I think you’ve got to have a vision and a mission that aligns with that, because it is a little bit different working at those institutions. I think that’s really important. You can’t come in here thinking that it’s something that it’s not.
“Because there are going to be some challenges. It’s a high-level academic institution. It’s not going to be a walk in the park, just do whatever you want, jump in an online class and do whatever. We want guys who want to embrace that challenge but also really want to be at USD.”
He replaces Steve Lavin, who went 47-84 in four seasons and had teams that ranked No. 344, 204, 256 and 254 nationally in defensive efficiency. Lavin was California casual, and his leading scorer was dismissed with seven games left in the season, in part, sources said, because he took that ethos too literally and was regularly late for meetings (along with a few buses).
In that regard, Blount represents the opposite extreme.
The Toreros will play defense. And they will be on time.
They won’t be out at the pool, chilling.
USD has hired Iowa State assistant coach JR Blount as its new head men’s basketball coach. (Jeff Spaur, Iowa State athletics)
Blount helped oversee Iowa State’s suffocating defense, specifically the ball screen coverages for a unit ranked in the top 15 nationally in defensive efficiency in each of his five years there. In 2023-24, the Cyclones were No. 1 at 87.5 points per 100 possessions, or 20.1 points less than the Toreros that season.
In his three seasons at Colorado State, Blount faced San Diego State and its vaunted defense five times. Lost four and averaged 61.8 points.
“That’s a pretty good blueprint, right over there at Viejas Arena,” Blount says. “They do it with toughness. And I think, you know, for what we’re going to build in our program, we’re not just looking for talent. We’re looking for competitors who want to build something special.
“Our identity will start on defense, toughness, disruption. … It is going to be physical, it’s going to be aggressive.”
And punctuality?
“The bus will be leaving at 8, and everyone will be on there at 7.50, and we’ll probably leave at 7.55,” Blount says. “So that’s what that’s going to be. We’ll make sure that gets established right away. I just think how you do anything is how you do everything.
“If you wouldn’t be late to practice, why would you be late to class? Why would you be late to the bus? Why would you be late to tutoring? If you wouldn’t talk to your mom like that, don’t talk to your tutor like that. Just do everything how you do anything. It’s a simple thing that we can control.”
It’s not hard to see where that comes from. Blount is the son of a police officer and a school teacher.
“I was scared of my dad,” he says. “My mom, she doesn’t play around, either.”
He wanted to attend a public high school with other top players in the city. His parents said no, they’d scrape together the money for Dominican High to instill Catholic values and better prepare him for college. He wanted to stay up late. His parents said no, he’d have a strict curfew and bedtime.
When he was 17, he still had it. School nights, semester break, summer vacation — 11 o’clock sharp. He remembers going to bed the summer before he went to college when it was still light outside.
They ate dinner together daily. No TV, no phones, no video games at the table, just conversation.
If he got a C, he couldn’t play basketball.
“It’s just how I was raised,” Blount says. “It wasn’t like I was in this dictatorship of a family, just kind of like what it was. This is what we do and this is how we do things.
“I like to do things a certain way. I like to make sure everything’s in line. Organization is key for me. There’s a foundation of accountability that is always going to be instilled in any program that I’ll be a part of. That’s just who I am.”
He’s also a winner. He won two state titles at Dominican. He averaged 13.5 points per game in his four-year career at Loyola Chicago and was a three-time team captain. His teams won at St. Leo, at Drake, at Colorado State. He’s won big at Iowa State, reaching the NCAA Tournament in all five years and three Sweet 16s.
This year’s team has been ranked as high No. 2 in the Associated Press poll, is a No. 2 seed and blew out its first weekend opponents by a combined 53 points.
Blount was one of TJ Otzelberger’s first calls when he left UNLV for Ames in 2021, having known him since he was 14 and followed his coaching career.
“I would say even before we get to the basketball, he is a tremendous husband, father, leader, man of character,” Otzelberger says. “I think those things set the tone for what you are able to do as a coach.
“When it comes down to the basketball piece, he is an elite teacher of the game. He is somebody that is very hard-working, very thoughtful, very intentional, very bright. … The San Diego program is in great hands.”
Iowa State’s players rave about him.
All-conference guard Tamin Lipsey: “I have been with him for four years. My whole college career, he has been the one I have been watching film with, developing my game, all of that. He has gotten me to where I am as a player.”
All-conference forward Joshua Jefferson, who spent two seasons at Saint Mary’s before transferring to Iowa State: “I have played there (in the WCC), so I understand the work he’s going to have to do. I think he’s the right man for the job with the amount of energy and the plan he is going to set forth.”
Forward Milan Momcilovic: “He will bring the right guys into that program. He will build it from the bottom up.”
USD athletic director Kimya Massey gives a tour of the University of San Diego’s new basketball facilities last April. (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Massey replaced Bill McGillis, who hired Lavin, two years ago. Last spring, they announced the “relaunch” of the basketball program with the opening of the $35 million performance center. The real relaunch, though, starts Tuesday with Blount’s formal introduction and a public commitment to bump up the program’s revenue-sharing dollars “into the top tier” of the WCC.
“I don’t see any reason in this current landscape, with the infrastructure we’ve set up for this program, why we can’t be really good right off the bat,” Massey says. “I just don’t. I wanted somebody who has that mindset, that I can come in here and win quickly. It’s just a different age. It’s not a four- or five-year build anymore.”
Massey is known to have started private conversations about a new coach, a new direction, back in the fall. He fired Lavin in mid-February with the intent of getting a head start on the formal search and not having to compete with other job openings.
Athletic directors always have their secret “just in case” coaching lists, and Blount, he says, was someone he didn’t know personally but had always admired from afar, knowing he was regarded as one of the nation’s hottest assistants in coaching circles and knowing that Iowa State had climbed into the upper tier of the Big 12 with financial resources in the bottom third.
His pursuit began not with a call with Blount but Otzelberger.
“It was almost like TJ interviewed me a little bit,” Massey says. “He said, ‘JR is very picky about jobs. He doesn’t just go for jobs like some assistants do. I want him to be in the right place to be successful.’
“I knew right then and there, this guy is wired differently. TJ talked about who he was as a person for about 10 minutes before he talked about the basketball side.”
The Cyclones were on the road at the time, and Otzelberger pulled Blount outside and told him about the conversation.
“He’s like, ‘Hey, man, like, that’s a real dude. You should get this job if you can,’” Blount says. “And then I talked to Kimya the next day, and I just had the same kind of vibe afterwards. I’ve been in some previous searches before but never got off the phone where I was like, ‘Wow, I could see myself working for that guy.’ From there, I was all in.”
The WCC tournament is a week before most others, and USD’s season was over March 7. Blount was hired March 9.
He could have slow-played Massey to see what else was out there. He didn’t.
“The investment, the infrastructure, the expanded resources, increasing NIL and rev share, increasing staffing, the dedication to player development, that to me showed, all right, this is real,” Blount says. “They’re serious about it. And with Gonzaga leaving (the WCC), they’re no longer just trying to be in the league and be part of it. They’re trying to compete for championships.
“For me, I’ve had opportunities. I felt like I would have other opportunities this cycle. But I didn’t want to take a job. I wanted to take an opportunity, a calling.”