After Penns Valley: Jesse Deloof’s journey to becoming a collegiate basketball coach

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Jesse Deloof graduated from Penns Valley 16 years ago, but he’s still making an impact in the sport he played in high school.

It was always deeper than the game of basketball itself — it was the competition and the desire to win that kept Deloof on the court.

Growing up there was a basketball hoop on the barn and Deloof was always shooting and playing with friends. His parents, who still live in central Pennsylvania, are farmers who work in the highly competitive show horse business. Earning a living depended on winning and losing, and Deloof embodied that mindset from an early age.

“Winning was celebrated and losing was needed to be improved on,” Deloof said. “I was used to that from the house I grew up in.”

However, he’s not playing anymore. He’s coaching.

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford is a Division III basketball program on a historic run in Deloof’s fourth season as head coach.

In high school, Deloof wasn’t ever someone you wanted to play against, said Tyler Ferguson, who went to West Branch and lost to him and Penns Valley nine times. The Rams won the league every season, and reached the state playoffs during Deloof’s senior year.

“I actually never cared for him,” Ferguson said. “He was very cocky on the court.”

But later, Ferguson got to know him as a teammate. It wasn’t planned that they would both attend Pitt-Bradford and play together through college. But it didn’t take long for them to connect on the court and start a friendship that has lasted well beyond their graduation in 2013.

“He’s just a loyal friend and teammate who’s going to do anything he can do on the court to make all his teammates better,” Ferguson said.

Deloof always knew his playing career was finite. Becoming a coach was always the dream to keep the fire of competition alive. However, he initially took a construction job based in Michigan before returning to his alma mater as an assistant coach.

His first head coaching role was at Youngsville High School, and Deloof established a winning culture. Before he took over, the Eagles only won two games. Within two years that changed to 20, with their first appearance in the state playoffs, according to Ferguson.

When the head coaching job opened at Pitt-Bradford, it was a no-brainer to apply. He was hired as the program’s seventh coach in history in 2020.

“I still wanted to win a championship here,” Deloof said. ‘We didn’t in the four years I was here [as a player], so it was kind of unfinished business.”

Between 2017-2020, the Panthers only won nine games, but under Deloof’s direction, their proud tradition of basketball was reinstated.

Sitting at 20-2 overall and 13-1 in the AMCC conference, Pitt-Bradford secured a share of the regular season conference title for the first time since 2001. With a 103-79 victory against Penn State Altoona on Wednesday night, the Panthers won the title outright and claimed the No. 1 seed in the AMCC Championship Tournament, which starts next week.

Pitt-Bradford will host the semifinal round on its home court at KOA Arena on Feb. 28.

Even though Deloof didn’t win a title as a player, he said it would mean more to him as a coach anyway.

“As hard as I worked as a player, I definitely put more into it as a coach,” he said. “I think we’ve done a really good job of not getting ahead of ourselves, just take it one game, one goal, one accomplishment at at time.”

The team plays with a unique style that has caught the rest of the conference off guard. Nathan Schneider played under Deloof during the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons. He played his graduate season at Gannon and returned to Pitt-Bradford this season as Deloof’s assistant, and together they implemented a full-court press system.

“It’s 40 minutes of hell,” Ferguson said. He’s attended several games throughout the seasons and said the team is fun to watch.

The Panthers average nearly 24 forced turnovers and 15 steals per game as they dismantle their opponents.

“There’s a big risk that we take if we don’t do it the right way, [opponents] are going to get a bunch of easy open layups,” Schneider said. “But we have the personnel to wear teams down for the length of a whole game so it kind of works to our advantage.”

This season is the culmination of strong recruiting. When you play at the Division III level, there aren’t scholarships or the NIL funds that programs in the Big Ten or SEC see at the Division I level.

With social media, Deloof says there aren’t any “hidden gems” anymore and that it’s easier to identify good players. He focuses on making these players the priority and “letting them know that they’re wanted and that they could have success.”

After the COVID-19 pandemic that prevented the 2020-2021 season, Scheinder was unsure if basketball was an option for him anymore, especially after coming off two big injuries. But he credits Deloof for how he “revitalized” his playing career — Schneider reached the 1,000 point mark in 45 games.

“He’s really good with letting the players play to their strengths and not really holding them back,” Schneider said.

The culture of the Panthers has Penns Valley traditions riddled in its fabric, with Deloof implementing the ways he was coached into his own process.

Every time a player gets off the bus, they thank the driver when arriving at a game and returning home. And before every game, the lights go off in the locker room for a moment of silence for prayer, reflection and intrinsic motivation. In the Penns Valley locker room Deloof did the same and the impact of that unique routine has now been adapted by the players he now coaches.

Creating a winning environment boils down to the small details.

“Winning and losing matters to me and not just on the court, but like winning and losing in life, academically, anything where someone keeps score, let’s go win it,” Deloof said.