John Loftin, who coached Southwestern Oklahoma State to five NAIA women’s basketball championships in 19 seasons, has died at age 82.
John Loftin, who coached Southwestern Oklahoma State to five NAIA women’s basketball championships in 19 seasons and set a standard for that sport at the small-college level, has died at age 82.
Loftin, who lived in Amarillo, Texas, died Thursday, Aug. 21, according to a notice from Kornerstone Funeral Directors. He was a member of at least five Halls of Fame – the NAIA Hall of Fame, the Southwestern Oklahoma State Athletic Hall of Fame, the Murray State College Athletic Hall of Fame, the Texas Panhandle Sports Hall of Fame and the Tulia Independent School District Hall of Fame.
Loftin graduated from Tulia High School in the Texas Panhandle in 1961 and was an all-state basketball player who later played at Texas Tech and eventually graduated from what’s now known as West Texas A&M.
“Oklahoma women’s basketball lost a great coach in the passing of John Loftin,” said Jerry Finkbeiner, who often faced Loftin’s squads while coaching at Southern Nazarene in the 1990s.
In the late 1970s, in the fledgling days of women’s basketball, Loftin – then a high school coach in Texas who’d won two state titles at Claude – began his college coaching career at what’s now known as Murray State College in Tishomingo, before moving across the state to Weatherford to coach at Southwestern.
"I felt like Southwestern has a bigger recruiting area than any other school in the state," Loftin told The Oklahoman in 1982. "With the exception of Panhandle State, there are no schools in this half of the state. I thought that if I could just get the best girls from western Oklahoma I could have a good team."
His theory proved correct. Over 19 seasons at Southwestern from 1981 to 2000, he posted a 499-99 record (an .834 winning percentage) and won NAIA titles in 1982, 1983, 1985, 1987 and 1990. Five other times, his Southwestern teams advanced to the NAIA semifinals.
Led by star freshman Kelli Litsch from nearby Thomas, his first Southwestern team in 1981-82 went 34-0, routing Missouri Southern 80-45 for the championship. The Bulldogs also went undefeated in 1984-85 during Litsch’s senior season, beating Saginaw Valley State (Michigan) 55-54 in the title game to again finish 34-0.
“He was intense,” Litsch said Saturday. “Literally down to the minute, he had a practice schedule every day. It was so organized and so planned and so thought out and so methodical. It was just total preparation. You felt like, as a player playing for him, you were prepared for everything. One of the best things you could say about him, in terms of his coaching, was his ability to adjust. You could have a scouting report, but if somebody did something a little bit different, he was able to adjust like nobody I’d ever seen.”
Oklahoma NAIA basketball during Loftin’s era was high-caliber, often drawing players – like Litsch – who were recruited by high-level NCAA Division I programs. As other Oklahoma NAIA programs (including Oklahoma City University and Southern Nazarene, which won national titles in 1988 and 1989, respectively) worked to match Southwestern’s success, the level of play steadily improved.
During Loftin’s heyday, few small-college atmospheres could match the intensity found in Southwestern’s Rankin Williams Fieldhouse during a major NAIA District 9 showdown against SNU, Southeastern Oklahoma State or another in-state rival.
In 1995, three Oklahoma teams – Southwestern, Southeastern and Southern Nazarene – reached the NAIA semifinals and then-Southeastern coach Nick Keith explained how it happened.
"John Loftin is responsible," Keith said. "When you keep getting beat and getting beat and getting beat by someone, you know what level you have to be at. We've all had to go get better players and become better coaches because of John."
In the 1990s, Finkbeiner coached Southern Nazarene, whose teams often served as a foil for Loftin’s Southwestern squads. Finkbeiner, who later coached at the NCAA Division I level at both Oral Roberts and Utah State, said Loftin was one of only two coaches he ever faced who forced him “to get better both philosophically and with game-plan development to survive 40 minutes of game time.”
“Competing against the Southwestern program made me a better coach and our SNU program a better program,” Finkbeiner said. “I respected John’s coaching and was fortunate later in life to get to know him better and to establish a more personable friendship after our competitive coaching days.”
Loftin came across to outsiders as fiery and confident, even brash, an image he didn’t seem to mind. He wasn’t afraid of giving blunt assessments of other teams. In 1990, Southwestern crushed Georgian Court (N.J.) 77-54 in the first round of the NAIA tournament in Jackson, Tennessee, and Loftin said afterward, “You can talk all day about why we won, but it's simple. We have a lot more talent. That team couldn't make the playoffs in our district."
In the national semifinals that year, Southwestern downed unbeaten St. Ambrose (Iowa), a team coached by Lisa Bluder, who eventually landed at Iowa, where she coached current WNBA sensation Caitlin Clark. The Bulldogs beat Arkansas-Monticello 82-75 in the 1990 championship game. They made it back to the NAIA title game in 1991, but lost 57-53 to Fort Hays State (Kansas).
All told, Southwestern played in 14 out of 17 NAIA Division I tournaments before entering NCAA Division II with the 1998-99 season. Southwestern fired Loftin following the 1999-2000 season, when the Bulldogs finished 15-11.
He went on to serve an assistant coach when Midland College (Texas) finished as the 2001 National Junior College Athletic Association national runner-up and as the head girls coach at Midland High School. All told, in 38 years of coaching at the high school, junior college and four-year college levels, he recorded 861 wins. Loftin coached 23 collegiate All-Americans, including 11 first-team All-Americans.
Eventually, Southwestern and Loftin mended fences and he often visited the Weatherford campus for reunions, including earlier this year, when he attended a 40-year reunion for the 1985 championship team in February.
“We had a great response,” said Litsch, who later served as Loftin’s assistant coach and as a Southwestern athletic administrator. “Most of the players were back for those. It was just good to get everybody together again and spend some time with him. … His mind was still just so sharp. He could pick right up. I bet we hadn’t been in there 10 minutes and he was already bossing us around like he was still the coach. It’s like the 40 years just disappeared.”
All of the NAIA title banners still hang in Rankin Williams Fieldhouse, which since has been replaced as the Bulldogs’ home court by the gleaming Pioneer Cellular Events Center. But all of the championship trophies are displayed inside the new facility in a trophy case topped with the label, “The Coach John Loftin Legacy."
“I guess you could say the timing worked out just perfect,” Loftin said in 2011, when he was inducted into Southwestern’s Hall of Fame. “Women’s basketball was really starting to take hold and there was no place where it was played better than Southwestern. No doubt, it was the highlight of my coaching career. Southwestern holds a lot of special memories for me.”
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Former SWOSU women's basketball coach John Loftin dies
Category: General Sports
