Head Coach Mark Jensen '00 and his Whittier College men's basketball staff have been recently recognized as SCIAC Men's Basketball Coaching Staff of the Year, while Head Coach Kristen Dowling of the Whittier College women's basketball team was also recognized as the head of the 2024-25 SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year. Dowling's teams have now yielded two SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year awards as the combined staff swept the SCIAC coaching awards for basketball.
During her seven years at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, Dowling's staff was once named staff of the year in 2014-15 — the year the Athenas made it a perfect 16-0 in conference play. This year's Poets squad, under the tutelage of Dowling and assistants Keyla Morgan and Lizzie Scriven '23, finished 14-2 in SCIAC play, and that number is all the more significant when considering the road taken to arrive here.
Dowling became the Poets' coach on Oct. 18, 2024 — less than three weeks before the start of the 2024-25 regular season. With limited time to work with her athletes and limited knowledge of the Poets' squad coming in, Dowling and her staff were able to develop the proper role players behind First Team All-SCIAC talents Rhe Nae Leach and Lorita Salloom and steer the Poets to 20 regular season wins for just the third time in program history, and a first-place seeding in the SCIAC Postseason Tournament.
Meanwhile, Jensen and the Poets embarked on an epic journey en route to this year's historic achievement and season. After spending more than a decade as the top assistant under Head Coach Rock Carter '89, Jensen took over as the permanent head coach in 2017-18. Seven seasons later, his program made a historic jump, and there's been no shortage of reasons for that. Ahead of the 2024-25 season, Jensen brought Chris Dalley '07 back on staff and added Jabari Lewis, Whittier's Director of Wellness & Recreational Sports, to the mix as well. Both coaches contributed heavily to the Poets becoming the SCIAC's most improved defensive team.
Additionally, Jensen added two more names to the staff that should be familiar to longtime SCIAC basketball viewers: Larry Zucker and Jack Roggin. Roggin was a key part of several Chapman University teams that contended for the SCIAC Championship in recent years, while Zucker, someone who has been around the SCIAC block, assisted on the recruiting end of things.
At the same time, the Poets' offensive efforts became more and more reliant on the play of senior guard Aamari Smith, who led the SCIAC in scoring as a junior back in 2023-24. As Smith took on more offensive and defensive responsibility the Poets' collective play began to reach new heights with each passing game. Smith would go on to lead the nation in scoring by nearly two points per game more than the next-highest scorer and become Whittier's first-ever Josten's Trophy Finalist. As for the Poets, they reached the SCIAC Postseason Tournament for the first time under Jensen and, in hosting the 4-5 matchup against Pomona-Pitzer Colleges, earned the program's first-ever SCIAC postseason victory. Jensen and the Poets then went on the road and gave SCIAC co-regular season winner California Lutheran University all they could handle.
From top-to-bottom, 2024-25 was arguably the most successful season in the recent history of the Whittier College men's basketball program. Jensen and his staff also produced a First Team All-SCIAC/D3Hoops First Team All-Region player in Smith, and a Second Team All-SCIAC player in junior wing Chine Nwanevu.
Photos by Tony Leon/Action West Photography
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