WHEELING, WV, Aug. 1, 2007 — Former Cardinal star basketball player and men’s assistant basketball coach Danny Sancomb has agreed to return to Wheeling Jesuit University, this time to do double duty as athletic director and head men’s basketball coach. When Sancomb was last part of the Cardinal men’s staff, the University dominated the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC) with back-to-back 20-win seasons, only the second time in the school’s basketball history.

He replaces Jay DeFruscio, who moved on to the NBA Indiana Pacers this past June as an assistant to head coach Jim O’Brien, also a former WJU men’s basketball coach.

Sancomb most recently headed up the St. Mary’s Ryken High School boy’s basketball team, where he also performed the duties of athletic director for the past three years. As athletic director, he supervised 62 coaches at the prep school, located in Leonardtown, Md. St. Mary’s is in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC), a highly competitive basketball league that is known for producing fast rising college players. Sancomb’s team posted a 10-10 league record and an overall record of 17-12 last season.

A 1998 graduate of Wheeling Jesuit with a bachelor’s of arts degree in criminal justice, Sancomb also earned his master’s in business administration at Wheeling Jesuit, graduating in 2004.

While a Cardinal basketball player, Sancomb broke the 1,000-point mark for his career during the season, scoring 1,454 points to establish himself as the University’s sixth all-time leading scorer. Sancomb later received WVIAC First-Team honors, All-East Region recognition and NCAA Division II Third-Team All-American status. After graduating from Wheeling Jesuit, Sancomb moved to a coaching position at West Virginia Institute of Technology, where he served as assistant men’s basketball coach and golf coach for the 1998-99 season.  

After that he returned to the Cardinals as assistant men’s basketball coach from 1999 - 2004 and headed recruitment, scouting, monitored compliance, directed basketball camps and was an assistant to WVIAC 2002 Coach of the Year.

From this he moved on to his recent position at St. Mary’s where he was responsible for coordinating the fundraising for the athletic department.

Highlights of Sancomb’s coaching career include:

• DCSportsfan.com’s Coach of the Year for 2006 for the WCAC,

• Coached St. Mary’s to its first winning season in the WCAC with a record of 16-10 in the 2005-2006 season, after a 2-19 record in 2004-2005.

• His team finished both the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons fifth in the WCAC.

• Coached a McDonald All-American Nominee, 10 All-Conference players, one All-Met player, and a two-time Southern Maryland extra player of the year.

• His team was ranked fifth best team in the DC Metro area by Rise magazine and ranked as high as seventh in the Washington Post in the 2006-2007 season.

• Team GPA for last season was 3.22

A selection committee made the choice of the new Cardinal athletic director and coach after interviewing applicants over the past six weeks.

Wheeling Jesuit has 18 men's and women's teams, most of which compete in the WVIAC and NCAA Division II. The athletic teams have won more than 45 WVIAC titles, fielding 40 Academic All-Americans, and receiving 29 WVIAC Coach of the Year awards. More than 25 percent of the University's full-time day undergraduate students participate on an athletic team.

One of 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States, Wheeling Jesuit University offers students a high-quality private education. Since 1995 U.S. News & World Report has ranked Wheeling Jesuit University among the top institutions in its “Best Master’s Universities in the South” category. The campus is also home to the Robert C. Byrd National Technology Transfer Center, the Erma Ora Byrd Center for Educational Technologies^®, the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future, a Challenger Learning Center^® and the Clifford M. Lewis Appalachian Institute.

To find out more about Wheeling Jesuit, please call 1-800-624-6992 or visit Wheeling Jesuit online at www.wju.edu.