Loyola Marymount to Relive Glory Days : Former Football Coaches Lieb, Olivar Top List of 11 Inductees Into Hall of Fame

The glory days of Loyola football, from the 1930s to the early 1950s, will be in the spotlight when Loyola Marymount University inducts nine former athletes and coaches and two Jesuit administrators into its Athletic Hall of Fame.

Ceremonies will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Amfac Hotel near the Westchester campus.

The honorees are former football coaches Tom Lieb and Jordan Olivar, former basketball coaches James Needles and Edwin McDonald, football players Maury Nipp and George Musaco, basketball players Luther Philyaw and Garnette Brown and baseball player Dean Jelmini.

The administrators being honored are the Rev. Alfred J. Kilp, moderator of athletics from 1956-63 and president of the West Coast Athletic Conference in 1960, and the Rev. Lorenzo Malone, moderator of athletics from 1947 to 1956 as well as golf coach. Kilp, a 1930 Loyola graduate, is now the school’s moderator of alumni relations.

Needles, McDonald, Lieb and Malone will be honored posthumously.

The Hall of Fame was instituted last year by Athletic Director Brian Quinn. The latest additions join the original 31 inductees honored in 1986.

Lieb, top football assistant to Knute Rockne at Notre Dame in the 1920s, took over the Loyola football team in 1930 and also established an ice hockey program. He had a 47-33-4 football coaching record and his hockey teams won four straight Pacific Coast Intercollegiate League titles from 1935 to 1938 with a record of 38-3-2.

Olivar coached the football team from only 1949 to 1951 but during his tenure the Lions won a school record 12 straight games. His 1950 team was 8-1, averaged 33 points a game and featured Don Klosterman, Bob Boyd, Ernie Cheatam, Gene Brito and new inductees Nipp and Musaco.

Musaco was named All-Coast as a junior in 1949 when he gained 881 yards--ninth in the nation--and scored 12 touchdowns. As a senior he ranked 17th in the nation with 866 yards and set an NCAA record with 45 rushes in one game, a mark that stood for a decade.

Nipp is probably the best lineman in Loyola history, despite being a relatively small 6-foot, 218-pound guard. After graduating in 1952 he started for several years for the Philadelphia Eagles. He since has served as president of the NFL Players Alumni Assn.

Needles served as head basketball coach from 1936 to 1940 as well as assistant football coach in 1939. His 1937-38 basketball team ranks among Loyola’s best, winning the Southwestern AAU Basketball Tournament title and finishing with an 18-7 record. Needles also coached the first U.S. Olympic basketball team that won the gold medal at Berlin in 1936.

McDonald played basketball for three seasons under Needles and became head coach in 1946, resurrecting the program after a lapse during World War II. In 1949 he led Loyola to a school-record 22 victories.

Brown played basketball for three seasons. As a senior forward in 1956-57, he averaged 20.3 points and 10.7 rebounds a game and set school records that still stand for free throws attempted (256) and made (186) in a season.

Two decades later, Philyaw was an All-WCAC guard who ended four varsity seasons as the school’s second all-time scorer. He graduated in 1976 with a career average of 15.2 and 1,581 career points, fourth on the school career list.

Jelmini, a 1973 graduate, earned all-district honors as an outfielder and played in the Angels’ minor-league chain. As a senior he batted .381 and led the Lions to a WCAC title and an appearance in the NCAA regionals. Jelmini also earned Little All-American honors as a fullback on the school’s club football team that won the national club title in 1969.