Covington Catholic names former standout, UC assistant as new head basketball coach

Covington Catholic High School has named UC men’s basketball assistant and former Colonel standout Jake Thelen its new head basketball coach.

He replaces Scott Ruthsatz, who resigned after 13 seasons.

“Jake Thelen did a terrific job for us at Cincinnati over the last three years,” said Wes Miller, UC Bearcats head men’s basketball coach. “He will be extremely missed. CovCath is getting a great young coach. He’s ready to be a head coach. The job he did with our players… mentoring them, helping them grow and mature, become better players. It will be really neat to watch him do that with his own program.”

A native of Edgewood, Kentucky, Thelen starred at CovCath and graduated in 2011. He was selected to play in both the Kentucky/Indiana and the Kentucky/Ohio All-Star games before embarking on an All-American career at Bellarmine University and gaining coaching experience at three top Division I basketball programs.

Thelen most recently served as director of player development/assistant coach for the University of Cincinnati men’s basketball team.

Prior to joining UC, Thelen was the director of basketball operations at the University of Georgia. He was the youngest director of basketball operations at a Power-Five school when he arrived in Athens at age 25. His on-campus coordination helped the Bulldogs land a consensus top-10 class in head coach Tom Crean’s first full recruiting cycle.

That group was headlined by Anthony Edwards, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft and one of six top-100 prospects Georgia has signed during Thelen’s tenure in Athens. Edwards led Minnesota to the Western Conference Finals in the NBA Playoffs last month.

Thelen finished his Colonels playing career with a scoring average of 16.6 points per game and is the eighth all-time leading scorer in Covington Catholic basketball history with 1,258 points. He also holds the single-game school record with 18 field goals.

Thelen was an All-American forward at Bellarmine University, where he finished ranked No. 16 among Bellarmine’s career-scoring leaders with 1,412 points in three seasons. As a senior, he posted the second-highest point (651) and rebound (375) tallies in school history to average a double-double of 18.6 ppg and 10.7 rebounds per game.

Thelen was a consensus All-American and was named the GLVC Player of the Year in 2015. Thelen was tabbed first-team All-America by Basketball Times, DII Bulletin, the National Association of Basketball Coaches and BennettRank.com.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Covington Catholic names UC assistant as new head basketball coach