Covington Catholic High School has named former Colonel standout and University of Cincinnati men’s basketball assistant Jake Thelen as its new head basketball coach.
Former coach of 13 years, Scott Ruthsatz, announced in May that he was leaving the position to focus more on his family and his personal businesses.
Thelen is the 11th head basketball coach in CovCath’s 80-year history. He is the sixth former Colonel to become head coach.
A native of Edgewood, Thelen thrived at Covington Catholic. Per a release from the school, 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. He gained coaching experience at three top Division I basketball programs.
According to the release, Thelen, Class of 2011, finished his career at Covington Catholic with a scoring average of 16.6 points per game. He is the eighth all-time leading scorer in CovCath basketball history with 1,258 points. He also holds the school single-game record with 18 field goals.
Thelen most recently served as Director of Player Development and Assistant Coach for the University of Cincinnati men’s basketball team.
“Jake Thelen did a terrific job for us here at Cincinnati over the last three years,” UC coach Wes Miller said. “He will be extremely missed. CovCath is getting a great young coach. He is ready to be a head coach.”
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 5 school when he arrived in Athens at age 25.
Thelen’s 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. He was one of six top-100 prospects Georgia signed during Thelen’s tenure in Athens.
Crean knew he had something special on his hands with Thelen while at Indiana University.
”Jake Thelen came highly recommended to us at Indiana, and I realized quickly that we had a star in the making,” Crean said. ”He’s extremely diligent, organized, focused and competitive.”
Thelen played professionally for Horsens IC one year before getting on the coaching path. He coached at Louisville St. Xavier High School in 2015-16. He became a graduate assistant under Crean at Indiana in 2016-17 and was an assistant coach at Bellarmine in 2017-18. Thelen eventually followed Crean to Georgia.
Thelen was an All-American forward at Bellarmine. He finished ranked No. 16 among Bellarmine’s career scoring leaders with 1,412 points in three seasons. As a senior, he recorded the second-highest point (651) and rebound (375) totals in school history and averaged a double-double. He averaged 18.6 points 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.
At CovCath, Thelen participated in basketball, football, Ambassadors Club, Drug Free Clubs of America and he was a pall bearer for the homeless.