BALTIMORE – Veteran NCAA coach Ricky Hernandez has joined the Loyola University Maryland men's basketball staff and will be the Greyhounds' director of operations, Head Coach Tavaras Hardy announced today.
 
Hernandez comes to the Evergreen campus from nearby Johns Hopkins University where he was an assistant coach for the Blue Jays since 2018.
 
"I am excited to welcome Ricky Hernandez to the Loyola Basketball Family. He is a rising talent in this business that is committed to the growth and development of our student-athletes," Hardy said. "Ricky made an incredible impact on the success of Johns Hopkins basketball over the past five years. He's organized, dependable and has a great feel for the game."
 
The 2008 graduate of West Chester University was the top assistant on the Johns Hopkins group that was name the 2023 Centennial Conference Coaching Staff of the Year as the Blue Jays reached the NCAA Sweet 16 for the first time 2015 and finished the year with a school-record-tying 25 wins.
 
He helped the Blue Jays to a 90-22 (.803) record, two Centennial Conference Championships and three NCAA bids in his five seasons at Johns Hopkins (including the 2020-2021 season when no official games were played).
 
Hernandez worked with 10 All-Centennial Conference players, including two-time league player of the year Connor Delaney, a First-Team All-American, and two-time conference Defensive Player of the Year Sidney Thybulle.
 
In 2020, Hernandez was named one of the top NCAA Division III assistant coaches nationally by the Minority Coaches Association.
 
Prior to joining the staff at Johns Hopkins, Hernandez was an assistant for two seasons at Moravian College where the Greyhounds won a pair of Landmark Conference regular-season titles, the 2018 league tournament and earned a bid to that season's NCAA Championships.
 
In his first year on the staff at the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, school, Moravian won 19 games, the program's most since 1987-88, and the following year, the Greyhounds set a school record with 20 wins.
 
Hernandez gained his first collegiate coaching experience at East Stroudsburg University at the NCAA Division II level where he was a graduate assistant coach from 2014-16. He coached two Honorable Mention All-Americans, three All-Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) players and helped the Warriors win the PSAC East title in 2015.
 
He earned a bachelor's degree in psychology at West Chester, and he received his master's in organizational development and leadership from St. Joseph's University.