DeSalme Era ends in Bartlesville High School basketball
Tommy DeSalme resigned as head Bartlesville Bruins basketball coach on Thursday after one season. DeSalme reportedly accepted a coaching job at a junior college.
BECKY BURCH/Bartlesville Area Sports
By Mike Tupa
April 4, 2025
BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT
For the second time in two years Bartlesville High School has the “Help Wanted” sign out for a new varsity boys basketball head coach.
The school’s athletic department announced Thursday that last season’s skipper Tommy DeSalme has accepted a coaching job on the college level. His tenure at Bartlesville lasted almost exactly a year. The school brought him on board on April 15, 2024 as the program’s seventh head coach since 1982.
An instant wave of excitement swept over many Bruin fans — especially the veteran faithful — who remembered DeSalme as one the program’s favorite players in team history. He played on two state championship teams, 1988-89 and 1990-91. He might have well been part of three-straight state championship teams had not the 1989-90 team slipped a little in the playoffs.
DeSalme — who left a nationally-prominent junior college program in Kansas in order to return and coach at Bartlesville — inherited a rugged challenge. Bartlesville was coming off a 3-21 record in 2023-24 and possessed only two winning records in the previous 11 seasons, since 2013-14.
In addition in trying to change the trajectory back from a losing to a winning tradition, DeSalme had almost no varsity experience on which to build his 2024-25 team. In fact his season-opening roster included only one senior and approximately dozen freshmen. DeSalme would rely heavily on his ninth graders during an intensely competitive schedule.
In addition to a shortage of experience, the team was physically shorter and lighter than the vast majority of teams it played. Illness and other challenges also took their toll. As a result the team duplicated its 3-21 mark from a year earlier.
But many observers felt DeSalme had succeeded in changing the mentality of the team toward a positive direction in the future. Indications seemed to suggest he would be back.
Thursday’s announcement revealed that won’t be the case.
“I think there was just an opportunity that came along that he feels fits him a little better,” Bartlesville Athletic Director Thad Dilbeck said, saying that during his recent discussions on the subject with DeSalme that DeSalme appeared to feel a stronger comfort zone in coaching college ball.
Dilbeck said it wasn’t an easy decision for DeSalme because of his friends and family and his history with Bartlesville as his home.
The school has already begun the formal process to bring a new coach on board.
Even though his tenure lasted just one season, Dilbeck feels DeSalme made his mark on the program.
“Tommy certainly came in and installed some toughness and work ethic, especially the value of committing to a tough defense,” Dilbeck said. “We watched him instill his program last fall and they only worked on defense for several weeks. He came in and got his way of thinking established pretty quickly.”
Whoever comes in next should become heir to a little better situation than DeSalme’s was a year ago.
As alluded to above, approximately a dozen freshmen with significant varsity experience are eligible to return along with some veteran upperclassmen.
“We all know how young our varsity roster was this year,” Dilbeck said. “Whoever leads our program will be getting a lot of returning varsity players. … The new coach will be certainly ahead in that aspect.”
Meanwhile, the DeSalme era will not soon be forgotten due to the enthusiasm it aroused and for the measurable progress a raw-green team made while working its way — rallied by DeSalme — through a treacherous gauntlet of unrelenting challenges. Perhaps the returning players will possess a Character Quotient hardened in the fiery trials of this past season that will be an extra asset for the next coach.