After finishing his collegiate career at Valpo in 2014, playing professionally for eight years in Europe and most recently working with Adidas Basketball, Lavonte Dority returned to Valpo as the program's Recruiting & Player Development Coach under head coach Roger Powell Jr., who was an assistant coach under Bryce Drew during Dority's playing days. Dority, who was Powell’s first recruit during his first stint on Valpo's staff, joined the staff prior to the 2025-26 season.
Year 1 of Dority’s Valpo coaching tenure in 2025-2026 saw the program record its best conference winning percentage and highest league win total since joining the Missouri Valley Conference in 2017. The team went 11-9 in MVC play, nearly doubling its conference win total for a second straight season, and notching the team’s first-ever winning season in Valley play. Overall, Valpo won 18 games including 17 regular-season contests in 2025-26, the program’s highest regular-season win total since its final season in the Horizon League in 2016-2017. Year 1 of Dority’s time on staff was Valpo’s first winning season overall since 2019-2020 and featured a 13-4 record at the Athletics-Recreation Center, the team’s highest home win total since 2016-2017.
Dority’s first season on staff was an underdog story in the sense that Valpo finished tied for sixth in the MVC and just one game out of a tie for third in a tightly-packed league after being picked last in the 11-team league in the preseason poll. Valpo ranked 325th nationally in Division-I experience as only three scholarship members of the team had played a D-I game prior to the season. Valpo finished the regular season at 150 in the KenPom after starting the season at 283, moving up 133 spots in the rankings, tied for the fourth largest improvement nationally.
The 2025-26 season saw Valpo sweep the regular-season series from UIC for the first time since the Flames joined The Valley, sweep the regular-season series from Indiana State for just the second time since joining The Valley, win a first-round MVC Tournament game over Indiana State to advance to the league quarterfinals, end a 10-game head-to-head losing streak to Bradley and squash an eight-game head-to-head skid to Drake while notching a road victory over the Bulldogs for the first time since 2018 en route to sweeping Drake for the first time since 2017-18.
After starting his collegiate career at the University of South Florida, the Foreman High School product and Chicago native transferred to Valpo at the semester break during the 2011-12 season and became eligible in December 2012 after sitting out due to transfer rules. He helped Valpo win the 2013 Horizon League championship and was a senior in 2013-14 on a young team that featured Alec Peters as a freshman.
Dority was named the Horizon League Sixth Man of the Year in 2012-13 and earned first-team all-league honors in 2013-14, also garnering All-District 12 Second Team status that season. He earned weekly awards from the league office on three occasions. In his hometown of Chicago, Dority scored 33 points on Feb. 1, 2014 at UIC. He averaged 8.6 points per game in 2012-13 before a team-high 15.7 points per game in 2013-14, when he started all 34 contests.
Dority played for the Kircheim Knights (2014-15, Germany), Francavilla Fontana (2016-17, Italy), Den Helder Suns (2017-18, Dutch Basketball League), Dutch Windmills (2018-19, Dutch Basketball League) and T71 Dudelange (2019-20, Luxembourgian Total League). During his post playing days, he has run events and done talent evaluating on the AAU circuit for Adidas Basketball.
