Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who became a sports-world celebrity as the chaplain, No. 1 fan and informal scout for Loyola University Chicago basketball teams that played in a pair of N.C.A.A. national championship tournaments, died on Thursday. She was 106.

Her death was announced by the university.

Amid the hoopla accompanying March Madness, the story of a nun and her support for players some 80 years her junior made for an uplifting tale.

A member of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or B.V.M., Sister Jean, as she preferred to be known, was retiring from her job as a student adviser at Loyola in 1994 when Father John Piderit, Loyola’s president at the time, asked if she would remain on campus to help athletes maintain good grades. She agreed and was named chaplain of the men’s basketball team soon after.

Players whose grades were merely average saw Sister Jean weekly to discuss their problems. One player said she helped him construct essays and another said she coached him on time management.

As chaplain, Sister Jean led the Loyola Ramblers in pregame prayers, asking God to bless the hands that would be used for shooting and rebounding. She also studied box scores of upcoming opponents’ games and pointed out strengths and weaknesses for the Loyola coach and players.

When Loyola surprised the collegiate basketball world in 2018, reaching the semifinals of the N.C.A.A. tournament before losing to Michigan, Sister Jean, at 98, was sought out for interviews and became known far beyond the campus.

“In 2018, Loyola got on the map and everybody was happy,” Sister Jean told ESPN when she returned to the N.C.A.A. tournament with Loyola in March 2021. “I got letters from Germany and France, different kinds of people, saying, ‘You brought great joy to our country.’ Now we need something to make us happy even more than we did in 2018.”

By then, plans were underway for marketing a third edition of Sister Jean bobblehead dolls.

Sister Jean wore personalized gym shoes with Loyola’s colors — maroon with gold lettering that read “Sister” on one shoe and “Jean” on the other — and once said “bopping around the sidelines in my Nikes and trifocals, standing 5 feet tall, I’m towered over by the athletes, but they treat me like a queen.”

She customarily sat behind the Loyola bench through the years, but did not attend any regular season games in 2020-21 during the coronavirus pandemic. She nonetheless kept in touch with the players by telephone and email.

After she was vaccinated, Sister Jean was driven from Chicago to Indianapolis to watch Loyola play in the 2021 N.C.A.A. tournament. Sitting in a wheelchair that she had started using after a hip fracture, she was in the upper stands at Hinkle Fieldhouse for the Midwest regional.

Loyola defeated Georgia Tech in its first tournament game, then faced Illinois, the Big Ten champions, who were seeded No. 1 to Loyola’s No. 8.

Having researched the Illinois team, Sister Jean observed that Loyola had “a great opportunity to convert rebounds” since Illinois had unimpressive percentages on close-in and long-range shots. Loyola did outrebound Illinois and came away with a 71-58 victory. But the Ramblers were ousted from the tournament by Oregon State in their next game.

Dolores Bertha Schmidt was born to a Catholic family on Aug. 21, 1919, in San Francisco, the oldest of three daughters of Joseph and Bertha Schmidt. She was imbued with a religious calling while in the third grade at a Catholic school. After graduating from high school, she received instruction at the Dubuque, Iowa, headquarters of the B.V.M. and took her religious name, Sister Jean Dolores.

Sister Jean taught at Catholic schools in the Los Angeles area and, after obtaining a master’s degree from what is now Loyola Marymount, in Los Angeles, she joined the faculty at Mundelein College of Chicago in 1961. She was a teacher and administrator at the women’s school, which was founded by her order, then became an assistant dean and academic adviser at Loyola Chicago in 1991, when the school absorbed Mundelein.

She is survived by her sister-in-law, Jeanne Tidwell, and her niece, Jan Schmidt.

Former Loyola basketball players maintained fond remembrances of Sister Jean long after their collegiate years. Derek Molis, a Loyola guard in the 1990s, told The New York Times during the 2021 N.C.A.A. tournament that she had helped him cope with his mother’s death.

“Most of the world knows her from the fame perspective,” he said. “The rest of us simply know her as Sister Jean, the one person we knew we could always count on.”

He added, “I’ll tell Sister Jean stories till the day that I die.”

While Sister Jean’s counseling work benefited Loyola students, it also buoyed her own spirits.

“These young people keep me young, even though I’m 101,” she said. “I consider myself young at heart.”