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POSTED: Sunday, November 16, 2008

It's a classic. Perfect for Tony Sellitto.

Whenever the Hawaii Pacific basketball coach feels old, he can just think about the place where he works.

The Blaisdell Hotel was built in 1912. It's got a quarter century on Tony the Tiger, who recently turned 70.

He still doesn't have a gym, but what a beautiful antique of a building to go to each day, riding up in a birdcage elevator, the kind you see in the old movies.

“;There's even an attendant,”; Sellitto says. “;This place has great character.”;

It's a well-preserved and utilitarian structure, the kind you see on college campuses everywhere. This one just happens to be in downtown Honolulu and has the same name as the arena where Sellitto's teams have won countless games and championships.

To get to Sellitto's office, you negotiate the eclectic bustle of Fort Street Mall, where HPU students and professors, office workers, business people and homeless wanderers frequent the same street vendors and noodle shops, lives headed in infinite directions bouncing off each other.

It's loud, vibrant and paradoxical. Full of history and kinetic energy.

Just like Sellitto.

On any short list of Hawaii's greatest basketball coaches, his name must be mentioned—and should be first. Alegre, Lopes, Manliguis, McLachlin, Rocha, Smith, Wong, Yagi. Those are some of the others, college and high school. You can throw Wallace in for longevity and Goo, too, especially considering that exemplary graduation rate.

But if the list is one, it's Sellitto. No one else has a high school state championship and a collegiate national title to his credit—1984 at Maryknoll and 1993 at HPU. No one else has done as much with as little.

And now he's back to coach the Sea Warriors, six years after retiring to deal with prostate cancer and a stroke.

“;People ask why,”; Sellitto says. “;One, I don't play golf. Two, I particularly like working with (HPU president) Chatt Wright. He has the proper feelings and attitude, the right perspective, about sports.”;

Wright and Sellitto continued to meet regularly for lunch. As it became clearer that Sellitto's health was restored, Wright began to think more about bringing him back, and then finally asked last year.

“;We would talk on the phone and reminisce; I longed for those wonderful days,”; Wright says. “;I knew we needed to bring the old spark back. I always had it in mind. It wasn't the same without Tony, it wasn't as good.”;

Sellitto came to Hawaii in 1961—courtesy of the United States Army, where his job was to play third base. He was from New Jersey, a three-sport high school star, and had graduated from Colorado College, where he boxed.

“;Talent-wise, I think baseball was my best. I was drafted out of high school and junior college by a couple of different teams. I decided I would finish college, because they wanted me to play in the low minors, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time in the minor leagues.”;

In his early years here, he continued to play baseball and fast-pitch softball, and scouted for the Cincinnati Reds. But coaching basketball was his vocation and his passion.

“;I could understand every facet. In baseball, I could play it well, but I didn't really know what was going on. I was a quarterback who never threw to the second or third read—I would just take off and run. I just played because I could play.”;

When he began job-hunting here, coaching opportunities at Punahou and Saint Louis arose. But Sellitto chose comparatively small Maryknoll—a school with far less tradition and fewer resources—because he could coach basketball and be the athletic director.

“;Our players always had the best tans,”; Sellitto quipped long ago, in reference to Maryknoll's lack of an indoor facility for practice or games.

In 23 years with the Spartans, he built a perennial basketball contender in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu, the state's most competitive high school sports conference—despite never playing a real home game, and all while wearing his trademark shorts (try doing that in New Jersey). It culminated in a state title in 1984, four years before he moved on to HPU, where his 1993 team won the NAIA championship.

Retired Star-Bulletin sportswriter Jim Easterwood covered both ascents.

“;His defense would lull me to sleep, that sticky zone of his. It frustrated a lot of good teams,”; Easterwood says. “;He had to be a good coach to meld that HPU team, guys from all over the place, guys from London.”;

As with many others, Sellitto didn't make the best first impression on Easterwood.

“;He was brash and cocky, but once you get to know him you see he's a really good guy, a good friend,”; Easterwood says. “;I think kids liked playing for him.”;

Francis Fletcher was one of his greatest players at Maryknoll and is now a Sellitto assistant at HPU.

“;I started off as a ballboy for him when I was 11. I was afraid of him then. He was Tony the Tiger. Big growl, but as nice a person as you'll ever meet. And honest and a great friend,”; Fletcher says. “;He definitely can read people. But not for their weaknesses. For their strengths. He knows how to work around the weaknesses and build on the strengths, with a lot of yelling in between. But once you know him, you know he's on your side.”;

He was just a guy from back east, being himself.

“;It took time (to adapt). I felt comfortable, but my style was not what people here were used to,”; says Sellitto, recalling playing fast-pitch softball with University of Hawaii baseball coaching legend Les Murakami in the 1960s and '70s. “;I had a great time. I was brash and outspoken, and my teammates were just the opposite—quiet, subdued. I had no problem, I thought they were the greatest guys in the world. They didn't say anything, but they probably thought I was a nut. I think Les felt that I was a great competitor, and that's why we were friends.”;

Five years after his retirement from HPU, Sellitto's legacy surfaced at the state high school tournament in 2007. His former player and assistant coach, Kelly Grant, coached Kaimuki to victory over Punahou in the championship game.

“;It's how he won I'm so proud of. (In the 1984 championship) we were losing to Maui by 14, and we did a box and one on J.J. Vroom. (Grant) did the same thing against Punahou, against Miah Ostrowski. I really thought that was an outstanding move on his part. I was thrilled that he remembered that.”;

Ostrowski's father, Kui, was Grant's teammate on that 1984 Maryknoll team.

“;I was told later that Kui had an idea we might do that,”; Grant says. “;I remember how hard that defense can make it on a team, how other players have to step up. Miah was such a big factor we wanted to eliminate his touches.

“;But it was off the court that (Sellitto) made the biggest impact on me. I was headed in the wrong direction when he gave me a chance when I was a high school sophomore.”;

It's a fine line between respected old school and silly old fool, and Tony Sellitto knows this. I spent an hour with him the other day, and it's clear he is no figurehead, not merely a hollow symbol of past glory days. He's basically the same shrewd, intense and energetic guy who put together 12 winning seasons in 14 years at HPU, with 298 victories.

“;Actually, he's better now,”; Fletcher says. “;He has the time to completely focus on basketball. I think he's doing some of his best work. He's like a good wine. He gets better with age, and a little more subtle.”;

Darrell Matsui is another longtime Sellitto assistant, going back to the early Maryknoll days. He echoes Fletcher.

“;He's still energized, very akamai about basketball and he loves recruiting. We need a point guard for next year and he must have called every one of them in the country. He's still the same, just a little more tolerant.”;

Sellitto says two of his joys at HPU are providing local players with a chance to experience college ball and exposing players from the mainland and other countries to Hawaii, hoping they fall in love with the islands the way he did in 1961.

“;In personality, he's a Hawaiian guy,”; says returning all-conference point guard Jason Curtis, who is from Maryland. “;Shorts, aloha shirts. He's still got that East Coast talk and style, but he's always smiling and talking about how beautiful it is here, how great the weather is. In coaching style, it's East Coast, especially for us guards. He wants us to penetrate and play tough defense.

“;He still has his little outbursts. He's calm, then he yells. Before our exhibition, he said he wasn't going to say anything. Two minutes into it, he's yelling and he didn't stop. He tells me, 'Jason, what are you doing, you call yourself a point guard?' It was funny, I like him. The main thing is no one wants to be the cause of him getting another stroke.”;

When Sellitto talks basketball philosophy, it's clear he's a throwback. It's all about fundamentals.

» “;You have to take the right attitude in athletics and make great sacrifices, spend an inordinate amount of time with athletes and make it as simple as possible. Simple is better.”;

» “;What Duke does isn't hard, but it's right. What Bobby Knight does is right.”;

» “;We want guys that really want to play basketball, not just put on a uniform to look good for their girlfriends.”;

» “;I always wear the X on my back so they know where to throw the tomato.”;

I was surprised, but probably shouldn't have been, to learn the Sea Warriors go all the way across town to practice each day, at Mid-Pacific Institute. Wright says there's a possibility of building a gym on HPU's windward campus as part of a $100 million expansion, and he'd love to do it. But other priorities exist.

So when I greet Sellitto, I can't resist.

“;Forty years, and you still don't have your own place to practice—what's up with that, Coach?”;

He grins.

“;Yeah, I still don't have a gym. I don't even ask anymore,”; he says. “;I never thought about not having a gym. I just wanted to have good players.”;

He's got most of his old staff, including former players Ben Valle and James Williams. He just needs long-time right-hand man Russell Dung back in the fold and the band is reunited.

We eventually get to the inevitable questions: How long? Can you still do it the way you want, on your terms?

If the last six years have taught Tony Sellitto anything, it's the futility in worrying about such things.

“;When I was on my back, retired, watching TV, I realized. No one has tomorrow guaranteed, no matter what age. So I don't think about it. I felt physically bad when I retired. I didn't have that zip. Now I do, and I know I'm lucky to have it back.”;

And who needs a gym when you've got the coolest elevator in the state?