Sitting behind the desk in his office at St. Joseph, the most successful coach in Illinois boys basketball history is talking about the number he can’t forget.
As he talks, Gene Pingatore taps his hands on the desk. Some of the knuckles are swollen, the side effect of years spent playing 16-inch softball without a glove. Wearing well-pressed black pants, a crisp white dress shirt and bold red tie, Pingatore is days away from the first practice of his 45th year as Chargers head coach. The 78-year-old’s first 44 seasons were an unprecedented success, netting a state-record 933 wins and the 1999 Class AA state championship against 327 losses.
Pingatore — or “Ping” — is more than 100 victories clear of the name below him on the career wins list, but it’s clear the number isn’t a subject he enjoys discussing.
“There was a point where I had to always go back and look at what the heck the record is, because I don’t pay attention to that,” Pingatore says, sounding almost wistful. “But now I do it so often, I know it by heart.”
The number will climb this season, the question is by how much.
St. Joseph brings back five starters from a team that won 23 games before a blowout loss to Fenwick in a Class 3A sectional semifinal. You’d have to go all the way back to 1986 to find another St. Joseph team that returned that many starters. Senior point guard Glynn Watson (a Northwestern commit) is back, as is classmate and shooting guard Jordan Ash (Nebraska). Junior Nick Rakocevic, a highly recruited 6-10 forward, gives the Chargers a third Division I talent. According to Pingatore, senior guard Joffery Brown could be a fourth.
On paper, Pingatore says, this team is one of the most talented he’s had in years. But is it talented enough to win St. Joseph’s first sectional since 2007? What about dreams of a second state title?
“It’s hard when it’s expected,” Pingatore says. “How do you keep them focused? How do you keep them working?
“When we won it [in 1999], nobody expected it and as a result, it was easier.”
Cicero roots
Born in 1936 in Cicero, Pingatore ‘s childhood was shaped by a strong family dealing with the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II. In Paul Pryma’s new book, “Coaches of Chicago,” Pingatore talked about rationing and recalled taking a wagon to the firehouse to pick up his family’s allotment of dried goods like beans and rice.
“The family was a hardworking family,” Pingatore said. “We never — for the most part — lacked anything, but we worked out butts off to get it.”
Pingatore didn’t make things easier when, at the imaginative age of 6 or 7, a radio program inspired him to “explore the jungle.” He got his sister, lit a candle and went into a closet where recently cleaned curtains were still wrapped in cellophane. The curtains caught on fire, and when Pingatore ‘s great grandmother used the same greasy frying pan she used to make breakfast to dump water on the flames, the family’s entire apartment burned.
“Just our apartment burned, but we had nothing,” said Pingatore , whose family went to live with his grandparents down the street. “It was a really interesting time to grow up, so you really cherished everything.”
In “Coaches of Chicago,” Pingatore goes into great detail about the importance of his tight-knit family, saying he “looked at family as more than family. I enjoyed their company. They were like friends.” Basketball may be Pingatore ‘s life’s work, but family remains a priority. That extends to the families of his players.
“He’s always talking about basketball,” Rakocevic said. “No matter where I see him, it’s always about, ‘How many shots did you get up today? What are you going to do today to be the best?’
“It’s always basketball to him, but he’ll always ask how your family is doing.”
Journey to St. Joseph
Pingatore says the number only serves to remind him that he’s been around a long time, and he’s right — he has been around a long time.
He came to St. Joseph as the foundation was being poured in the ground, taking a position as a history teacher when the Christian Brothers founded the school in 1960 (he’s now the director of alumni affairs). Pingatore had attended St. Mel (now Providence St. Mel), an all-boys high school that was also run by the Christian Brothers, enjoying a standout prep career that included an upset victory over a heavily favored DuSable team in the 1954 City Championship.
Pingatore, a 5-11.5 forward in high school — “I’ve shrunk,” he said, now. “That’s traumatic.” — went on to play basketball for Loyola of Los Angeles, where as a defensive-minded guard he ran up against San Francisco center and future Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell.
“My only contact with Russell is that he knocked one of my shots into the second balcony,” he said with a laugh.
After graduation, Pingatore returned to the Chicago area to be around family and pursue a coaching career. He caught on at St. Joseph and spent nine years as an assistant under Pat Callahan, the team’s first coach and athletic director. Pingatore came close to leaving several times over the years, but St. Joseph always pulled him back.
Bobby Knight, whom Pingatore met while Knight was recruiting St. Joseph’s Tom Miller to play at Army in the mid-1960s, offered Pingatore an assistant job on multiple occasions, but Pingatore said the timing was never right. Pingatore enrolled in Kent College of Law in Chicago in 1968, only to drop out when he decided he’d rather watch St. Joseph’s first-ever varsity football game in Waterloo, Iowa, than prepare for class.
In 1969, frustrated by his inability to catch on as a head coach somewhere, Pingatore made up his mind to get out of coaching. He had a job lined up with the sporting goods department of Aldens Catalog Store when Callahan had a December falling out with the St. Joseph administration. Callahan resigned, and Pingatore became the interim coach.
“I almost got out,” Pingatore said. “[Callahan] didn’t have to resign, but he resigned. … I think he did it mainly to give me a chance to get the job. I think he felt like he definitely was going to leave, and if he waited until the end of the season they would’ve opened it up to all kinds of other people.
“He left in December, and I took over and I never left.”
Old school
In the heat of an intense practice, it’s not hard to imagine a St. Joseph point guard wishing Pingatore had left.
For Pingatore , basketball starts with the point guard position, and he’s had plenty of talented ones at St. Joseph. Isiah Thomas is the obvious name, but there has also been players like Tony Freeman; Brandon Watkins; William Gates, whose career at St. Joseph was chronicled in the “Hoop Dreams” documentary; Demetri McCamey — whose framed picture with former Charger Evan Turner hangs on the wall in Pingatore ‘s office — and now Watson.
“If you have an excellent point guard, you’re always going to be competitive,” Pingatore said. “If you have a seven-foot stud and no point guard, you’re in trouble.”
Unfortunately for the point guards, that usually means being held to a higher standard.
“It’s tough having a coach like that that’ll stop everything and get on you about everything just so you can be the best you can,” said Watson, who averaged 15 points a game last season. “It’s hard to do in practice because he’ll stay on you, probably the most.”
Watson, who happens to be McCamey’s half brother, said Pingatore will get on him if he feels Watson isn’t working hard enough, or even if he feels Watson isn’t pushing his teammates to work hard enough. Watson said Pingatore will almost never admit the Chargers are having a good practice until after the fact.
The coach’s approach can take some getting used to, but it’s tough to argue with the results. Pingatore likes to have his teams play high-pressure man-to-man defense, then get out and run. He presses when he has the right athletes to do so.
“He’s a tough guy to play for because he’s so old school,” said Ash, a 14-ppg scorer a year ago. “He has a lot of guys who want to play a certain way, but he sticks to the basics. He sticks to the fundamentals. And really once you do that, then that’s when you add what you have on to it.
“He’s going to teach you the same things, and if you do it wrong, he’s going to say it again like he said the first time. … When you see the younger guys, it’s like a shock or an eye-opener because it’s their first time with coach Ping.”
‘I’ll know’
The winningest coach in Illinois boys basketball history knows his days on the bench are numbered.
Pingatore isn’t a big fan of the rise of AAU basketball, lamenting the lack of defense and the way players disperse to run different systems in the offseason. He’s had to close his practices in an effort to limit outside distractions. He readily admits that if high school basketball was like it is now when he started coaching, he might not have lasted. He can still relate to his players, but it’s more difficult than it’s ever been.
“Sometimes they don’t understand what I’m talking about,” Pingatore said. “I might use some words they’ve never heard of. … It’s a different generation, and I’ve got to realize that.”
But just how many seasons does Pingatore have left? He answers that question with a story about a recreational basketball league he used to play in with a group of friends. They were still competing in their 40s, until one year when they ran into a team of younger players who eschewed the league tradition of playing a soft zone in favor of a full-court press. Pingatore was running down the court when he heard John Hornacek, his assistant of 25 years, call his name. He turned just in time to catch Hornacek’s pass with his face, his glasses shattering.
“I said, ‘That’s it, I’m done,’ ” Pingatore said. “That’s how I quit. I walked off the court.
“I’ll know. I could walk in the gym today and say, ‘Hey, I’m done.’ That’s the way I think it’s going to happen with me.”
