Posted on: Wednesday, July 18, 2001

Ferd Lewis
Local small colleges to lose an icon

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Les Murakami, Cal Lee and now ... Tony Sellitto? The ranks of certified on-the-job Hawai'i sporting institutions are thinning right before our eyes. A generational changing of the guard is in the making.

Or so it might seem now that the 64-year-old Sellitto has announced his timetable to leave Hawai'i Pacific University, where he has been athletic director, basketball coach and a whole lot more.

If there has been a public face — screaming or otherwise — on small college basketball in the state these last couple decades, it was surely Sellitto's.

For 35 years in a coaching career that spans both high school and college, no one has been a more recognizable or flamboyant character than the guy who has prowled the sidelines in trademark shorts and decibels too loud to ignore.

They called him "Tony the Tiger" in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu a generation ago when his undermanned but rarely outgunned "Freeway Five" made a name for Maryknoll, the school wedged in along side H-1.

But his most telling body of work would come after age 50 when he moved into the small college ranks at HPU. For when you think about the people who most influenced the sport at that level here, there are three names that jump out: Jimmy Yagi, Merv Lopes and Sellitto; three figures who, by force of their personalities and abilities, made the most significant contributions.

Yagi and his University of Hawai'i-Hilo Vulcans first developed and popularized the concept of small college hoops in the 1970s. Lopes and his Chaminade University teams put the state on the map with their string of upsets beginning with the stunning of then-No.1-ranked Virginia and Ralph Sampson in 1982.

Then, there has been Sellitto, the only one still active of the trio, and the winningest small college coach in Hawai'i history. It was he and the Sea Warriors, who gave the state its only national championship of any kind in basketball, the 1993 NAIA title.

When the Sea Warriors took Kansas City and the NAIA by storm that year, they were merely following the example of their coach, whose blunt assessment and self-assured demeanor from the time he walked into the entrance of the arena was, "we're the best team here."

Even without their top player, Roger Huggins, who was sidelined with a leg injury, the 30-4 Sea Warriors amply backed it up.

But, then, doing without was something that Sellitto had acquired a lot of practice at. In 22 seasons at Maryknoll High, he never had a campus gym yet still managed to win a state title and went to five other finals in a 374-71 career.

When Sellitto took the job at HPU, his father, Anthony in New Jersey, congratulated him on finally getting a job that came with a gym.

Of course, Tony didn't bother to explain that HPU's downtown campus didn't have one of those, either.

Not that it mattered much in a career that has seen him go 277-127 with the Sea Warriors. Sellitto seemed to figure that if he could corral enough talent and turn it loose, it mattered little where — or who — you played.

And, for the most part, history suggests he has been right.