A basketball lifer in the town of Rutherford, St. Mary head coach Brian Gaccione picked up career win No. 400 during the busy festive period of games.
RUTHERFORD – If there was a high school game being played inside the borders of Rutherford over the past 40 years there is a good chance that Brian Gaccione had some connection to or at least knew every participant. It's not a stretch to say that at either of the town's two varsity basketball programs over the last few decades, there is not much more than one or two degrees of separation from St. Mary's current head coach.
If any of the basketball courts inside Rutherford's borders could talk, it would no doubt sound exactly like Gaccione: a little gravely, a lot knowledgeable and intensely passionate.
With the exception of 9 wins he got as the head coach at Indian Hills in the transition year between his gigs at Rutherford and St. Mary, the other 391 that led to his latest milestone all came within town borders. When the Gaels beat Lyndhurst at the Jack Stone Shootout on December 28, it was the 400th career win for Gaccione.
"There are a lot of great moments to think back on, but if are asking me about what it means to get 400 wins the answer I would want you to write about are the relationships with the kids, with all of your former players," said Gaccione. "Whether it was at Rutherford, Indian Hills or St. Mary's, just to know that your can look back and know that you cared a lot, that you had passion and they knew the goal was always to make them better players and better people. That's what high school sports are for."
Outside of that one year at Indian Hills and the four years he played at Caldwell College, Gaccione's story is nearly an unbroken chain of Rutherford/St. Mary hoops going all the way back to his freshman year as a Bulldog. Tom Potor was the Rutherford head coach back then and how things have turned out comes as no surprise.
"His was a loaded freshman group and back then freshmen didn't play varsity. We kept them all together and they lost in the freshman County Jambo final to Hackensack after they beat Bergen [Catholic] in the semifinals. That is how it all started with Brian and that class," said Potor, who had a 10-year run as the Rutherford head coach starting with the 1986-87 season. "Brian was a coach on the court and he was the ultimate gym rat. He wanted to not only be the best player he could be, but he wanted all of his teammates to be the best that they could be. That was one of his best attributes and I think it still is. He is that way as a coach; he wants to get the best out of his players."
Tracing Gaccione's history is also a history lesson because so much has changed in the structure of Bergen County sports. Gaccione took the head coaching job at Rutherford as a 24-year-old in the old BCSL-American Division. Nowadays the Big North Conference is separated into mini leagues with five teams each and 10-game schedules to determine champions. In the BCSL days it was a full slate of home-and-homes that made up the regular season and every night was a brawl. It was so much more competitive game in and game out back then.
"I grew up in the BCSL-American as a young coach going up against Brian Long [at River Dell], Johnny Ziemba [at Fort Lee], Frankie Connolly at Cliffside Park [and Westwood], Gerald Akridge at Englewood and so many others. It really helped me as a young coach because they were wars every single night," said Gaccione. "I look back and realize that I was going up against titans every night in that BCSL-American."
Gaccione first career win came on December 15, 2000 when Rutherford beat Westwood 84-55. Hisa 100th win came on January 29, 2008 when the Bulldogs topped River Dell, 44-41. He compiled a 126-131 record in his 10 years at Rutherford before everything changed.
When the old order was upended by the demise of all three divisions of BCSL (and the NBIL, B-PSL, NHC and NNJIL) Rutherford was the only team from the BCSL-American Division that opted to join the small school, southern Bergen County anchored NJIC rather than move to the Big North Conference. Gaccione started four sophomores in his final year at Rutherford, two of whom went on to be 1,000-point scorers.
He never got a chance to make the transition, however, as the administration opted to make a change and Gaccione took the Indian Hills job where he went 9-18 in his one season in Oakland.
"I didn't agree with the decision, but I knew I was going to continue my coaching career. My one frustration was not getting to coach Rutherford through the transition, but I don't want it to come across like sour grapes, either, because at the end of the day I am in a great spot right now," said Gaccione. "My administration at St. Mary's has been totally supportive and, being at a catholic school, you are able to attract eighth graders and almost get to like pick your team. To be honest, I don't know if I could ever go back to coaching at a public school again.'
In the 14 years at St. Mary preceding this one, Gaccione was a combined 261-111, he is on a streak of four straight 20-win seasons and the Gaels won The Bergen Invitational Tournament last year. St. Mary is 9-3 this year meaning Gaccione has upped his career win total to 405 and St. Mary is on a four-game heater.
The success is obvious and the supporting cast is familiar. Gaccione's long-time and current assistant coach is Bill Mulcahy, the former Athletic Director at Rutherford who hired Gaccione at his alma mater all those years ago. So many of his relationships have carried over.
Nick DeBari, now in administration at Rutherford, was the Bulldogs' girls basketball coach when Gaccione was the boys coach. They started their coaching journeys together and are best friends to this day.
"We were both in our early 20s and we both kind of hit it off right away. Jack Hurley was ahead of me and he moved on to be the vice principal of the high school and Bill Mulcahy was in front of him before he moved on to become the AD. We were both fortunate enough to move up right at the same time," said DeBari. "The guys that you are in the business with are the guys you become closest to, even the ones you are coaching against. Our relationship just took off because we were both new guys encountering stuff the first time through."
Gaccione is also a solid branch on a well-flowered coaching tree. Current Rutherford head coach Jaime Parnafiello played for Gaccione and was also on his staff at St. Mary. Kevin McGory, a current Bulldogs assistant, played for him. On the girls side, Eddie Guy coached with him. The guys that coached Gaccione like Mulcahy, Potor and Dennis Gregory bring stretch the chain all the way back into the early 1980s.
Over the last 40 years of Rutherford basketball, Gaccione has been somehow involved. His kids have grown up in it, too. His daughter Gina played her high school basketball at IHA and is now a senior guard on the St. Anselm College (NH) hoops team and his son Luke, a 1,000-point scorer at St. Mary, is a freshman guard at Pace University.
Through it all, the passion is still there and the focus, as always, is on his current team.
"I like where we are headed right now, I like my team and I have some good young kids," he said. "We've scheduled hard and I do that because when you get to that Round of 16, that Round of 8, Round of 4 [in the Bergen County Jamboree] we will be used to playing high quality opponents. I think Bergen Catholic has established itself as the class of the county, but other than that there are probably six, seven, eight other teams that can get to the Final 4 or get to a championship [game] and I'd like to think that my team could be in that mix."
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