Born and raised in the Bronx, Gary Decesare knew early on in his life he wanted to be a basketball coach. So in 1989 he moved into a convent. The then-head coach at St. Raymond High School in the Bronx, who had been married for just four months, had two players in dire need of help.

Orlando and Oliver Antigua were living with their younger brother and single mother in New York City and couldn’t make rent. Decesare suggested the three brothers live in the convent at St. Ray’s. The only problem was the priest wouldn’t let three boys live there alone – someone had to supervise. So he invited the Antigua brothers to live with him.

Decesare said goodbye to his wife, for the time being, and hello to three surrogate children.

‘It was one of the most unselfish things I have ever seen,’ Orlando said. ‘We found ourselves homeless because of a family situation, and there was Coach helping us out.’

On Thursday night, when Syracuse takes on the DePaul at Allstate Arena in Chicago at 9, Decesare, now an assistant with the Demons, will be reunited with one of his many former sons – Orange junior Louie McCroskey.

From the Antigua brothers to McCroskey, Decesare has played mentor, coach, teacher, father and friend to countless basketball players through the past 20-plus years. He has sent 35 athletes to the Division I ranks and three to the NBA. Decesare, a graduate of the famous St. Raymond’s, returned to the Catholic school as its head coach for 16 years before venturing on to the college coaching level.

‘He was very well-organized, very dedicated and ran tremendous practices,’ St. Raymond Athletic Director Ron Patnosh said. ‘The discipline: We used to fight about it all the time. He used to have very, very strict team rules, and looking back – he was right. His mandate was that he had a lot of D-I ballplayers and they better get used to things being strict because that is how it was going to be in college.’

‘One of the things I believe in is today’s kids need discipline,’ Decesare said. ‘I have found during my coaching that a lot of what you do off the court relates to what you are trying to do on the court.’

Walkmans, beepers, cell phones, do-rags and hats were all banned when the team was traveling. Departure time was to the minute, and he wasn’t afraid of leaving someone behind.

‘Oh yea,’ Patnosh said with a chuckle. ‘All the time. He didn’t compromise his rules for winning. Ever.’

‘He was like an FBI guy,’ Orlando said. ‘He was tough. He would have keys to all of the rooms when we were on the road, and he would just come in at any time and make sure you weren’t doing something you shouldn’t be.’

After racking up a record at St. Ray’s of 286-142 – a stint the included four New York City championships, three-time coach of the year honors and a pair of state titles – longtime friend and then-Richmond head coach Jerry Wainwright called.

‘You know when it’s time,’ Decesare said. ‘The program and school were in great shape, and I wanted a new challenge.’

Decesare’s Big East pipeline runs deep. McCroskey and Villanova star Allen Ray are two of the four players in the league Decesare coached in high school. There are also several coaches who have come from the Decesare tutelage. One is Jose ‘Chuck’ Martin, an assistant with St. John’s. The other two are the Antigua brothers.

Orlando (a former Harlem Globetrotter) is an assistant with Pitt, and younger brother Oliver is now the head coach at St. Raymond’s. And while Decesare isn’t necessarily trying to find his way back to St. Ray’s, he wants to finish up where he started.

‘Fordham,’ he said, ‘I want to coach there someday. That is the Bronx, and that’s what basketball to me is.’

The move from high school to college came after McCroskey’s junior year, and as Decesare bounced from Richmond to DePaul, one of his last stars struggles at the next level.

‘Louie played inside for me at St. Ray’s,’ Decesare said, ‘He was too good not to have him there, but it was a tough transition when he went up to Syracuse to learn all the different things on the fly that were expected of him.

‘Louie was really a hard worker,’ Decesare said. ‘He hated to lose. He would miss a lay-up and go punch a wall. He cared so much and played so hard, he expected everyone else to care as much and play as hard as he did.’

Decesare doesn’t have much planned when he reunites with McCroskey on Thursday night, one of the many players he has touched in all his years of coaching basketball.

‘I’m just going to check in with him, make sure he’s OK,’ Decesare said. ‘Whatever happened in the past couple weeks happened, and I hope he’s just being himself and contributing in all the ways he can.’

Published on February 28, 2006 at 12:00 pm