After guiding Pitt-Johnstown men's basketball to 566 wins and counting, Bob Rukavina set to join school's hall of fame

As a basketball player at Riverview High School, Bob Rukavina could dish the rock with the best of them. Later in life, in geezer pickup games, he was money off the glass from the left wing.

Yet, what he seems most to have done well in his 66 years so far on Earth is epitomize civility.

As a player, leader and personality — or is it another way around? — Rukavina seemingly by all accounts has been an overwhelming winner.

Now, Pitt-Johnstown’s revered longtime men’s coach is set to be honored April 22 by the institution where he has worked for nearly half his life with his induction into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

“He’s a better guy than a coach, and he’s a great coach,” said South Fayette High School boys assistant Frank Holloran, who met Rukavina in 1987, when Rukavina was a junior college coach at CCAC-South.

“I consider him to be my best friend. I might be biased, but he’s as good as it gets,” said former longtime Clarion University assistant Al Modrzejewski, currently an assistant at Bluefield State. Modrzejewski served two seasons under Rukavina at Pitt-Johnstown from 1996-98, when the Mountain Cats combined for a 45-10 record and made two appearances in the NCAA Division II Tournament.

Quite the endorsements for a man known simply as “Rook,” who during a luminous college coaching career has won 566 games at UPJ, which lost an NCAA Tournament Atlantic Region first-round matchup Saturday against West Liberty.

It was the Mountain Cats’ fifth NCAA Tournament appearance in their 10th season of at least 20 victories under Rukavina, whose earlier teams faced difficulty in securing postseason bids because they played independent schedules with no conference affiliation until 2006.

“They wanted to put me in last year,” Rukavina said. “I told them, ‘Nah, there’s others who deserve it more than me.’ They said, ‘You gotta go in this year.’ A lot of my ex-players are going to be there. I talk to someone almost every day, texting or emailing. That’s what it’s all about for me.”

A previous honor

A Verona native, Rukavina in 2019 was inducted into the Alle-Kiski Valley Sports Hall of Fame. As a player at Riverview before becoming its boys coach, Rukavina held the school record for single-season assists that stood for 42 years.

Rukavina has lived in Lower Burrell for much of his life, driving almost daily back and forth to UPJ’s isolated Richland campus in Cambria County, where the grid is devoid of limited-access highways. He said he doesn’t mind the grind of the trips along mostly winding, heavily traveled arteries because he really hasn’t thought of it as going to work.

“I’ve been retired for 35 years. I probably need to get a real job,” he said.

The move to UPJ from the junior college ranks at CCAC, indeed, saw Rukavina step into a more stable situation. He spent one year as an assistant to the late Chris Kristich before taking over the program when Kristich was fired in 1989, and he has been tutoring young student-athletes ever since in a job that’s as genuinely rewarding as it is unique.

In a release by UPJ, the school said that “well over 90% of his student-athletes have earned their degrees, a statistic that will stand up to nearly any institution in the nation.”

For the love of the game

When his colleagues mention his name, more often than not, the cliches begin to fly.

“Not only is he an incredible basketball coach,” Modrzejewski said, “but any coach in the (Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference) will tell you the respect level for Bob Rukavina is as good as it gets. He doesn’t get the resources or maybe have as much money available that some may have, but he finds a way to win.”

Holloran, a former Avonworth High School girls coach and Point Park University men’s assistant, once collapsed during a girls game against Neshannock in January 2020 and was transported to the hospital, where tests attributed the incident to fatigue.

He said one of the first calls he received the next day was from Rukavina.

Another former Riverview High star, Jeff Trebac, when reminded of Rukavina’s long, successful career, couldn’t resist taking a shot at the dark side of coaching, where scandals, especially in recruiting tactics, are as old as a James Naismith peach basket.

“Bob Rukavina could have been a Division I coach, but he’s not dirty enough to be one,” said Trebac, who went on to play at Cornell. “ ‘Rook’ does it for the love of the game. He coaches kids to improve their life skills as well as their game. That’s the beauty of him.”

It took Trebac until just recently — he’s 58 — to break away from his routine as owner-operator of the iconic Peppi’s Old Tyme Sandwich Shoppes and do something that’s dogged him for years. He finally attended a UPJ game, a 76-72 afternoon victory on Jan. 28 at Cal (Pa.), and wondered why he hadn’t done so sooner.

“The games are at strange times for me. I work six days a week,” Trebac said. “My time is very limited. But it’s probably the best thing I ever did for myself. I can’t tell you what that meant to me to talk to him after the game. I told him if I had to pick five guys in my life, ‘you’re in my top 5.’”

A basketball junkie

It was a joyous reunion that brought out a lot of emotions that Trebac hasn’t been able to tame ever since. His voice level rose with each breath.

“I met him when I was 8 years old,” said Trebac, whose late dad, Jack Trebac, a former player at Pitt, established the original Peppi’s location in the North Side, a stone’s throw from the CCAC-Allegheny campus, where Rukavina was a voluntary assistant under legendary coach Bill Shay while serving as the restaurant’s manager for two years.

“I had a teaching degree (from IUP), but I decided I didn’t want to teach,” Rukavina said. “I coached at CCAC and I worked at the restaurant. I did everything there. I cooked, ran the register, made the schedule … They wanted me to take it over permanently. It was a fulltime job. Jeff probably took it over in the early-1990s.”

Rukavina’s first coaching experience came earlier at Riverview, when Jeff Trebac was just beginning to play basketball.

“My dad loved him. They got along famously,” Trebac said. “My dad loved basketball. He was a junkie, just like ‘Rook.’ When I got to high school, ‘Rook’ wasn’t even the head coach, but he told me, ‘You’re starting for the JV team.’ I was deathly afraid of it. But that’s what he was about, developing the players. I started JV the next year.”

By most accounts, Rukavina has an easy-going disposition. But, Modrzejewski said, his players find out quickly not to be deceived. The respect, he said, is mutual.

“He’s a player’s coach, but he can be tough. He demands a lot,” Modrzejewski said. “Those kids, all the way back to the ones from long ago know. They know ‘Rook’ would have their backs. He’d do anything to support them, and those kids would run through a wall for him.”

And Modrzejewski said that Rukavina hasn’t changed a bit over the years.

“He knows when to have fun and when to lay the hammer down,” he said. “He’s a great X’s and O’s guy, but you can only have so much of that. A lot of it comes down to relating to the players. When it comes to that, there’s no (nonsense) with ‘Rook.’ ”

Another Hall call

Rukavina soon will be formally recognized among the UPJ greats with his formal Hall of Fame induction at the school. His journey began when he took over a men’s basketball program that experienced just four winning seasons in its 17-year existence.

In just two years, Rukavina had the Mountain Cats back on the winning trail.

If not for an offer of more money to take an assistant’s job at East Stroudsburg, Modrzejewski said he’d have stayed on with his buddy at UPJ for as long as Rukavina would have had him. Modrzejewski went on to two successful stints totaling 26 seasons as an assistant and also a brief time as interim coach at Clarion.

“Being at UPJ for those two years was as much fun as I’ve had in coaching,” Modrzejewski said. “I worked for a great guy. To me, he’s still just plain, old ‘Rook.’ ”