Based upon records posted on the men’s basketball web site for MCTC, in 1965 Community College basketball begin its run at 1501 Hennepin Ave. South. The first Coach Ron Leviense started MCTC off with a 5-15 record.
After getting the school’s first winning season in his third year, 28-3, he went to Normandale Community College where he would complete his very successful Community College coaching career in 1995. He left with a 39-35 MCTC record.
It would take 6 more coaches over a 9 year stretch to get MCTC as many wins. In fact, outside of Alan Burmeister’s 1969-70 team finish of 12-10, there would not be a winning season for MCTC until Coach Bill Chambliss did it 2 years in a row in 1978-79 and 1979-80 seasons gaining the schools 100th victory in that first year.
After Coach Chambliss set a tone for future coaches to try to follow, in comes the late Mel Riley. Like his many predecessors, Coach Riley discovered how difficult it is to recruit players at the Community College level but none the less was able to guild the school to a .500 or better record in 3 of his 4 years.
In the 1984-85 season, Ralph G. Powell took over for the next 5 years, getting the schools 200th win in his final season (1988-89). Although he did not have the success that Coach Riley had there was now a feeling of stability in the coaching ranks at MCTC. No longer was the expectation of a coach to be in charge of this team for just 2 or 3 years, and as we would see later, along with this stability it would be easier to tell players considering playing at MCTC that a coaching change would be unlikely.
In the 1990-91 season, a young coach by the name of Jay Pivec took over after the second win less season in school history. It took him 3 seasons to become the schools winningest coach and to put that in perspective it took him 10 seasons to get more losses than any other coach in school history (no other coach lasting longer then 4 or 5 seasons).
Coach Pivec has never had a MCTC team finish with more the 10 losses (3 times) and has had as many as 29 wins in a season (2004-2005). There have been many milestones achieved over his 18 seasons at MCTC both personal and school related.
On the personal side Coach Pivec has reached career wins of 200, 300, 400, and this season 500 wins. Coach Pivec is also on pace to get his 400th win as the head coach of MCTC if his team gets to the national tournament this year.
On the school side numbers 300, 400, 500, and on this season’s final regular season game, the schools 600th win.
Dual milestones include many trips to the national tournament finishing as high as national runners up, but most notably from a records stand point not one losing season in 18 years.
From the perspective of a fan of Minneapolis area basketball overall I am only slightly bothered by the fact that the schools 600th win seems to have gone unnoticed while Coach Pivec’s 500th career win came with a ton of handshakes and congrats (both against Anoka Ramsey CTC). But when you think about it there was a hand shake that went unnoticed by me as well, until now.
This program would not have seen this milestone for a number of years to come without Coach Pivec and his staff --- FANTASTIC JOB GENTLEMEN --- and keep up the great work, (hopefully) for years to come.
Side note: The Mav's ended the year in regional semi's gaining 2 more victory's to get there for a current school total of 602.
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