Tony Sellitto returning to coach the Hawai'i Pacific University men's basketball team after a six-year hiatus?

If that seems a bit far-fetched, then please consider that he not only heartily confirms it, but vows to "be less demonstrative" on the sideline.

We'll pause here for the surprise to sink in and the head-shaking disbelief to take hold.

If incredulity is your first reaction, then be assured you are not alone. "That's what everybody says," Sellitto barks.

Indeed, any suggestion the one they call "Tony the Tiger" for his thundering sideline manner now changing his stripes at age 69 is something that will have to be seen to be believed.

When we last heard him roar from a court, it was 2002 and Sellitto went into retirement as the winningest college basketball coach in state history (298-136) after being a much-decorated high school coach at Maryknoll. His mission at the time: to regain his health while, in the process, seeing if it would be possible for one man to watch every televised basketball game from a Waikiki apartment.

Both tasks apparently accomplished, he now turns his attention to something infinitely more challenging: Redeeming the once-proud name of HPU basketball. For it was Sellitto who put the Sea Warriors on the map with a 1993 NAIA national championship and string of stellar seasons.

But since his departure, the Downtown team has hit the skids, something a revolving door of coaches has been unable to reverse. Sellitto got a first-hand glimpse of just how bad things had gotten when the school brought him back for ceremonies last month and the scoreboard read Brigham Young University-Hawai'i 56, HPU 28 at halftime of an eventual 101-62 loss in an 8-19 season.

Presumably that jarring contrast of the HPU of old and present prompted the folks in charge to summon him. Though we're left to guess what compelled Sellitto to come back in the face of pleas from some of his friends to remain retired. Surely he missed the players, the opportunity to affect lives and, above all, the competition.

But it is no longer the HPU that Sellitto knew as a coach or once operated as an athletic director. It was a place, with Tita Ahuna coaching volleyball and Allan Sato baseball, that was solid and highly successful. Without them, it has been a while since HPU has been either.

Of course, there has always been a spirit of a crusader in Sellitto. He lives to compete, whether as the world-class softball player he once was or as the hoops coach he still believes he can be. He believes local players can not only compete but excel on the collegiate level.

No matter how different he might say he will be, the years have apparently done little to extinguish the competitive fires that burn within.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.