Coaching vet Chris Carideo on guiding Widener back to the NCAA tournament

NCAA Tournament bid secured, an opponent identified in Tufts and a trip to New Hampshire planned with obstacles identified (big New England snow in the forecast) … Widener men’s basketball coach Chris Carideo was the best kind of busy this week.

Not saying Carideo was too busy to shave, but he was not clean-shaven the other morning sitting in his office in Chester. He’s a literal gray beard now. A senior statesman.

“Getting there, yeah,” Carideo said.

Maybe gotten there.

“Thanks, yeah,” said Carideo, who turned 50 in September.

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Hard to believe, for those who remember one of this area’s sweetest shooters during Carideo’s own Widener undergraduate days. Despite his still-youthful appearance, he’s a grizzled veteran, now in his 17th season as Widener’s head coach, near the top in local seniority.

An NCAA bid never gets old. If anything, such feats are more appreciated … Perhaps Carideo thought it would be easy forever when Widener got to Division III March Madness in each of his first three seasons. Now, the grizzled vet is a thoughtful one as 19-8 Widener prepares to play Tufts (19-7) this Friday at 3 p.m. in Keene, N.H.

How has the job changed in the time Carideo has been a head coach?

“Yeah, it’s changed a lot,” he said. “On a lot of levels. The university’s changed, for the better. Academically, it’s way different than when I started in 2006. Widener was a good school, but …”

The academic profile has increased “exponentially,” Carideo said. “There was a time there, from probably like 2010 to 2013, where we as coaches really had to adjust to the kinds of students they were letting in. And now, we’ve adjusted to it.”

Finding part-time assistants isn’t ever a problem.

“I’ve got Andrew Radomicki on my staff — he was at Lafayette with Fran [O’Hanlon] for five years,” Carideo said. “He’s downstairs now doing the scouting report for Tufts and crunching numbers, doing everything. He’s not technically full-time, but I can pay him enough that he’s around. … I’ve got another, Brendan Pollick, who was with John Gallagher at Hartford as a GA. He was right over the bridge and he wants to stay in it.”

Back to the gray beard portion of things: Carideo probably does know about everybody there is to know around here.

“You get calls,” Carideo said. “‘I’ve got a guy, I’ve got a guy.’ You’re a little more adept at taking those calls and listening than when you were younger.”

It’s not hard to believe that Carideo will listen closely when his own legendary South Jersey high school coach, Paul Rodio at St. Augustine Prep, called him … “‘I’ve got Xavier Ernest on my team, he doesn’t play for me much, but I think he’s got upside.’ Well, he’s in our rotation and he’s a sophomore.”

Flip side … other calls.

“My inbox is flooded right now,” Carideo said. “When you start to win, my inbox is flooded with coaches — ‘I’ve got a guy.’ But it’s hard. If I don’t know them. I don’t want to ignore anyone. Basketball is not measurable. It’s not an exact science. It’s not like swimming or track, where the track coach can look at a time and say, ‘Well, that person will be my best runner.’ I can’t look at [a player’s] points per game and say that person will be my best player, because it’s not apples to apples.”

For Carideo, it’s not just seeing them play, but figuring out how they fit.

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“The hunting and gathering when I started 20 years ago, that was the grind,” Carideo said. “It was all summer, it was AAU, all spring and summer. It was sitting at game after game after game, circling a kid. Starting with 200 names in the fall and then breaking it down to 50 guys and then down to 10, then hoping they picked you over somebody else’s financial aid package. That’s how it was.”

Now …

“It might be 200 names, but you gather that way differently,” Carideo said. “Yes, you go to games. But that’s not all there is anymore. Kids can send you film. You can talk to high school coaches you trust [who send film]. So those names come in a little differently.”

Is the Division III transfer portal as crazy as the Division I portal?

“It’s not as crazy — it just isn’t,” Carideo said. “There [are] not hundreds of dollars at stake — if you get this player, it’s going to change your revenue … It’s not that for us. It is a little crazy. The portal is the portal. With an extra year of COVID, for the next two years, there are going to be a lot of quality kids who graduate from institutions that just don’t have graduate programs.”

That’s how Widener got leading scorer Dominic Dunn (18.2 points a game), a Camden Catholic graduate who transferred from Susquehanna University.

“They have a graduate program, but they’ve got like five people in it,” Carideo said. “He could have stayed and gotten something he really didn’t care to do. … He was looking for someplace to get a Master’s … he’s from just over the bridge.”

Did Dunn call Widener?

“No, I saw him in the portal and I emailed him right away,” Carideo said. “I was on the phone with Dom 20 minutes after I emailed him.”

A tour of Carideo’s office includes a framed photo of a young Carideo, just into coaching, with Jack Ramsay, a friend of Carideo’s dad in Ocean City, where Chris grew up.

“I would just go to his house,” Carideo said. “I appreciated it, but was too young … it was like sitting with Yoda, you know what I mean? He was always very kind to sit and talk with me.”

Eventually, the young guys become gray beards. Carideo seems comfortable with the transition. His ability to adapt has, in fact, helped put one of this area’s historic basketball schools back into March Madness.