Puidokas Gone, Nearly Forgotten

At Washington State, they like Ike. Heck, they love Ike. But 20 years ago, they cleaved to Steve.

An entire generation of students has cycled through Wazzu since then, knowing little or nothing of Steve Puidokas - except maybe that it’s his school scoring record Isaac Fontaine will break in a couple of weeks. By doing the math, we surmise it will happen against Cal on Feb. 22, just four days shy of the 20th anniversary of the night Puidokas’ Cougar jersey was retired near the end of his senior year.

But no No. 55 hangs from the girders above Friel Court as a reminder or a prompt to wonder, “What’s that for?”

Steve Puidokas - who scored more points in a Cougar basketball uniform than anyone other than a gifted girl from Walla Walla named Jeanne Eggart - isn’t even in the Cougar Hall of Fame, itself something of a victim of neglect.

That oversight will, in time, be corrected. But not, alas, in his time.

At WSU, those who do recall the Puidokas era were shocked last week to discover that he had died - shocked because he was only 39 at the time he was stricken by a heart attack, and maybe even more so because it took 2-1/2 years for the news to trickle back from his adopted home in Sardinia.

Time and distance. Still the best way to erode a bond.

Ex-teammates didn’t know. Old friends didn’t know. George Raveling knew because he’s still just a phone call away from Genevieve Puidokas, which was pretty much how the bond was formed in the first place.

It was Raveling, a year into his stay as head basketball coach at Wazzu, who recruited Puidokas to Pullman, an event that pretty much serves as the jumping-off point for the more contemporary history of Cougar hoops.

Rather, Raveling recruited the mom.

“I think that’s basically true,” Ginny Puidokas admitted. “He and I hit it off. We still keep in touch. I think he’s very honest and I’m very outspoken - I’m sure he told you that.”

Actually, the terms Raveling used were “salty” and “a pistol,” but you get the idea.

His term for the recruiting of Puidokas was “gigantic” - and not just because Ginny’s older son stood 6-feet-11 and weighed more than 250 pounds.

Under coach Marv Harshman, the Cougars had staked out basketball respectability regionally. Lured from the East, Raveling took recruiting national. Puidokas was a set of big shoulders from the city famous for them - a talent who took visits to Illinois, Kansas and Duke and, being a good Catholic boy from Chicago, seemed destined to attend Notre Dame. At least, that’s what Raveling’s gut told him.

“I remember calling late in February (1973),” Raveling said. “I got Ginny on the phone and told her I thought Steve was going to end up at Notre Dame. And she said, ‘What makes you think that?”’

So Raveling ticked off the reasons: the Catholic upbringing, the proximity of Notre Dame, the uncle who lived downstairs from Puidokas who just loved the Irish.

“Well, what if I tell you he’s going to Washington State?” Ginny Puidokas offered.

“What makes you so sure?” Raveling replied.

“Because he doesn’t like to see his mother cry,” she said, “and if he doesn’t go to Washington State, I’ll cry.”

Hmm. Wonder if it was the thought of entrusting her son to Digger Phelps?

Marty Giovacchini came to Wazzu at the same time Puidokas arrived, Raveling’s building block at point guard. He roomed with Puidokas - and passed to him, time and again.

“He was huge,” said Giovacchini, who now works in sales and management in Salt Lake City. “He was so broad shoulder-to-shoulder that he could turn and get a shot off over pretty much everybody, including Bill Walton and some of the great centers. He wasn’t very mobile or fast, but he could really shoot it - more so from the outside than the inside, even.

“He’d get into a flow and throw up almost anything and it would go in.”

In the end, it added up to 1,894 points - though Raveling insisted that “if they’d had the 3-point line then, he’d have had a bunch more. I’ve never coached a big man who could shoot as well outside as he could.”

In the process, the Cougars improved from an 8-21 team to a pair of 19-win seasons. It helped that players like Ron Davis and Harold Rhodes, serious talents in their own right, accepted complementary roles - though Rhodes actually outscored Puidokas as a senior.

“We had some guys who could run and play more uptempo, but it would have taken Steve out of it and it’s so rare to have a big center who can play,” Giovacchini said. “Even our fast-break was geared to him, if you can believe it. He was the first trailer and if we didn’t have a layup, I was to stop at one of the elbows of the free-throw line and he’d follow to the other elbow. That was as good as a layup for him.”

It was that ability to score from the outside that had Raveling thinking Puidokas would have had a long NBA career. But the pros worried about his foot speed, and he slipped to the third round of the draft before Washington picked him.

And when they didn’t offer a guaranteed contract, Puidokas took his game to Italy.

“He was always concerned about security,” Raveling said.

It took him awhile, but he found it. He bounced from club to club, country to country - first Italy, then France, then Italy again, then Switzerland and Holland, and finally back to Italy.

“He was loved in Italy,” Ginny Puidokas said.

And found love. He married an Italian woman, Francesca, and had five children - the oldest of which, Sabrina, is one of the top junior women’s players in Italy. He worked in an investment company run by his wife’s family on the island and still played, according his mother, up until his death.

It was on August 13, 1994 - just days before the family was going to make a visit to the States - that Puidokas collapsed in the bathroom. There was no history of heart trouble in his family - his father had died of pneumonia when Steve was 5 - and Ginny Puidokas still calls it “really very strange.

“He lived a good life, but it’s a shame for those kids.”

The Puidokas legacy was that of a determined, but reserved, giant - something of a stoic, though Giovacchini said “he had a better sense of humor than people might paint.” Raveling maintained that the big man never dunked in a game at Wazzu and explained it away by saying, “I’m not trying to prove anything to anybody.”

Said Giovacchini, “I don’t think he really relished being the guy everybody knew. He wanted friendships on his terms, and being in Italy like he was, it was easy to lose track.”

Time and distance, the enemies of old friends. At least now there’s this business of a record being broken to bring Steve Puidokas back to mind.

Just one more reason to like Ike.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

This sidebar appeared with the story: WSU CAREER SCORING

All-time leaders: Steve Puidokas, ‘74-77 1,894 Isaac Fontaine ‘94-97 1,823 Don Collins, ‘77-80 1,563 M. Hendrickson, ‘93-96 1,496 Bennie Seltzer, ‘90-93 1,423 Jim McKean, ‘66-68 1,411 Brian Quinnett, ‘85-89 1,393 Joe Wallace, ‘84-87 1,317 Larry Beck, ‘55-57 1,263 Eddie Hill, ‘91-94 1,242

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review