Leonard T. Serfustini, former UB basketball coach
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Dec. 15, 1923—Dec. 2, 2009
Leonard T. Serfustini had a reputation as a hard-driving, rigid coach, who emphasized fundamentals and conditioning, put up with no shenanigans and always had his University of Buffalo basketball team playing a relentless man-to-man defense.
He also notched the most wins in UB basketball history, compiling a record of 204-104 during his 14- year career in the late 1950s and 1960s.
“He was a hard-nosed basketball coach,” said Benny Constantino, a former UB classmate and basketball teammate. “His players thought he was very tough on them. But about 15 of them became top high school basketball coaches in the area.”
Mr. Serfustini, who was inducted into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame in 2001, died Wednesday in his St. Petersburg, Fla., home following an illness of more than a year. He was 85.
“He was a role model above reproach,” former UB player Ken Parr said Friday. “You won’t find a better person than Len Serfustini.”
Mr. Serfustini also left his mark at UB in another way. Before leaving the school in 1971 to head the physical education department at Glassboro State College in New Jersey, he headed a UB presidential committee to implement plans for what became Alumni Arena on the university’s then-new North Campus in Amherst.
He grew up on Buffalo’s West Side, where he attended Technical High School and earned All- High honors as a basketball player before graduating in 1942. After serving with the Navy in World War II, he entered UB, where he played tight end on the football team and center on the basketball squad.
“He was one of the tallest people on the UB team—6 foot 1 or 6 foot 2,” Constantino said.
Mr. Serfustini, a straight-A student, earned his bachelor’s degree in three years, graduating in 1949, before earning his master’s in 1950 and his doctorate in education in 1954.
He served as a graduate assistant and teaching fellow at UB, before becoming head basketball coach at Troy State in Alabama, where he had a record of 70-30 before returning as UB head coach in 1956. He also was an associate professor of education at UB from 1956 to 1971.
Mr. Serfustini was well ahead of his time in his coaching methods. His players lifted weights in the summer, roughly half a century ago. He had his own physical fitness program on WKBWTV in the late 1960s. And players quipped that they barely, if ever, touched a basketball the first two weeks of practice in the fall.
“We ran and ran and ran,” Parr said. The coach also liked to go deep into his 10-
man rotation, employing a three-quarter-court defense, always man to man.
“He had a fetish about balanced scoring,” retired Buffalo News Sports Editor Larry Felser recalled. “Some of the players used to swear that if you scored 10 points early in the game, you got benched.”
In addition to being named to the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame, Mr. Serfustini was enshrined in the UB Athletic Hall of Fame in 1978 and was presented with a UB distinguished alumni award the following year.
Surviving are his wife of 60 years, Clyde, and a son, Dr. Anthony Serfustini.
A graveside service will be held at 10 a. m. Monday in Sarasota National Cemetery. —Gene Warner
Published: December 05, 2009, 12:30 am