On the night Bill Shay notched his 800th victory, he was greeted at home by his wife of 38 years, Cindy, who asked him to take the garbage out. And his dog started barking to be taken out for a walk in sub-freezing temperatures.

	Last Week Revisited Highlights from individual and team performances in district colleges last week: IUP was ranked 24th in the U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup NCAA Division II standings after the fall sports seasons. IUP earned its ranking on the strength of three teams that qualified for the NCAA tournament -- women's soccer and field hockey and men's volleyball. IUP's 6-5 forward Gerald Brooks (Schenley) is the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference rookie of the week for the sixth time this season. He averaged 14.0 points and 8.3 rebounds in three games. Edinboro (13-1) is eighth and Penn State (10-5) 12th in the USA Today/InterMat/National Wrestling Coaches Association Division I Top 15 rankings. Gannon, which returns its top eight scorers and all its starters from an 11-6 team, is ranked eighth in the Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association Division II preseason poll. Edinboro senior Alex Clemson, who won the title at 184 pounds to become the 14th wrestler in PSAC history to win four league titles, is Eastern Wrestling League co-wrestler of the week. California's Chris Clark, who set a school indoor record with a time of 14:26.71 in the 5,000-meter run at the University of Akron, is the PSAC Men's Indoor Track and Field athlete of the week.

"That put things into perspective," said Shay, 66, who has been the basketball coach at Community College of Allegheny County North Side the past 39 years and recently picked up No. 800 with a 105-46 win against West Virginia Northern Community College.

"I never figured to be coaching for 39 years."

Shay's 802-356 record, including 15-10 this season, puts him at the top of the list as the all-time winningest men's college basketball coach in Western Pennsylvania. Nobody else is even close.

"I learned very early that winning seemed to be a lot more important than losing," said Shay, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. "As long as you're keeping score, you try to score more points than the other team. I still like to win as much as I did when I first started. If you're still going to do it [coach], the purpose is to enjoy the fact you're trying to win. If not, you shouldn't be doing it."

But don't jump to the wrong conclusion that Shay is obsessed with winning. Nothing could be further from the truth. He embraces the entire process, the recruiting, teaching, coaching and guiding the players who come through his program.

"We demand that you take care of business in the classroom and on the court," Shay said. "We've always had a simple approach to what we do as a basketball team. You could scout us and not use much paper for notes. We want to do a few things well, not a lot of things not very well. I'm demanding the same things we did 39 years ago."

That basically means you're expected to come to class on time, you're expected to come to practice on time and you better pay attention to what Shay and his staff are saying.

"It's not a democratic process. There aren't a lot of options to listen or not to listen," he said. "You don't want to exclude the kids from offering suggestions, but it comes down to what I want to do. Not what they want to do."

Shay was asked if he could sum up his coaching philosophy that has been so successful.

"I always want to have better players than the other guy when I walk onto the floor," he said. "That's the secret."

How many of the 800 wins can be attributed to your coaching?

"I don't know if there's one win [where I outcoached someone]," he said after much thought. "The players win games. It's what they do on the court."

The Cougars, coming off a 75-71 overtime loss against Franciscan in a non-league game Monday, will be the top-seeded team and host of the four-team Western Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference tournament. The championship game will be Monday night. CCAC has won 16 WPCC titles in Shay's career.

CCAC will be led by 6-foot-5 sophomore John Geiger (18.7 ppg, 8.0 rpg) and 6-4 sophomore Mark Gillooly (16.8 ppg, 8.0 rpg), both of whom transferred from Clarion this season.

"There's much more athleticism in basketball today than there was 39 years ago," Shay said. "There's also a lot more pressure on the kids to succeed than there used to be. Everything's organized so much. There's too much lack of creative personnel expression. There's not enough free time to play on the playgrounds. The kids start going to camps of all kinds when they're 5 and 6 years old, and they keep going to camps.

"But I think the kids today want the discipline they get in college and are willing to work hard if you're consistent with them."

How much longer does Shay want to coach?

"I still have the enthusiasm to do it as of this minute," he said, with a laugh. "You still have to feel less than happy if you lose and the food doesn't taste as good when you lose, but it's not the end of the world. I really will sit down and evaluate at the end of this year. I really am taking it a year at a time."