Suddenly, Tony Wingen knew it was time to broach the subject.
It was the sort of major life decision the longtime Carnegie Mellon men’s basketball coach had typically mulled over with his wife, Kris, over the course of the past five decades.
Wingen said she had yet to steer him wrong.
“It was probably [three] weeks ago, it was the middle of the week before I went in for my knee surgery, Kris was making dinner, and I just said, ‘You know, I think it’s time,’” he recalled of the conversation with his wife in the Mt. Lebanon home they have shared and raised their family in since 1990. “She works for the Mt. Lebanon School District, and she’s ready to retire at any point; she can go whenever she wants.
“She looked at me and she said, ‘OK, let’s retire.’”
And so the process began of bringing to a close an NCAA basketball career, which touched four decades.
Wingen’s retirement after 35 seasons from Carnegie Mellon’s men’s basketball program was announced earlier this month. He leaves the Oakland campus he has called home since 1990 as the Tartans’ all-time leader in wins with 390 while also guiding his program to three NCAA Division III tournament appearances and a University Athletic Association championship in 2005-06.
In addition, Wingen led Carnegie Mellon to five Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament berths. He was named UAA Coach of the Year three times and Great Lakes Coach of the Year in 2005-06.
“Tony has had a profound and lasting impact on generations of student-athletes,” said Josh Centor, associate vice president for student affairs and director of athletics, in a news release. “He built a program grounded in integrity, humility and excellence, and has positively impacted the educational experience of hundreds of Tartans through his love for them and the game of basketball. We are forever grateful for his service to Carnegie Mellon.”
While still enrolled as an undergraduate student at Springfield College — where Dr. James Naismith invented the game of basketball — Wingen would serve as an assistant coach of the women’s and men’s basketball teams. He also served as an assistant coach at Ivy League Brown University and University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.
“Coach is a true gentleman on and off the court,” said fourth-year Tartans assistant coach Colin Shaunnessey, who also played for Carnegie Mellon until graduating in 1998. “I don’t know if I’ve ever met as genuine, and just as good a person, as coach. I would love for my son to play for him.
“He fit so well into this institution,” Shaunnessey added of Wingen. “He’s been CMU basketball for 35 years, but because of his character and leadership he has helped grow not only the basketball program but the athletic program.”
Wingen said his love for the game began with his father, Jerry, who was inducted into the South Dakota High School Basketball Hall of Fame.
“He’s the only hero I’ll ever need,” Wingen said of his father.
After sharing the news of his retirement with his children — Corey, Sara and Jessica — Wingen said he was anxious about letting his father know he was calling it a career.
“Our kids were surprised but happy,” Wingen said. “I have three brothers, they were all surprised but happy. The toughest conversation, and it ended up not being a tough conversation, but the one I had the most trouble getting ready for, I guess, was with my dad. My dad lives in Connecticut where I grew up, and he’s been Carnegie Mellon basketball’s biggest fan for 35 years.”
Wingen said each reaction to news of his retirement has been positive.
“The reaction has been great,” he said. “The family, everybody within our department has been very happy for me.”
After standing out on the hardwood at Enrico Fermi High School in Enfield, Conn., Wingen played for one season at then-Division II Springfield before accepting an offer from then-Spirit women’s basketball coach Harvey Shapiro to become one of his assistant coaches.
Over the next two years, until Wingen earned his undergraduate degree, Springfield advanced to the Elite Eight in each of its national tournaments. The Spirit competed in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women tournament for his first season before then becoming an NCAA program the following year.
“So having that experience being a high school physical education teacher and high school coach was out the window,” Wingen said. “That was no longer my game plan. My game plan was I’m going to be a college coach.”
Wingen was next offered a position as a graduate assistant by Springfield men’s basketball coach Ed Bilik and served as an assistant on his staff the following two seasons. He then moved to Brown where, as an assistant coach, he helped the program win its only Ivy League championship in school history in 1985-86.
“That was an unbelievable experience of course,” Wingen said. “August of the start of that next season, ’86-’87, Mike Cingiser, my boss at Brown, put a letter on my desk and said, ‘What do you think about this, the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.?’
“I went home and showed it to Kris and she goes, this is kind of back to, ‘Well, let’s retire.’ She said, ‘Well, I have never thought about living in Tennessee, have you? Why don’t you apply for it and see what happens?’”
After two seasons at the University of the South, Wingen said he was presented with his first opportunity to become a head coach at Carnegie Mellon, and the rest is history.
“It was the same type of thing,” Wingen said. “Kris was like, ‘Man, I never thought about living in Pittsburgh.’ Everything about it was just pointing all in the right direction. Kris will also tell you that year [I] said, ‘We’d be here three or four years and then move someplace else.’ Three or four turned into 35. Here we are. It’s been great.”
Wingen’s first assistant coach at Carnegie Mellon, Mike Mastroianni, said his former boss’s strong fit with the Tartans was apparent from the start. He said Wingen’s longevity at Carnegie Mellon should be commended.
“He should be applauded and is probably going to be one of the few guys, last guys, that are going to be able to do it that way,” said Mastroianni, who has coached the Quaker Valley boys basketball team for the past 26 seasons and led the Quakers to a WPIAL championship in 2022. “He should be commended at the highest level to coach at one place and stay at one place and maintain that balance for all those years is really a difficult job.”
Wingen said he is proud of all the teams he coached at Carnegie Mellon.
“The ’92-’93 team that was 16-8 that was our first good team,” he said. “We were really young those first two years, and then we started to get a little more veteran a little more mature, and we were good … and kind of carried that for a few more years. It hasn’t always been rosy. We hit some downtime there right around the turn of the century.”
The Tartans then earned NCAA tournament appearances in 2006 and 2009 before then advancing to the national postseason again in 2024.
Wingen coached 15 players who surpassed 1,000 career points and 69 who earned all-UAA status.
“We had 75 guys come back for our reunion in February,” Wingen said. “I don’t think there’s a lot of Division III schools that can make that claim.”
Wingen said the culture he helped cultivate at Carnegie Mellon paid dividends during his career and will continue to do so.
Carnegie Mellon is in the middle of a national search to name Wingen’s successor.
Wingen said he will remain with the program until June to help facilitate a new transition to the next head coach.
“We are good citizens,” Wingen said. “We are good students. We are good teammates. We serve the community, and, yes, we want to compete as the best basketball players we can be and the best basketball team we can be.
“In total would I have loved to have won more games, would I have loved to have won more championships? Yep, I’m a coach, but I’m very proud of everything that we’ve developed over the last 35 years.”
Junior guard Buckley DeJardin said he is proud to have come to Carnegie Mellon from St. Francis High School in San Gabriel, Calif.
“Coach Wingen is a great guy to play for,” DeJardin said. “He’s really considerate and thoughtful, he is always thinking of you.”
Now, Wingen said he is turning his attention toward his family. He said he is looking forward to spending time with Kris, their children and the couple’s five grandchildren: PJ, Caleb, Charlie, Hannah and Mae.
“I’ve been so fortunate to have Kris as supportive as she’s been throughout my career and through my marriage that I really shouldn’t be surprised that she would’ve said, ‘All right, well, let’s retire and let’s figure out all what that means,’” Wingen said. “We’re not going to be old retired people. We’ve got too much to do.
“This is just a very happy decision,” he added. “It’s like all of the decisions that I’ve made. It comes with the full meaning that I’m making this decision based on what I think is best for Carnegie Mellon basketball.”
And that includes the understanding that he did his best in 35 years in Oakland, Wingen said.
“It’s meant the world,” he said. “It’s been great.”
John is a copy editor and page designer at the Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at jsanta@unionprogress.com.