It's a high school history teacher who gets the credit for putting Paul Bernabei on the path that led him to Saint John's University.
"I went to an all-boys Catholic school run by the Benedictines," recalls Bernabei, a native of Dalzell, Illinois. "I had a history teacher there – a guy by the name of Bob Burke – who had been at Saint John's.
"It was around Easter time of my senior year and I still hadn't decided on a college. So Bob brought myself and three other guys up to visit Saint John's. All four of us ended up going there."
One of those four – John Balestri – became a standout running back on the Johnnies football team. Bernabei, meanwhile, established himself as one of the top basketball players in SJU history and played a key role in leading the Johnnies to the first MIAC title in program history as a senior in 1968-69.
"He was really a non-recruit," said Jim Smith, SJU's head basketball coach from 1964 to 2015. "I didn't go out and recruit him. He just ended up here and kind of fell into our laps. But he became one of the guys most instrumental in helping turn the basketball program around."
Indeed, despite the presence of standout players like Stan Wilfahrt, Bill Sexton, Dick Matchinsky, Norb Kowalkowski, Bernie Kukar and others over the years, the Johnnies had rarely even contended for a conference title.
In the six seasons that preceded Smith's arrival in 1964, SJU had a combined record of 40-118.
But by Smith's second season in 1965-66, senior All-American Joe Mucha was joined by Bernabei and other young talent. The improvement was noticeable as the Johnnies finished third in the MIAC, their best finish since 1948-49.
"There hadn't been a lot of success in Johnnie basketball up to that point," said Bernabei, who averaged 11.6 points per game as a freshman. "There had been a lot of coaching turnover. But then Jim got there and started to turn things around.
"My freshman year, we still had Joe Mucha. But the rest of us were pretty young. We still finished around .500 (11-13), though, and things kept getting better from there."
The Johnnies finished 14-10 during Bernabei's sophomore season, then went 15-10 the following year when he earned All-MIAC first-team honors. That momentum continued into the 1968-69 season when SJU finished 20-9, earning its first MIAC title with an 88-57 victory over Minnesota-Duluth late in the regular season in Collegeville.
The team still had to wait on the results between Saint Mary's and Concordia in Moorhead, though, meaning the players and coaches gathered in the bowels of the Old Gym (Guild Hall) while athletic director George Durenberger called someone at Concordia who provided play-by-play of the game's final seconds.
When Concordia won, the celebration was on.
"We were in the basement, and let me tell you, that place was nicknamed Rat Hall for a reason," said Bernabei, who averaged 14.1 points and 5.2 rebounds per game that season, becoming the first SJU player to earn MIAC MVP honors.
"But it didn't matter. George was relaying the messages to us, and when that game turned out in our favor, it was crazy. We all knew the history of basketball at Saint John's and all the hard work we'd put in. So to finally reach the top was really satisfying."
The Johnnies then took on Winona State in a best-of-three series to decide the NAIA District 13 title. Bernabei was the star – scoring a team-best 15 points to lead the way in a 53-50 road victory in game one, including a coast-to-coast layup with 22 seconds remaining that put the game out of reach.
He then scored 24 points as SJU took the series with a 66-61 overtime victory the next night in Collegeville.
"There was no doubt about it, he was a guy who made things happen for us that year," Smith said. "He could shoot the ball, but he was also able to pass it. He probably could have scored a lot more points but he made sure he got his teammates involved. He was a great player, but even more importantly, he was a fantastic young man."
And one who came from a supportive family. Though his parents lived in Illinois, they missed only a handful of Bernabei's games during his senior season. They even stayed in the dorms at SJU and sat in on some classes.
"My mom and dad never went to college, so Saint John's became a special place for them," said Bernabei, whose 1,413 career points still rank seventh in school history.
"They'd drive up or they'd take the bus or train. And after every game, they'd go into (St. Cloud) with Jim and (his wife Adrienne) and go to a bar or to get something to eat. We were a very Italian family and, over Christmas break, my mom brought homemade ravioli for a party at the Smiths' house. They'd go looking for mushrooms with some of the priests.
"This was kind of their home away from home."
The victories over Winona State earned the Johnnies a trip to Kansas City for the program's first NAIA national tournament appearance. But their season came to an end with a heartbreaking 78-76 last-second loss to Henderson (Arkansas) State in the first round.
"Losing that game in Kansas City was the hardest moment of my career at Saint John's," Bernabei said. "The problem wasn't that we'd lost. We'd lost games before. The problem was that it was over. I couldn't believe that was the last time I was going to put on a Johnnie uniform.
"I bawled like a baby in the locker room."
A sociology major at SJU, Bernabei went on to pursue a long career in education. But in 2000, he founded Top 20 Training, an educational training firm for students, parents, educators and other professionals designed to create "healthier cultures where individuals are more positive, engaged and effective."
"I have four daughters and I was coaching girls basketball at Visitation," said Bernabei, who still resides in St. Paul where he and his wife now have 14 grandchildren. "I developed a friendship with Tom Cody, who was the girls coach at Cretin-Derham Hall. We decided we wanted to put together a program for incoming freshmen there so we developed an elective class we called TLC – Thinking, Learning and Communicating. We had no plans for it to become a business, but it became super-popular. And, after a couple of years, we decided we needed to pass it on beyond one school. So we started doing training for teachers.
"The first year, we trained six. Now we've gone on to train over a million people across the country."
And, all these years later, Bernabei continues to write the story of SJU basketball -- literally. He and Smith just finished co-authoring a book on the program's history.
"Everything important in my life happened because of my time at Saint John's," he said. "That place will always be a part of me."
