MINOT, N.D. – From playing high school basketball in Peoria, Ill., to being a Minot State Beaver, to being a part of a NCAA Division I No. 1 ranked team, Ray Giacoletti has seen it all during his basketball career.

Giacoletti is a 1985 graduate of Minot State University and was a four-year letter winner in men's basketball from '81-'84. He is now an Assistant Basketball Coach at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash.

The Bulldogs are the newly crowned No. 1 team in the nation, the Associated Press announced Monday and Giacoletti has helped a special coaching staff and a special team reach a once thought unattainable goal.

“The phones, texts, e-mails, and everything have just blown up since the rankings came out,” said Giacoletti. “I have hardly made it out of the office today so I am not sure about the community responding quite yet. Anything that happens for the first time is unique and special.

“This community has supported Gonzaga basketball for a long, long time,” said Giacoletti. “We've had a great fifteen year run here. If you would have told me 20 years ago that tiny, little Gonzaga would be No. 1 in the country, I would laugh, but this group has made it happen.”

Coach Giacoletti attributes the success on the court to the level of responsibility shown by the Gonzaga team, which sports the best record in the country at 29 wins and two losses.

“This is a really mature group of guys,” Giacoletti stated with conviction. “I've been in college coaching for 28 years and this is the most mature group I've been around. They listen, they aren't caught up in themselves, and it's incredibly refreshing to have a group like that right now because that is not the way our society is.”

After coaching at the collegiate level for nearly three decades, you can trace Giacoletti's coaching roots back to Minot State. He was recruited from his hometown of Peoria, Ill. to join the Beavers in the fall of 1980.

 “Coach Becker (Kenneth Becker, MISU head coach in 1980) came through Illinois after each season and I was one of the first guys in my area to come to Minot,” said Giacoletti. “I wanted to get away from home, and the Dome was just being built. When I visited up there, it was just the people that made the difference. It's a blue-collar, hardworking town and you don't see that too much anymore. I think that is what really brought me there.”

Giacoletti made an immediate impact on the 1980-'81 Minot State team, as he helped the Beavers to a North Dakota Collegiate Athletics Conference Championship during his freshman season. After a successful playing career, Giacoletti got his collegiate coaching start as a student assistant coach for Minot State for the '84-'85 season.

“It was probably after my junior year at Minot State that I really started to think of what I wanted to do,” Giacoletti said. “I thought coaching would be a great way to stay in the game, so I started working camps all over the country. I was gone for 10 weeks of the summer trying to learn and meet different people and make connections.”

Those connections have led Giacoletti to a variety of different universities and cities around the nation. After one season coaching his alma mater, he landed a Graduate Assistantship at Western Illinois University.

Over his career he has made coaching stops at Illinois State, Oral Roberts, North Dakota State, Eastern Washington, and Utah. His 10-year record as a head coach is 171-123, including a 2-2 record in the NCAA Tournament.

“As a coach, I was really lucky to be successful at certain levels that have led me to where I am now,” Giacoletti humbly stated. “All the moves were for the right reasons and I was fortunate to be successful as a head coach over my career. It goes by fast but I've been very fortunate to see a number of different places and see a bunch of different things over my career.”

All the different stops and different teams has led Giacoletti to this moment; being a part of a No. 1 ranked Gonzaga team that is poised to make a deep run in this year's NCAA Tournament.

Don't expect the Bulldogs to dwell on the ranking, as their experienced coaching staff and mature players know that it's all about what's in front of them, not behind them.

Gonzaga is still waiting to hear who they play in the first round of the West Coast Conference Tournament on March 9; that game will nationally aired on ESPN 2.

“It's nice that it happened, and now it's over,” Giacoletti said of the No. 1 ranking. “We have to get ready for Saturday and whoever we might play in Las Vegas for the conference tournament. It all ends if you get beat the next game so the only way to make it continue is to win the next game and that's our main goal.”