Benedictine University men's basketball coach Keith Bunkenburg surpassed Tony LaScala on December 20 to become the program's all-time leader in wins when his team bested the University of Puget Sound 97-85 in the first game of a trip west.

Following Friday night's comeback win over Pacific Lutheran, Bunkenburg is currently 387-236 in his 24th season as the head man at his alma mater, averaging over 16 wins per year. The Chicago native ranks among the winningest active coaches in all of NCAA Division III both by percentage and total victories. Bunkenburg attended St. Patrick High School before arriving at Benedictine as a student and is a member of the Benedictine Athletics Hall of Fame. Bunkenburg, who was a four-year starter, still ranks 10th all-time in scoring, second in assists and eighth in field goal percentage. Bunkenburg also played baseball and golf at Benedictine.

Benedictine has been one of the winningest programs in the nation over the past four years, totaling 89 wins culminating in NCAA Tournament appearances in 2016 and 2017. Bunkenburg has directed Benedictine to seven NCAA Tournament appearances and six 20-win seasons including back-to-back campaigns from 2003-05 and again in 2015-17. The program has won eight regular season conference titles along with four tournament titles.

Taking over for the 1995-96 season following five years as an assistant at Benedictine, the team posted a record of 11-14 in his first campaign. The team turned around in 1996, finishing 17-9 and winning the Northern Illinois-Iowa Conference, reaching the NCAA Tournament. The season began a stretch of nine consecutive winning years, a program record. Benedictine is currently in a stretch of five straight winning seasons and has finished with a winning record in 17 seasons under Bunkenburg.

The most successful season in program history came in 2015-16 when Bunkenburg was named as the D3hoops.com National Coach of the Year. Benedictine went on a historic run to the national championship game, winning the first 31 contests of the year and hosted three NCAA Tournament contests. The team re-wrote the record book and was led by D3hoops.com National Player of the Year, Luke Johnson. With a final record of 31-1, Benedictine logged the best winning percentage in Division III since 2003. The squad also led the nation in rebound margin with the highest mark since 1991 at +14.3. The 2015-16 season was the middle campaign of a run that saw three consecutive Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference titles.

A mentor not only to student-athletes, four of his most recent full-time assistant coaches have moved on to collegiate head coaching jobs (Steve Schaefer – Benedictine at Mesa; Kaniela Aiona – Menlo; Steve Kollar – Blackburn; Joe Fano – St. Mary's).

Benedictine is 6-5 this year and continues the season on January 3 at MSOE.