LEWISTON - Leave it in better shape than you found it.

That's the best policy for nurturing anything that won't be yours forever, and it encapsulates the 11-year tenure of Bates College men's basketball coach Joe Reilly to the letter.

Reilly has announced his resignation at Bates to accept the same post at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., one of the Bobcats' rival schools in the New England Small College Athletic Conference.

"Eleven years is a long time to get attached to a school," Reilly said Wednesday. "I'm stepping away from a great situation. This team has the potential to be terrific the next couple years. That's bad news for me being in the same league."

Bates already has launched its search for a successor.

"(Reilly) built a terrific program, brought competitive success to the men's team and worked extremely hard to make a meaningful impact on the campus, the local community, and Bates alumni," Bates athletic director Kevin McHugh said in a statement.

In his first head coaching job after a stellar playing career at Trinity in Hartford, Conn., and three years as an assistant at Yale in nearby New Haven, Reilly gradually and authoritatively led a downtrodden Bates program up the NESCAC ladder.

He leaves behind a chain of eight consecutive winning seasons. To put that in perspective, prior to Reilly's arrival, no Bates senior class had finished all four years above the .500 mark since 1960-61.

Reilly's career record at Bates was 154-121, but the Bobcats are 92-37 (.714 winning percentage) over the last five years. Reilly directed the first 20-win season in school history in 2005-06. He leaves four wins shy of the school record for head coaching victories owned by George Wigton, who guided the program nearly twice as long from 1965 to 1986.

"Bates basketball wasn't used to winning," Reilly said. "There was a cultural change, and we were able to attract guys into our program who knew what it was like to win championships, like Zak Ray from Bangor and Angelo Salvaggio from Cheverus."

Nine of the 28 1,000-point scorers in Bates men's hoop history played during Reilly's tenure: Ray, Alex Wilson, Rob Stockwell, Ed Walker, Bryan Wholey, Brian Gerrity, Billy Hart, Rommel Padonou and C.J. Neely.

Given four years, Salvaggio probably would have brought that total to double digits. He transferred to Bates from North Florida prior to his junior season.

Ray and Salvaggio each won Maine Mr. Basketball, symbolic of the outstanding senior high school player in the state. Ray, a product of Maine's dominant high school program of the last two decades, was a prized recruit.

"The day Zak Ray committed to us had a major impact on our program," said Reilly. "Not just Zak, but Salvaggio, Brian Gerrity (Maranacook), Jon Furbush (South Portland), and now Chris Wilson (Brewer) and Ben Thayer (Gorham)."

That pipeline will continue next season, with Ryan Weston of Bangor and Edward Little's Kyle Philbrook both committed to the Bobcats.

There's little question that consistent winning and a regularly full house at quaint Alumni Gymnasium under Reilly's watch put once-forgotten Bates on their wish lists.

"I felt a greater sense of community here than I did anywhere else," Ray said in a 2006 Sun Journal interview.

Reilly moves into a situation at Wesleyan that looks dauntingly familiar. The Cardinals have averaged only seven wins per season over the last three winters. They haven't topped 15 wins in any season since 1990-91.

In addition to his chance to construct a new foundation, Reilly welcomes the opportunity to go home. He is part of a prominent Connecticut coaching family that includes his late father Joseph, uncle Gene and brother Luke.

"All my family and my wife's family live within a 12-mile radius of the Wesleyan campus, so that's a big factor," Reilly said. "I'm moving into a rebuilding situation. At this point in my career, I think it's exciting to have that rebuilding challenge."

But what a price, Reilly admitted.

"The fan base at Bates is really strong right now, and the alumni support is really strong," he said. "That made this an even more difficult decision."