Friday, September 1, 2017

Rollie Massimino, 1934-2017

We lost Jud Heathcote & Rollie Massimino in the same week, winners of arguably the 2 most famous college basketball National Championships.

Roland Vincent Massimino was born on November 13, 1934 in Hillside, Union County, New Jersey. He played basketball at Hillside High School and the University of Vermont, and got a master's degree in health and physical education at Rutgers.

He returned to Hillsdie High as head coach in 1962, after being an assistant at neighboring Cranford, and moved on to the Boston suburbs. He got his 1st college head coaching job in 1969, at Stony Brook on Long Island. In 1972, Chuck Daly hired him as an assistant at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

That got the attention of nearby Villanova University. In 1973, trying to move on from the scandal that got their 1971 Final Four berth stricken from the record, they needed a young man of integrity. The fact that the 38-year-old Rollie was Catholic, and had the endorsement of the admired Daly, helped a lot.

Burdened by NCAA sanctions that the previous regime had brought on, his 1st 2 seasons were bad. But in 1976, he went 16-11. In 1977, he got them into the NIT. In 1978, he got them into the NCAA Tournament.

In 1982, he won the Big East Conference, and got 'Nova to the Elite Eight. In 1983, he did that again, tying Georgetown for the title. In 1984, he finished 2nd in the Big East, to Georgetown.

The Wildcat players were believing in the man they called Daddy Mass, and they were giving him something to believe in. In other words, what happened in the 1984-85 season, while worthy of expressions of surprise, should not have been considered an outright shock.

The big rivalry in the Big East was between 2 big-city Catholic schools: St. John's in New York, and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Almost nobody was paying attention to the one in between, where Rollie had made the Wildcats big enough that the 1,500-seat Villanova Field House (shortly thereafter, renamed the Jake Nevin Field House) was woefully inadequate, and even the 6,500-seat Pavilion that was then under construction wasn't enough: 'Nova played nearly every game at the 18,000-seat Spectrum, the South Philly home of the 76ers and Flyers, 14 miles from campus.

Villanova went just 9-7 in Big East play, and were 19-10 going into the NCAA Tournament. They were seed 8th in their region, and their game against 9th seed Dayton was, uncharacteristically, on Dayton's home court. The Wildcats won anyway. Then they best 1st seed Michigan, 4th seed Maryland (with Len Bias), and 2nd seed North Carolina.

The Big East had 3 of the Final Four berths: Lou Carnsecca's St. John's, John Thompson's Georgetown, and Rollie Massimino's Villanova. Dana Kirk's Memphis State had the other one.

The Final Four was set for Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. On spite of being named the Wildcats and wearing blue, like the venue's home team, most observers didn't give Villanova a chance. Even if they beat Memphis in the Final, the other Semifinal, between defending National Champion Georgetown and St. John's, who had split their regular-season meetings, was being considered "the real final."

But Villanova did beat Memphis, and when Georgetown beat St. John's rather easily, it seemed to set Monday, April 1, 1985 up as a coronation for the defending National Champion Hoyas.

Instead, Villanova pulled off one of the biggest upsets of all time. They shot 22-for-28 from the field, 78 percent, the highest in Final Four history. Georgetown hardly folded, but Villanova won, 66-64. It was April Fool's Day, but there was no joke in Rupp Arena.

It was the 1st NCAA men's basketball National Championship won by a Philadelphia-area team since LaSalle in 1954. And, with the 9th seed in their region, the 1985 Villanova team remains the lowest seed ever to win the Tournament.

"I still never saw the Championship Game replay in its entirety," Massimino said in 2015, at a 30th Anniversary reunion. "I still think we might lose."

But they won. Hail the Champions:
Top row, left to right: Center Wyatt Maker; forward Ed Pinckney,
forward Mark Plansky, forward Howard Pressley,
head coach Rollie Massimino, forward Dwayne McClain,
forward Connally Brown, center Chuck Everson.
Bottom row: Guard Dwight Wilbur, guard DeAlvin Phillips,
guard R.C. Massimino, guard Gary McLain,
guard Brian Harrington, guard Harold Jensen, forward Steve Pinone.

Pretty much all of them went on to do goo things. Ed Pinckney played 12 seasons in the NBA, mostly for the Phoenix Suns. He went back to Villanova, on Jay Wright's staff, and is now an assistant coach with the Denver Nuggets. Dwayne McClain played 12 seasons of pro ball, mostly in Europe, but did have 1 season with the Indiana Pacers. He went into coaching, and now runs a financial firm in Florida.

Howard Pressley played for the Sacramento Kings, and is now a TV announcer in Sacramento. Connally Brown became an FBI Agent. And R.C. Massimino, 1 of 5 kids Rollie had with his wife, now runs a construction management company in the Philadelphia suburbs.

*

After the title, Rollie was offered the head coaching job of the NBA's New Jersey Nets. At first, he accepted. Then he changed his mind, wanting to stay close to home. To be fair, it is over 100 miles from the Villanova campus to the Meadowlands.

Rollie stayed at Villanova until 1992, when he got an offer that spoke to his integrity, and mirrored his arrival at Villanova. The University of Nevada at Las Vegas, reeling from NCAA sanctions after their failure to defend their 1990 National Championship, a 1991 Semifinal loss to Duke nearly as shocking as Georgetown's 1985 loss to Villanova (a win by Duke could still be considered a big upset then), had fired crooked head coach Jerry Tarkanian.

But maybe, just maybe, Vegas corrupts everyone eventually. Just 2 years later, Rollie's own integrity was impeached. It was revealed that he and UNLV President Robert Maxson cut a deal to lift Rollie salary above the figure that was reported to the State of Nevada, violating ethics rules. He had to go.

He resurfaced in 1996, at Cleveland State University. He did not do well there, and he couldn't control his players, who were involved in substance abuse, other crimes, and academic fraud. He left in 2003.

He moved to Florida, intending to be retired. But in 2005, Northwood University, an NAIA school in West Palm Beach, started a basketball program, and the athletic director asked Rollie to be their 1st coach. He led them to 4 conference titles, getting to the NAIA Semifinal in 2011 and the Final in 2012. In 2014, Northwood was bought by a private corporation, and renamed Keiser University.

He began battling cancer, but in 2016, Villanova got back to the NCAA Final, and coach Jay Wright asked Rollie to come to the Final at NRG Stadium in Houston. He did, and met with the team. Villanova won a thriller against North Carolina, to take their 2nd National Championship.
Jay Wright and Rollie Massimino,
at the 2016 NCAA Final in Houston

His health declined after that. Officially, he was still Keiser's head coach this past Wednesday, August 30, 2017, when he passed away in West Palm Beach. He was 82 years old.

"God Almighty, I'm so sorry to hear that," Louie Carnesecca said. "We go way back. I just spoke with him 10 days ago. It's like when you lose one of your family.

"Rollie was an excellent coach. You really had to prepare when you played against him. He threw everything at you."

Dwayne McClain, who coached on his staff at Northwood/Keiser, probably knew him better than any of his players, aside from son R.C. I'll let him have the final word:

"Daddy Mass will be missed. He'll be forever missed. He was a fiery Italian that had nothing but love."

UPDATE: He was buried at Calvary Cemetery in the Philadelphia suburb of West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

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