Rollie Massimino, who led Villanova to 1985 men’s basketball national title, dies at 82.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Rollie Massimino, who led Villanova’s storied run to the 1985 NCAA championship and won more than 800 games in his coaching career, died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer. He was 82.
Massimino’s death was announced by Keiser University, where he was still the men’s basketball coach. He spent the final days of his life in hospice care.
Best known for that national title at Villanova, Massimino also coached at Stony Brook, UNLV and Cleveland State. He spent the last 11 years of his life at Keiser, where he started the program and turned it into an NAIA power.
Roland Vincent Massimino was born Nov. 13, 1934, in New Jersey, played his college basketball at Vermont and got his master’s degree from Rutgers. His first head coaching job was at his alma mater, Hillside High School, in 1962. His college coaching career started at Stony Brook in 1969, and after two seasons he became an assistant at Penn under Chuck Daly.
After one season at Penn, Massimino took over at Villanova. He spent 19 seasons there, best remembered by the 1985 NCAA title run that was anything but easy.
Villanova needed a last-second stop just to escape over Dayton in the first round, went scoreless for the first eight minutes of the second half and somehow still beat top-seeded Michigan in the second round, and toppled Maryland in the regional semifinal — winning those three games by a combined nine points. And to get to the Final Four, Villanova erased a halftime deficit against North Carolina.
That game with the Tar Heels was the one where Massimino gave what those linked to that ‘85 team still call “the pasta speech” at halftime.
“He looked at all of us and threw his coat down,” Chuck Everson, who played on that team, said Wednesday. “He said, ‘If I knew it was going to come down to this, I’d rather have a bowl of pasta with clam sauce and a lot of cheese on it.’ Everybody was looking at him like, ‘What the heck does this have to do about playing?’ What he was saying was just go out and have some fun. Do something you like. Play. Everybody’s eyes exploded.”
Villanova dominated the second half. Pasta was eaten afterward.
The Wildcats downed Memphis State in the national semifinals. That left a Villanova vs. Georgetown showdown, an allBig East final.
“This is the greatest thing to ever happen to me,” Massimino said after Villanova shot 79 percent and upset Georgetown 66-64.
Massimino spent two seasons at UNLV, seven more at Cleveland State and the last 11 at Keiser (which was called Northwood when he started). Keiser went to the NAIA national tournament nine times in his 11 seasons.
He was a finalist for enshrinement in the Basketball Hall of Fame this year. Massimino is survived by his wife, five children and 17 grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.