Family is all there for ‘Coach Mass’ until the end
A lot of coaches talk about their team being a family. For many, it’s just talk. That never was an issue with Rollie Massimino, who died Wednesday at 82 after a lengthy battle with cancer.
His teams, especially during his 19 years as the men’s basketball coach at Villanova where he won the national title with a stunning upset of Georgetown in 1985, were family.
Pasta dinners, cooked by his wife Mary Jane, were a Sunday staple at the Massimino house, a tradition he continued at his last coaching stop, Keiser University, an NAIA school in West Palm Beach., Fla.
Reunions also became a matter of routine. Many of the members of that 1985 national championship team spent Super Bowl weekend with the man they lovingly called “Coach Mass.”
“He was really an integral part of everybody’s family and we were all part of his,” Chuck Everson said. “We all called his wife ‘Mom.’”
And so when Everson received a call from Massimino’s son, R.C., over the weekend that “Mom” wanted to see players from Villanova’s 1985 national championship team, it wasn’t a question if Everson would go, but how quickly he could get to Massimino’s home in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Everson was not alone. Former players Brian Harrington and Harold Pressley also made the trip, along with ex-assistant coach Marty Marbach. Jay Wright, who coached with Massimino at Villanova and UNLV, also was by his mentor’s side Monday.
That’s how much Massimino meant to those who played for and coached with him.
“That’s what he lived for,” Wright said. “That’s what he loved, and he did it right to the end. There’s no one that lived life harder. No one got more out of life than him. He ate everything that was in front of him, he had a lot of good cigars, he drank a lot of wine. He didn’t miss out on anything. He had a lot of friends, and he lived a full life. All his players from Northwood … I’m getting texts from Northwood, Cleveland State, UNLV, but they all love him. He was just an incredible force on this earth.”
Like every family, there were rough patches. There was ill will when Massimino left Villanova for UNLV in 1992. Massimino took a lot of the heat when the Big 5 went from a full round-robin format to two games for nine years, starting in 1991-92.
In time, though, Massimino was welcomed back into the Villanova and Big 5 families shortly after Wright became the head coach at Villanova. Wright helped smooth over the old grudges, and Massimino eventually was inducted the Big 5 Hall of Fame, something that did not seem possible when he left.
“It was just, I think, natural when we came back,” Wright said. “I think he probably had a lot to do with telling the alumni to bring us back, so I think it was already in motion. I think he was really comfortable and knew that we all wanted him around, and he wanted to be here. He always wanted to be at Villanova.”
That family bond was so strong that Massimino made sure he was in Houston last year when Wright’s Wildcats Carolina,secondgram Massiminohealth. history, national stunned77-74, was evento in title Northwin failing thoughin the pro
semifinalour “He alumni couldn’t game, who makeand flew even himthe up were on afraidtheir plane,on the they way up that he wasn’t going to make it,” Wright said. “Then when he got there, all of a sudden, the lights came on and he was on top of his game. I knew, and we all did, that it meant probably as much to him that we won it than when he won it. It was a struggle for him to get there. I know he wanted to be there for us, and it meant the world to all of us to have him there.”
It was the same when Massimino made his last trip to Villanova for the team’s Summer Jam festival July 31. Roughly 60 former players showed including most of the 1985 national championship team were there, too. The ’85 group spent the night before the festival telling tales at McShea’s in Ardmore.
“Coach Mass was top form,” Everson said. “We had a blast. It was just a great time.” It was a family reunion. This clan, though, had a broad reach. It stretched far beyond his team. Harry Perretta was just out of Lycoming College when he became the women’s coach at Villanova in 1978. Massimino was going into his sixth season as the men’s coach and fresh off of a trip to the Elite Eight, beginning to make his mark on the national scene. It would have been easy for Massimino to brush the upstart Perretta aside. He did “He took me in like a son,” Perretta said. “He involved me in practice sessions, everything. He basically mentored me when I was there. Back then, the women’s and men’s coaches hardly talked to each other, but not here. He took me under his wing. He taught me everything that he knew. I applied a lot of things, basic conservative strategy, you can see in my team.” There were times, Perretta said, when Massimino had his team practice against Perretta’s squad when the men’s team was playing Princeton or any other program that ran the motion offense. It was outof-the-box thinking, but that was Massimino.
“Rollie and John Chaney are the only coaches I know who ever did that,” Perretta said. “John would practice against Vivian Stringer’s team when they coached together at Cheyney.”
That’s what families do, they stick together through thick and thin, which is why the news of Massimino’s passing hit so hard and cut such a wide path.
“It’s a big void in this Villanova basketball family because his presence was just so powerful,” Wright said. “It impacted current players, current coaches, all his players, the players that came before him, coaches before him. He was just larger than life.”
“I feel like I lost my dad again,” Perretta said. “That’s how much he meant to me. I’m going to miss him.” RADNOR »