Coaching great Massimino is dead at 82

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.

Massimino faced numerous health issues in recent years yet never stopped coaching. 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.

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 — for many reasons.

Villanova needed a last- second stop just to escape over Dayton in the first round, went scoreless for the f irst 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.

The Wildcats downed Memphis State in the national semifinals. That left a Villanova- Georgetown showdown, an all- Big East f inal. The Hoyas won both regular- season matchups between the rivals, but Villanova shot a staggering 79% in the title game and pulled off a 66- 64 upset when it mattered most.

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.