Basketball coaching legend Rollie Massimino, who took Villanova to national title in 1985, dies at 82

Reporting from 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 in Fort Lauderdale, where he was 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 University, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and Cleveland State University. He spent the last 11 years at Keiser, where he started the basketball program.

“As our campus community deeply mourns the loss of Coach Massimino, we extend our warmest thoughts and condolences to his wife, Mary Jane, and the entire Massimino family,” Chancellor Arthur Keiser said. “We are so truly honored to have shared this time with him and take some degree of comfort in knowing the positive impact he has had on college students for the last four decades remains immeasurable.”

Massimino faced numerous health issues in recent years yet never stopped coaching. And even though he left Villanova 25 years ago, he was still considered family by the Wildcats and coach Jay Wright.

“If not for Rollie Massimino, I’m not even a part of this,” Wright once said.

Wright was given a championship ring from 1985, and Massimino was given a championship ring from 2016. Wright wasn’t working at Villanova during the first title season; Massimino wasn’t officially there for the second one. But Wright worked Massimino’s camps in the mid-1980s before coming to Villanova, so that made him part of the family.

Massimino always went out of his way to take care of those he considered family. So Wright got that 1985 ring. And the only moment when Wright teared up at Villanova’s 2016 ring ceremony was when he handed Massimino his piece of championship jewelry.

“When you’re a young coach and you grow up in Philly, Rollie Massimino is a legend to you,” Wright said.

Roland Vincent Massimino was born Nov. 13, 1934, in New Jersey, played 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 the University of Pennsylvania — under Chuck Daly.

Massimino and Daly would remain close until Daly’s death in 2009. Like Daly, Massimino was always dapper on the sidelines. So when Daly died, Massimino took Daly’s collection of sharp-dress shoes and wore a pair in every game he coached for the remainder of his life.

“Chuck is always with me,” Massimino said earlier this year.

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 the University of Dayton (a game played at Dayton, no less) 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.

The team then rallied from a deficit to beat North Carolina for a trip to the Final Four, then downed Memphis State in the national semifinals. That left a Villanova vs. Georgetown showdown, an all-Big East final. 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.

“This is the greatest thing to ever happen to me,” Massimino said that night.

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.

“Some days, we do take him for granted,” Keiser guard Andrija Sarenac said earlier this year. “But then you see him on TV so much, you see all these videos made about him, the movies about Villanova and everything, and it just hits you. You realize that he’s a legend. I mean, your coach is a walking legend. With the energy and everything he comes in with, it’s inspiring.”

It only seemed like Massimino knew everyone. He dined with Frank Sinatra, got to be a Dodgers batboy under Tommy Lasorda and loved Perry Como. The ’85 Villanova team would gather annually with Massimino, grown men sleeping on air mattresses scattered all over the coach’s home while dining on his favorites — tons of pasta, tons of eggplant, all the while toasting the past and the future.

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.