Jensen: Villanova's Perretta knew the legendary Pat Summitt like few others

H arry Perretta warned that he would probably start crying. He did almost instantly. He would croak out a thought and then get it together and then lose it a bit more. He never paused, never stopped talking about his friend.

Pat Summitt meant too much to him.

Yes, a deep friendship between the University of Tennessee women's basketball coach and her counterpart at Villanova was a strange and surprising one. The greatest coach in the game wanted to fly here to learn about Harry Perretta's offense? Country girl and West Philly/Delco guy? This had to be a joke one of his friends was playing on him.

"I don't know what the right term is. You'd think it would be oil and water. One of her greatest attributes: Somebody of her stature would learn from everybody," Perretta said as he waited for a phone call that eventually came. Summitt died Tuesday, taken down at age 64 by Alzheimer's.

Let's frame this correctly. Pat Summitt carried the entire game of women's basketball to so much higher ground. Put her down as this: the greatest female coach of all-time, any sport, any country.

"Just think about it, in terms of if she doesn't have the illness, where she should be all at this point, it's mind-boggling," Perretta said.

Her Vols won 1,098 times over 38 years. She coached her country to Olympic gold, in 1984, also won eight NCAA titles. Losing seasons? None. Southeastern Conference titles? Sixteen. National coach of the year? Seven times.

Summitt also had the greatest stare in women's college hoops. Mess with her? You've got to be kidding. Perretta knows what was behind the stare.

"I knew her past the rough Pat Summitt. I knew the genuine Pat Summitt," Perretta said over the phone. "I saw the person who gave jobs to all her friends that she grew up with. I saw that. I saw her take all her friends under her wing. She would go get her nails done at some hole-in-the-wall place, not some exclusive place. I knew because I stayed at the house. I stayed at the pool house with my children. I saw her on a day-to-day basis, take care of everybody."

Seeing her swift descent from Alzheimer's was just devastating. Here, Perretta really had trouble getting out the words. After Summitt went public in 2011 that she had Alzheimer's, Perretta related then how he had known about it already, had stayed with her, had done Sudoku and other word games with her, although he was the one who had struggled. "I'm like illiterate with computers."

The difference he could see then was in the fatigue that would find her. She'd need a nap. "She was always never tired," Perretta had said.

He coached against her just once, the Final Four on the line. Perretta said he didn't even mind that the 2003 Elite Eight game was in Knoxville. That was part of the honor, he said. (No, he didn't win.)

What was the whole thing like?

"Like coaching against somebody who is greater than the game itself," Perretta said.

Once the Vols got rolling, the talent flowed to Knoxville, and plenty of games were over at tipoff, sort of like Connecticut in recent years.

But Summitt and UConn coach Geno Auriemma, the greatest of rivals, shared a trait beyond winning. They never assumed.

"You knew they were always going to be totally prepared," Perretta said of Tennessee. "Every detail would be covered."

When Summitt first left a message in 2002 saying she wanted to go to the Main Line to study his offense, Perretta really did think some friend was playing a joke.

Villanova's coach relates how Summitt, no joke, showed up at the Pavilion and after like two or three hours of hanging around, including at a practice, she said to Perretta, "Do you not like me?"

"What are you talking about?" Perretta remembers saying. "I don't even know you."

Summitt wanted to know why he wouldn't look her in the eye.

Perretta told the great Pat Summitt he had been a history major.

"The peasant never looks the queen in the eye," he said to her.

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus