Massimino: Just as big on smaller stage

BRANSON, Mo. - The rest of the 75-year-olds staying in motels all over town put on their windbreakers to go catch the endless buffet at Golden Corral. They take in a show at Andy Williams' Moon River Theatre or try to see Tony Orlando or maybe some Osmond Brothers.

Rollie Massimino wasn't in Branson for any of that. He skipped the Yakov Smirnoff Theatre, didn't catch any of the Elvis impersonators in town. The 75-year-old is skipping retirement entirely. He'd tried it, getting to the first tee every morning.

"He was bored to tears," said his friend Rick Porter, who owns expensive racehorses. "He told me. He told all of us. He's as hyper a guy as you are ever going to see. That SOB can't sit in one place."

Massimino was in Branson on business. At 8:30 a.m., just about tee time back home, Massimino's basketball team, Northwood University, was tipping off in the NAIA Division II national tournament in a little gym at the College of the Ozarks.

If that sounds sad, the coach of Villanova's 1985 national champions not letting go, slipping further away from his proudest moments, just another '80s relic showing up in Branson - sorry, wrong. Of his coaching stops after 'Nova, UNLV wasn't right (except for the fat paycheck; otherwise, the knives were out for Massimino as soon as he hit Vegas), and Cleveland State was no place for redemption. But this last stop on the trail, leading a program he started from scratch five years ago in West Palm Beach, Fla., his friends all say it's perfect.

If Massimino had stayed retired, "I think he would put Mary Jane in a home," jokes his friend Billy Cunningham, referring to Massimino's wife. "At the end of the day, it's the best thing for her."

In retirement, he'd bring his grandkids to Villanova in the summer, into the gym to work with them. But he was still a coach. One hot day, a Villanova staffer spotted Massimino throwing his own grandson out of the gym during a workout.

Cunningham, who coached the '83 championship Sixers and never attempted an encore, said Massimino and their buddy, the late Chuck Daly, were kindred souls, that Daly never would have quit the NBA except he'd get exhausted by February. In fact, Daly, who died last May, told friends that Massimino was the guy who got it right in the end.

" 'Did you see this player here? How about him? How do we defend this high-low?' " Villanova coach Jay Wright said, describing a round of golf with Massimino. "He likes playing golf to talk about that stuff."

He isn't coaching for the money.

"Nooo, not even close,'' Massimino said, laughing at the thought. He spends more money on the program than he makes, he said.

The coach once accused of getting too big for his britches in Philly after winning a national title enjoys life in the small time.

"No frills at all," Wright said. "He calls me sometimes. 'Where are you?' He tells me, 'On an eight-hour bus ride from the Savannah School of Design.' The first year they went to Branson for the national tournament, they took a bus. He's doing that at 75 years old. I can't do it now."

A guy sitting in the stands at College of the Ozarks, a middle-aged man wearing jeans and a plain yellow T-shirt, saw Massimino across the way and asked the woman next to him: "How old is he? I asked this one guy that question. He goes, 'He's 80.' I don't think so."

Actually, Massimino looks the same as ever. What people get fooled by is Massimino's age in his heyday. He was 44 when one of his Villanova teams reached the Elite Eight for the first time, 50 when he won it all. His age seemed immaterial in those days. Always frantic and rumpled, hair shooting up, eyes in perpetual anguish.

His friend Porter has been to Northwood games - "If you watch the game, he'll look the same as he did against Georgetown - same old motions, same old gestures."

Yes, and no. Massimino was the best-dressed guy in the gym, suit on, blue tie, matching handkerchief in the front pocket. He was on top of everything. A couple of his players joined their teammates after being announced in pregame introductions. Massimino pointed them to center court to bump fists with the guy from the other team. He was calling plays ("Four out!!!!"), changing defenses, chewing gum with a perpetual scowl, going to one knee as the game tightened. Massimino stayed calm the whole way. Once, he yelled at a player out of position, "You're the 5 guy! I asked you to start there!"

Otherwise, his words and gestures tended to be encouraging. His jacket stayed on until he walked off the court at halftime, and was back on when he came out of the lockerroom.

It was easy to see how Northwood had qualified for the national tournament. Northwood's post players were probably a couple of inches short of big-time, but they had moves, and Massimino's shooting guard wasn't jet-quick, but he could shoot, getting Northwood an early lead by hitting some deep threes. At halftime, they were up eight over Spring Arbor (Mich.). They'd committed just three turnovers.

"The idea of starting it from scratch, that was intriguing," Massimino said. "Helping build a gym. Build locker rooms. Order the equipment. Everything had to be done. I wasn't going to come in and take over a team. The first year, we didn't play a game."

Daly, Massimino's old boss at Penn, would talk to Massimino's Northwood players every year, come to games all the time. After Daly got pancreatic cancer, which spread to his liver, Massimino said, "I visited him every day, and every day, he'd say, 'Who'd you recruit today?' "

Massimino was, and remains, one of the more complex figures in Philadelphia sports history. He gets his due for winning the Perfect Game over Georgetown, one of the most memorable results in NCAA history. Lost a little is the fact that Massimino had the most successful 10-year postseason run in Big Five history, reaching the Elite Eight five times from 1978 to 1988.

"Until he won it, maybe even after he won it, he never quite got his just due, in terms of how good he was technically," said 76ers assistant coach Jim Lynam, who faced Massimino as St. Joseph's head coach.

At Villanova, they still insist Massimino took the heat for an institutional decision to cut down on Big Five games, to stop playing the full round-robin, which happened in 1991-92, Massimino's last season on the Main Line.

Just as big an issue, Villanova had left the Palestra doubleheaders behind, taking their home games back to campus. Temple did the same, not minding that Villanova took the heat. Looking at all that through more of a historical prism, it seems quaint to think all of the Big Five schools would have kept playing in the same building.

"The Big Five, as good as it was, and as much as it meant to so many of us, the landscape was changing,'' Lynam said.

Even if you blame Massimino for not stopping the Big Five changes, why doesn't he get the same credit for leading Villanova into the Big East? It was his talks with league founder Dave Gavitt that got that ball rolling, Big East honchos say. And it wasn't the no-brainer that it looks like today. Temple already had turned down the opportunity, according to numerous sources at Temple and other schools.

There were other factors in play that kept Massimino from becoming beloved in Philly. His you're with us or you're against us manner, his combative way when criticized - he will be the first to admit that he didn't have the diplomatic skills of his friend Daly.

"He was a master at that stuff, at handling people," Massimino said, adding that his own lessons came from a different direction, from an immigrant family where loyalty and discipline were primary.

After Villanova won it all, Jim Valvano, who had won the national title two years earlier with North Carolina State, told Massimino what was going to happen, that people were going to accuse him of changing, of suddenly thinking he knew everything. He admits that's the one thing that really hurt him, the charge that he'd changed.

"I was always around - I saw the tremendous time commitments change on him," said Villanova women's coach, Harry Perretta. "He had to do so many things because of what happened. People then started to say he's forgetting about this person or the little guy. I don't believe that to be true. We were the little guys, and he treated us the same. He just didn't have the same time that he used to have."

Something else did change: Villanova got to one more regional final after '85, in 1988, but 'Nova made only the NIT in '87 and '89 and '92, and lost in the first round of the NCAAs in '90. The expectations were higher. The joyride was over. It wasn't just Big Five fans from other schools turning on Massimino.

Looking back, he admits to missing game nights in the old days, even the give-and-take with the media, "a little bit," he said.

"When we were at Villanova, after every game, we came back to my house, 40 or 50 people,'' Massimino said. "My wife would make 10 pounds of macaroni, 10 pounds."

Massimino can, in fact, take a hit.

Earlier this year, a couple of Massimino's '85 players were visiting. They had gone to Northwood's practice, he said, and then to a sports bar that is now a regular Massimino postgame spot, a place to watch all the games. They were walking across the street at the intersection. An older guy driving five or 10 m.p.h., Massimino said, making a left turn, never saw them, and they never saw him as they talked.

Massimino and Brian Harrington ended up on the hood of the Toyota Camry, then on the pavement.

"Coach, you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine."

"We'll call 911."

"Don't worry about it."

They were headed back to his house.

"Everything is fine," Massimino said, assuring his former players and the rattled driver. "The pasta is waiting for us, and I want it al dente."

There were always famous friends of Massimino's around Villanova. Tommy Lasorda would be screaming at refs. . . . There's Mario Andretti . . . Perry Como.

That didn't change at Northwood. Massimino opened the new 1,500-seat building, announcing to everyone, including Villanova, that Villanova would be the opponent. All his golf buddies, Daly and Cunningham and John Havlicek and Bobby Orr, showed up.

But coaching Northwood can't be about the limelight. He still gets a bit of that from all the '85 remembrances, and Villanova's success in recent years has helped bring Massimino further back in the fold since Jay is his guy.

"He loves being part of a team," Wright said. "It's very clear - not just being head of a team. He likes having a team, hanging with the guys, having players that need him, grooming coaches."

Squeezed in next to Massimino at the NAIA tournament was '85 star Dwayne McClain, who had played professionally overseas for years and is trying his hand at coaching.

One dry spell against Spring Arbor, a few possessions that ended at the rim, proved fateful. Northwood held a small lead most of the way and still was up one in the last minute when one of Massimino's big men was called for elbowing while setting a screen. Spring Arbor's best player drove and scored. Massimino called time-out with 18 seconds left. His team got an open look from just inside the three-point line, but the shot didn't fall. It got one more shot at the buzzer. The rim again.

Twenty minutes later, Massimino was first out of Northwood's locker room. He held a crumpled tissue in his left hand. The moisture on his shirt could have been sweat but looked more like tears.

"We had a chance - we were up one, 50 seconds left. The ball just didn't go in the basket," Massimino said immediately. "It was a terrific game."

This could have been a season-ending scene straight from the '80s except there was no news conference and it was 10:45 a.m.

"It hurts just as much," Massimino said as he stood in the hallway. "This was a special group."

He knew, however, that in Philly, the fate of Northwood U. means nothing.

"You want me to talk about Jay?" Massimino asked.