April 1, 1985, 40 years ago: Someone who had been following the college basketball season, but had been unable to watch the game, might have seen the final score, and thought it was an April Fool's joke. After all, this was mere days after Sports Illustrated's article "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch." But it was real, and it remains the biggest upset in the history of the NCAA's men's basketball tournament.
In Philadelphia college basketball, the "Big Five," an unofficial group, are the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, La Salle University, St. Joseph's University, and Villanova University. Temple is secular. Penn is Ivy League. La Salle and St. Joe's are Catholic. Villanova is Catholic, likes to pretend that it is Ivy.
While St. Joe's straddles the City Line and the western "Main Line" suburbs, Villanova, is 11 miles to the northwest, well into the Main Line. While the other 4 schools, especially Temple, are more racially diverse (yes, even Penn), the Wildcats are mocked as "Vanilla-nova," and with claims that half the black people on campus are on the basketball team.
One season, as the seconds ticked down in a win over St. Joe's, allowing them to clinch the best overall record in the Big 5, their fans chanted, "We own Philly!" The St. Joe's fans chanted back, "You ain't Philly!" They do seem, of the 5 student bodies, the least likely to eat a cheesesteak and then work it off by running up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum -- but then, their track and field program has been among the nation's best for decades.
In 1972, Chuck Daly, later to coach the Detroit Pistons to back-to-back NBA Championships, hired Rollie Massimino as an assistant coach. In 1973, trying to move on from the scandal that got their 1971 Final Four berth stricken from the record, Villanova needed a young man of integrity. The fact that the 38-year-old Rollie was Catholic, and had the endorsement of the admired Daly, helped a lot.
Burdened by NCAA sanctions that the previous regime had brought on, his 1st 2 seasons were bad. But in 1976, he went 16-11. In 1977, he got them into the NIT. In 1978, he got them into the NCAA Tournament.
In 1982, he won the Big East Conference, and got 'Nova to the Elite Eight. In 1983, he did that again, tying Georgetown for the title. In 1984, he finished 2nd in the Big East, to Georgetown.
The Wildcat players were believing in the man they called Daddy Mass, and they were giving him something to believe in. In other words, what happened in the 1984-85 season, while worthy of expressions of surprise, should not have been considered an outright shock.
The big rivalry in the Big East was between 2 big-city Catholic schools: St. John's in New York, and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Almost nobody was paying attention to the one in between, where Rollie had made the Wildcats big enough that the 1,500-seat Villanova Field House (shortly thereafter, renamed the Jake Nevin Field House) was woefully inadequate, and even the 6,500-seat Pavilion that was then under construction wasn't enough: 'Nova played nearly every game at the 18,000-seat Spectrum, the South Philly home of the 76ers and Flyers, 14 miles from campus.
Villanova went just 9-7 in Big East play, and were 19-10 going into the NCAA Tournament. They were seed 8th in their region, and their game against 9th seed Dayton was, uncharacteristically, on Dayton's home court. The Wildcats won anyway. Then they best 1st seed Michigan, 4th seed Maryland (with Len Bias), and 2nd seed North Carolina.
The Big East had 3 of the Final Four berths: Lou Carnsecca's St. John's, John Thompson's Georgetown, and Rollie Massimino's Villanova. Dana Kirk's Memphis State had the other one.
The Final Four was set for Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. On spite of being named the Wildcats and wearing blue, like the venue's home team, most observers didn't give Villanova a chance. Even if they beat Memphis in the Final, the other Semifinal, between defending National Champion Georgetown and St. John's, who had split their regular-season meetings, was being considered "the real final."
But Villanova did beat Memphis, and when Georgetown beat St. John's rather easily, it seemed to set Monday, April 1, 1985 up as a coronation for the defending National Champion Hoyas.
Instead, Villanova pulled off one of the biggest upsets of all time. They shot 22-for-28 from the field, 78 percent, the highest in Final Four history. Georgetown hardly folded, but Villanova won, 66-64. It was April Fool's Day, but there was no joke in Rupp Arena.
It was the 1st NCAA men's basketball National Championship won by a Philadelphia-area team since La Salle in 1954. And, with the 9th seed in their region, the 1985 Villanova team remains the lowest seed ever to win the Tournament.
"I still never saw the Championship Game replay in its entirety," Massimino said in 2015, at a 30th Anniversary reunion. "I still think we might lose."
But they won. Hail the Champions:
Top row, left to right: Center Wyatt Maker; forward Ed Pinckney,
forward Mark Plansky, forward Howard Pressley,
head coach Rollie Massimino, forward Dwayne McClain,
forward Connally Brown, center Chuck Everson.
Bottom row: Guard Dwight Wilbur, guard DeAlvin Phillips,
guard R.C. Massimino, guard Gary McLain,
guard Brian Harrington, guard Harold Jensen, forward Steve Pinone.
Pretty much all of them went on to do good things. Ed Pinckney played 12 seasons in the NBA, mostly for the Phoenix Suns. He went back to Villanova, on Jay Wright's staff, and has been an assistant coach for 3 NBA teams. Dwayne McClain played 12 seasons of pro ball, mostly in Europe, but did have 1 season with the Indiana Pacers. He went into coaching, and now runs a financial firm in Florida.
Harold Pressley played for the Sacramento Kings, and is now a TV announcer in Sacramento. Connally Brown became an FBI Agent. And R.C. Massimino, 1 of 5 kids Rollie had with his wife, now runs a construction management company in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Rollie stayed at Villanova until 1992, when he got an offer that spoke to his integrity, and mirrored his arrival at Villanova. The University of Nevada at Las Vegas, reeling from NCAA sanctions after their failure to defend their 1990 National Championship, a 1991 Semifinal loss to Duke nearly as shocking as Georgetown's 1985 loss to Villanova (a win by Duke could still be considered a big upset then), had fired crooked head coach Jerry Tarkanian.
But maybe, just maybe, Vegas corrupts everyone eventually. Just 2 years later, Rollie's own integrity was impeached. It was revealed that he and UNLV President Robert Maxson cut a deal to lift Rollie's salary above the figure that was reported to the State of Nevada, violating ethics rules. He had to go.
He resurfaced in 1996, at Cleveland State University. He did not do well there, and he couldn't control his players, who were involved in substance abuse, other crimes, and academic fraud. He left in 2003.
He moved to Florida, intending to be retired. But in 2005, Northwood University, an NAIA school in West Palm Beach, started a basketball program, and the athletic director asked Rollie to be their 1st coach. He led them to 4 conference titles, getting to the NAIA Semifinal in 2011 and the Final in 2012. In 2014, Northwood was bought by a private corporation, and renamed Keiser University.
He began battling cancer, but in 2016, Villanova got back to the NCAA Final, and coach Jay Wright asked Rollie to come to the Final at NRG Stadium in Houston. He did, and met with the team. Villanova won a thriller against North Carolina, to take their 2nd National Championship. He died the following year.
Villanova won another National Championship in 2018. The Big 5's count currently stands as follows: Villanova 3, Penn 2 (if you count retroactive titles from the pre-NCAA Tournament era), La Salle 1, Temple 1 (if you count NIT titles from the era before the NCAA Tournament became the big one), St. Joseph's none.
