By By Dan Powell
Call them dancing lessons, but after practice is over at Hofstra Arena, perhaps the greatest Cinderella figure in NCAA basketball history toils with members of the Pride. He is helping the team improve in even the most fundamental parts of the game in hopes of guiding it to where he has already been.
Rollie Massimino led the eighth-seeded Villanova Wildcats on the most unlikely NCAA championship run in tournament history in 1985. Twenty years later, Massimino can be found helping Pride players such as junior guard Loren Stokes perfect simple tasks such as shooting free throws.
“He told us to stay loose,” Stokes said. “He told us not to worry about a missed free throw, just focus on making the next one.”
At 70-years-old, Massimino is widely held to be one of the greatest coaching minds in the country. His family style of coaching has brought great success, with Massimino’s lifetime record currently standing at 515-391, including a 20-10 record in the NCAA tournament. After leaving Villanova in 1992, Massimino led the UNLV Running Rebels to two winning seasons and then helped establish credibility to the basketball program at Cleveland State University as head coach from 1996-2001. In 2001, Massimino became only the 16th coach in college basketball history to win both 500 games and a national championship.
Although he will help launch an NAIA basketball program at Northwood University in Florida next year, for now Massimino has devoted some of his time to help the Pride coaching staff for a couple of days during practice.
Players seem to enjoy working with the coach. Instead of being begrudged to have to stay and work on free throws after practice, Stokes enjoys the extra work with Massimino. The legend keeps the team loose by humoring players with jokes and stories from his life in basketball.
Pride head coach Tom Pecora is ecstatic to have such a coaching mastermind helping him out in practice.
“Any time you can have a legendary basketball mind like Coach Massimino come in and help your team, that’s something that is going to be a great benefit to the team,” Pecora said.
The players seem to understand Massimino’s basketball genius and are eager to tap into it for advice.
Massimino is happy to be with the team as well. Even after over 30 years of coaching, his love of the game is evident when watching him work with the players.
Massimino says the Pride has what it takes to be successful this season and in the future.
“You’ve got to be a little lucky and you have to work really hard, as Coach Pecora and his staff do here,” he said. “They do a great job. He has good players here and good people, that’s what I like.”
Massimino has also helped sophomore guard Antoine Agudio with free throws and coming off screens.
“He actually recruited my father when he was at Villanova, so he was able to keep me relaxed by telling me stories about that,” Agudio said. “It was great to work with a coach with that much history behind him.”
With a little extra help from someone who has been there before, maybe these players can create a new kind of dance, one that gets this University a similar Cinderella story.