Basketball Hall of Fame to honor former Villanova coach Rollie Massimino

The 1985 NCAA title-winning coach will be honored as part of the Naismith Coaches Circle ceremony this weekend.

Former Villanova coaches Jay Wright (left) and Rollie Massimino are the only two men's head coaches to win an NCAA championship with the program.Read moreFile Photograph

Published Aug. 11, 2023, 5:48 p.m. ET

Former Villanova men’s basketball coach Rollie Massimino will be immortalized inside the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday as one of four coaches honored with a bench dedication as part of the annual Naismith Coaches Circle ceremony.

The event is scheduled to take place at 2 p.m. inside the MassMutual Center within the Hall of Fame grounds in Springfield, Mass.

Coaches Circle, conceived in 2015 by Hall of Famers John Calipari, Jerry Colangelo, and George Raveling, honors college basketball’s best coaches with a series of granite benches with the names of coaches etched into it, highlighted by a sculpture of the founder of basketball, James Naismith.

In addition to Massimino, former North Carolina women’s coach Sylvia Hatchell, North Carolina State women’s coaching legend Kay Yow, and former Rutgers men’s coach Tom Young will also receive the honor.

Massimino, the charismatic coach of the Wildcats for 19 seasons, became the first coach to lead Villanova to an NCAA championship in 1985 with an upset of Georgetown in the final. Massimino’s time at Villanova was his longest and most significant coaching stint, with 355 wins in those 19 seasons.

He also held head coaching responsibilities at Stony Brook (1969-71), UNLV (1992-94), Cleveland State (1996-2003), and Northwood (Fla.) University (now Keiser University) from 2006-17.

Massimino died from cancer in 2017 at the age of 82, but not before being able to see his beloved Wildcats win the NCAA Tournament once more in 2016 at NRG Stadium in Houston. He was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013.

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