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Calhoun remembers Massimino
YSU coach played for legend for two seasons
By Brian Dzenis
Legendary college basketball coach Rollie Massimino had a favorite phrase he would repeat to Jerrod Calhoun.
It can’t be printed in a newspaper, but it rhymes with “You can’t sit a sitter.” Figure out the missing letters and you’ve got it.
“Basically in a roundabout way, he was telling us not to take shortcuts because I’ve been in your shoes and I’ve been there before and you’re not going to come at me,” the Youngstown State men’s basketball coach said.
Massimino died at 82 years old last Wednesday after a battle with lung cancer. He is best remembered in college basketball for coaching Villanova to a national championship in the 1984-85 season in what is considered to be one of the most unlikely championship runs in tournament history. The No. 8-seeded Wildcats defeated a No. 1-seed Georgetown that featured future NBA Hall-of-Famer Patrick Ewing.
Calhoun played for Massimino for two seasons at Cleveland State. After Massimino was fired from Cleveland State after an 8-22 season with various off-the-court dramas in 2003, Calhoun began his coaching career. He recalled Massimino coming to watch him play at Cleveland Villa-Angela-St. Joseph and didn’t want to play for another coach.
“I was kind of devastated, and I didn’t want to play basketball anymore. I decided to be a student assistant in Cincinnati with [Bob] Huggins,” Calhoun said. “He kept coaching. He was the head coach at Keiser University for a number of years in Division II. It showed how much he loved the game.”
In 47 years, Massimino won 816 games and had just eight losing seasons in that stretch. He was a success to the very end. His Keiser Seahawks were 23-9 in his final season as a coach last year. Calhoun and Penguins assistant coach Paul Molinari – a former Massimino assistant – travelled to Florida a few years ago to be with their old boss for a weekend. He found his old coach to be as engaged with the game as he was nearly two decades ago in Cleveland.
“He still had so much passion, and he was still trying to learn the game 35 or 36 years later,. It’s amazing,” Calhoun said. “He was still going strong. We would be up until nine or ten o’clock at night talking ball. We’d sleep over at his house and then get up to find him waiting for us in the gym.”
Calhoun will travel to Philadelphia for Massimino’s funeral on Sept. 12.
“I look forward to going to just celebrate his life. The thing about him is there was more to the game of life than wins and losses,” Calhoun said. “He won a lot of games, but he impacted a lot of people’s lives. I wouldn’t be the head coach at Youngstown State. I wouldn’t know how to prepare for games or treat people or create a family atmosphere if it wasn’t for coach ‘Mass.’”