SUPER NOVA
It was 30 years ago when Cinderella Villanova shocked Georgetown for NCAA title
THE MORNING of the most important college basketball game Rollie Massimino would ever coach began with a death in the Villanova Wildcats’ family.
Al Severance, the former Villanova basketball player in the late 1920s and later, the school’s head basketball coach as well as a university business law professor, had come to Lexington, Ky. to root for Massimino and his Wildcats in the NCAA title game against defending champ Georgetown. Only Severance never made it to Rupp Arena that night, April 1, 1985.
“What had happened, our former coach, Al Severance, had passed away the morning of the game,” says Massimino. “He was very successful, was at Villanova for years (1936-61). He was a dear friend. He was shaving, and just had a heart attack and passed away.”
Although most of the Villanova roster, which included Massimino’s son, R.C., says it didn’t know Severance well, Massimino recalls how the team’s chaplain spoke with the players during the pregame meal that day. Instead of setting a maudlin tone in the hours before taking on Patrick Ewing and Co. on the court, the chaplain struck a note of levity, and gave a nod Upstairs.
“We have the Mass and our chaplain said, ‘Tonight, Al Severance will be swatting the balls away from up in heaven,’” says Massimino. “A great line.”
Thirty years later, it would be difficult not to believe that a bit of divine intervention took place in Kentucky when the Villanova Wildcats pulled off one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history — taking down Ewing and coach John Thompson Jr.’s mighty Hoyas.
“The underdogs had pulled it off,” says Dwayne McClain, the former Villanova star forward from Worcester, Mass., who scored a game-high 17 points against Georgetown in that upset. “Small school in the Northeast winning the national championship that a lot of people didn’t expect to happen. And to this day, it’s the only one in the school’s history.”
Villanova’s early flameout this year in the NCAA Tournament — despite being the No. 1 seed in its bracket — may already have sparked conspiracy theorists to ponder whether the Wildcats will ever go all the way again the way they did under Massimino, on an April night that saw the Philadelphia Main Line turn into an outdoor party along Lancaster Ave., the main artery that runs from Paoli to Center City. The tale of the Wildcats’ road to Lexington three decades ago was chock full of storylines — including the dominating play of Ewing, whom Massimino calls “arguably one of the best players in the collegiate game during the ‘80s.”
The dramas and headlines spanned the spectrum, from
’Nova barely squeaking into the Big Dance as the No. 8 seed in the Southeast bracket; to knocking off No. 1 Michigan, the Len Bias-led Maryland Terps and Dean Smith’s No. 2 North Carolina Tar Heels en route to the Final Four; to cutting down the nets at Rupp Arena; and in a shock some consider as big a headline as the Wildcats’ upset victory, the first-person account for Sports Illustrated written by Gary McLain, Villanova’s starting point guard on the ’85 squad. McLain detailed his substance-abuse issues in the story, including his claim that he was high on cocaine during some of those 1985 NCAA Tournament games, although not the championship bout.
Gary McLain was part of the reunion of the 1985 players and coaches who gathered at Villanova last fall to recognize the anniversary. It was an evening of hugs and laughs, mended fences and toasts to an era when the ’Cats ran wild.
“It was the most beautiful confirmation that time heals all wounds,” says Gary McLain of the reunion. “Sure, there might be feelings that are difficult to cope with regarding anything negative that surrounded the game from my hand. What we can definitely say is that everybody has stuck together because of what Villanova represents — unity, truth and love. That’s just the authenticity that is Villanova. I’m just fortunate to be with a bunch of guys who, we all have loved each other with all
our shortcomings.”
The Villanova Wildcats’ final regular-season game during the ’84-’85 season was at Pittsburgh on national television. Villanova was on a three-game win streak and vying for a spot in the NCAA tourney. Pittsburgh had other designs.
“The season ended with the Pittsburgh game where we got destroyed,” says Long Island product Chuck Everson, Villanova’s backup center to Ed Pinckney, referring to the 85-62 demolition by the Panthers. “It was brutal. No one expected that. Coach Mass came into the locker room at halftime and said to the starters, ‘You’ve got three minutes, and if you don’t play in three minutes, you’re all out.’ He took those guys out of the game. After that game we did a little soul searching.”
Three of Villanova’s starters — Pinckney, Gary McLain and Dwayne McClain (the latter two are not related) — were all seniors in ’85, and in no way wanted to end their collegiate careers in ignominious fashion by not making the NCAA Tournament, when they had qualified the previous three years. The Wildcats regrouped in the Big East tournament, beating Pittsburgh five days after the rout in the Steel City. Nova then lost to St. John’s, but still got into the tournament as the No. 8 seed in the Southeast bracket.
“It was kind of a toss-up whether we got into the tournament with 10 losses,” says Massimino.
“We were just happy to get in,” adds Mark Plansky, a freshman reserve from Wakefield, Mass.
But the fiery Massimino was none too pleased with Villanova’s draw in the first game — against No. 9 seed Dayton. At Dayton.
“That might have been one of toughest games of the whole tournament. Coach was not happy about that,” says Everson. “Thank goodness for (Harold) Jensen. He curled around and made a layup that almost rolled out. It rolled right to the edge of the rim and fell back in and we won (51-49). From there it was a magical ride that started the whole thing.”
Adds Villanova starting forward Harold Pressley: “It was a very tough road — the hardest road to the final any team could go through. When you start at an opposing team’s gym, you know that it’s going to be a heck of a long hike to the top of the mountain.”
Depending upon which former ’85 Villanova player you talk to, any one of the victories leading up to the final at Rupp Arena might have served notice that the Wildcats were a force to be reckoned with. Jensen, the Trumball, Conn. product who was a sophomore guard, says when he and his teammates toppled the Tar Heels to reach the Final Four, there was some electricity in the ’Nova locker room after the 56-44 win.
“I think the Carolina game was huge for us. Coach Mass had been there before that, to the Elite Eight, and had not gotten over the hump,” says Jensen, who still lives near Villanova’s campus and works in event marketing. “That was huge for (Massimino). It was UNC, (head coach) Dean Smith, it was the Elite Eight. I think the momentum was at its peak when we beat Carolina.”
Three Big East teams rolled into the Final Four in Lexington that year, with Georgetown facing St. John’s in one semifinal, and Villanova taking on Memphis State (now known as the University of Memphis) in the other. Lou Carnesecca, the St. John’s coaching icon, says that “you’ll probably never see that again,” where not only three conference teams advanced to the Final Four, but were made up of the kind of talent that makes NBA scouts and executives drool.
“Hollywood could not have done a better job,” says Carnesecca, whose ’84-’85 team boasted the likes of Mark Jackson, Chris Mullin, Bill Wennington and Walter Berry. “That time was electric.”
Villanova took care of Memphis State, while St. John’s — which had lost to Georgetown in the Big East final — fell to the Hoyas at Rupp. Dwayne McClain says that he and his ’Nova teammates were only too happy that Georgetown had wiped out the Johnnies, because the Wildcats wanted no part of Mullin and Co. in the final. St. John’s had swept the season series against the Wildcats, and then beat them in the Big East tournament.
“I think if we had gotten St. John’s (in the NCAA final), me and you wouldn’t be having this conversation,” says McClain, laughing.
Hoyas starting forward Bill Martin was a senior during the ’84-’85 season, and he had seen plenty of the Villanova players over his four years at Georgetown. He had also relished three trips to the NCAA title game, winning a championship his junior year against Hakeem Olajuwon and the University of Houston.
“We expected to be there every year,” says Martin. “We thought we were that good. We fully expected to win. We had been to the mountaintop. Nothing was new. But that’s always in the back of your head — in the NCAA, on any given day, anybody can lose.”
But Georgetown had No. 33, the Big Fella, and nobody had to remind Massimino and the Wildcats who was going to try to clog up the paint on the opposing team.
“We knew Patrick was a handful. We probably had more respect for Patrick on the defensive side of the ball,” says Dwayne McClain, who now has his own mergers and acquisitions firm in Jupiter, Fla. “They had great athletes on the perimeter that would funnel the ball to Patrick. And he would block everything on defense.”
Carnesecca says strategizing against Ewing gave coaches headaches galore, because “this guy blocked everything but the Lincoln Tunnel.”
Jensen remembers that when Massimino ran practices before playing the Hoyas, “we would practice our offense against seven or eight defenders to try and simulate (Georgetown’s) athleticism. Obviously Patrick was an incredible force.
“We had to rebound with them and manage the tempo, and really play within ourselves,” says Jensen, who was a perfect 5-for-5 (14 points) from the field in the NCAA title game.
The Wildcats won possession on the opening tipoff, and hung with the Hoyas in the first half, despite Ewing’s best efforts to rattle his opponents, including a thunderous alley-oop jam near the end of the period when he caught a Michael Jackson pass. Jensen followed that play by banking in a shot, causing CBS television announcer Billy Packer to exclaim, “Hey, Villanova’s a good team, but they are a great team so far tonight.”
The halftime buzzer sounded with Villanova up by one, 29-28, but before the players exited to their respective locker rooms, Georgetown’s Reggie Williams, playing with a bum ankle, tangled with Everson under the basket, and tempers flared briefly.
“What had happened with Reggie Williams and Chuck Everson at the close of the half, we had gotten under their collar,” says Gary McLain. “That was Big East basketball. Everybody played with grit. Everybody played with pride and was incredibly physical. What I had seen, as a point guard, and as someone that’s a student of the game, was that we were scaring them.”
Most of the other Villanova players, however, thought Georgetown was still showing its confident side — Jensen bluntly says, “They were cocky” — when the teams went in for halftime.
“They were still like, ‘Yeah, we got this,’ ” says Everson of the Hoyas.
“We pretty much was thinking once we get a hold of the game, what we’re trying to do is make turnovers for them,” says Georgetown forward David Wingate, who later had a long NBA career, including reuniting with Ewing on the Knicks. “But Villanova, they were just so steady. Nothing could break them.”
Wingate guarded Dwayne McClain that night, a backand-forth tussle that culminated with the two getting tangled up on the final play of the game. Seconds earlier, Michael Jackson had scored for the Hoyas to bring them within two, and Wingate followed the play by shrewdly knocking the ball into the stands, stopping the clock with two seconds left.
“To be quite honest, we go over those situations just about every day in practice, with two or three seconds left on the clock. We practiced that every day, every year that I was there,” says Wingate. “That was kind of like second nature to me. Just to try to stop the clock. And it worked!”
Wingate adds that he was thinking the Hoyas had a sliver of hope, and he and teammate Horace Broadnax both tried to take a charge in those final seconds. Instead, Wingate and Dwayne McClain fell to the floor, and Jensen
calmly inbounded to McClain who smothered the ball and raised his left fist in victory. Villanova had won, 66-64, and Rupp Arena turned into Wildcat mayhem.
“To be quite honest, both of them was close,” Wingate says of the almost foul calls at the end. “I think I took a charge (with McClain). But the ref was like, ‘Y’all go on with that, the game’s over. Go on home, they got it.’ ”
Massimino, who was apoplectic when Wingate knocked the ball out of bounds, says 30 years later he still has nightmares about the final inbound pass by Jensen.
“We got the ball in, and Dwayne caught it, and fell on his knees. I think he traveled, but that’s OK,” says Massimino. “And he held it for the end of the game. I still never saw the championship game replay in its entirety. I still think we might lose.”
Dwayne McClain says “it was going to be criminal if we were to lose that ballgame.
“Couple seconds left, up two with the possession. Just get the ball, hold onto it for dear life,” says McClain. “I wasn’t going to let it go. I was just waiting for the horn to expire.”
While the blue uniforms danced on the court in a euphoric daze, and Massimino was engulfed by his coaching staff, bedlam broke out on the Main Line, where then Villanova junior Jacqueline Cohen, now a therapist in New York City, says the campus turned into a “full-on outdoor rave.”
Ewing, the NBA-bound center, meanwhile, hugged his Hoya teammates on the court, his chance to end his collegiate career with back-to-back NCAA titles snuffed out just like that.
“Like I always tell people, that record still holds that Villanova had, with their shooting percentage (79%),” says Wingate. “It was something that just happened that day — unfortunately we were on the tail end of it. I tell you this — I was on the winning end and I was on the losing end. I got a chance to see how both of them felt.”
In the losing locker room afterward, Wingate says that Thompson, for all of the perception that he would take his players to task for losing, exuded a calmness.
“Like I always tell people, after that game, people that don’t know Coach Thompson probably thought that he would be mad,” says Wingate. “It was like, ‘I know you guys did the best you could. But, it was one of those days they came out on top and did something unexpected.’ After the game, he just gathered us together, thanked us for the year we had. That was it. There wasn’t no ceremony speech or anything like that.”
Years later, after Massimino’s coaching career wound from Villanova through UNLV to Cleveland State to his current post, the head men’s basketball coach at tiny Northwood University in West Palm Beach, Fla., he took his Northwood players up to Orlando to visit the Magic, when Ewing was an assistant coach.
“Patrick got up, and we exchanged hellos and everything else. Then he got up and talked to the kids,” says the 80-year-old Massimino. “He said, ‘See that man over there? He stole another championship ring from me.’ It was great. He was very positive, and very nice about the whole thing.”
After getting drafted by the Pacers, Dwayne McClain played professionally in France in 1987, the same year his former ’Nova teammate Gary McLain penned the explosive first-person account of his cocaine use, which included McLain’s playing days with the Wildcats during the title run, and during Villanova’s trip to the White House in 1985 when President Ronald Reagan honored the team’s championship.
The SI article, entitled “A Bad Trip,” was something that Dwayne McClain says he found to be “very disappointing” when he heard about its publication overseas.
“It was sad to hear, that Gary sold his story,” says Dwayne McClain, referring to Gary McLain getting paid by SI to write the story. News clips from that time report that McLain received somewhere between $20,000 and $35,000 for the piece.
“It’s something that (Gary McLain) chose to do,” says Dwayne McClain. “He’s responsible for his actions. I still love him like a brother. He’s down here in south Florida now. He’s a motivational speaker, and he does a phenomenal job with it. I love him to death.”
Gary McLain’s other former teammates say they were angered by the article as well, and Jensen says what was most hurtful was the impact on Massimino, who took the news hard. Everson says it was years before that bond was restored. For Massimino, the tick of heartache is still reflected when he talks about McLain’s past.
“I don’t know what kind of personal struggles he had then. All I know is that we did not know anything about what was going on,” says Massimino. “Once he finished college, then we always keep in touch with everybody. He had his struggles and we called his parents many times. That’s neither here nor there. Right now, Gary’s a motivational speaker. Hopefully he’s gotten himself in order.”
Gary McLain, for his part, has turned his life around completely, and, in addition to being a motivational speaker, runs a treatment center in Port St. Lucie where he says he is a therapist.
“I’m responsible for about anywhere from 50 to 80 patients. I’ve been in this business the last 15 years, and I counsel them through the recovery process, while also dealing with other issues, relational, reintegration back into society after entering a facility (for treatment),” says Gary McLain. “It’s beautiful.”
He says he has no regrets, and calls the time period he was battling his drug issues and writing the article a “life lesson.”
“You know what? You don’t want to live anything with regrets. I was 21, 22 years old then,” says McLain. “Simply put, now I take everything one day at a time to this day. I have today. Right now, I’m a better person for all the trials and tribulations that I’ve been through.
“As time goes on, I know that I can say that if it all ended this evening, or whenever it did end, without any predictability, I have lived one of the fullest lives. Some people will always look at Gary McLain in one light. And there are the people that I know that will always cherish accepting me for who I am. You understand?” he adds. “That’s pretty much the people I run with. I’m not really one to be a big fan of bashing Gary McLain.
“I’m my own No. 1 fan. And I’m part of one of the greatest upsets in college history. It still stands the test of time as something that a lot of my Baby Boomers remember. I’ll take that. I’m good with that.”