The Upset

In the wake of Villanova's 1985 championship, Massimino's assistant coaches were hot properties. "When we won the title, the players handled themselves with class in interviews, and Rollie went on television and talked about the family atmosphere, and everybody wanted a piece of that," says Lappas. Massimino, ever the patriarch, was happy to push his guys into jobs.

Buonaguro, who had joined Massimino's staff in 1977 when he was 24, was hired at Fairfield shortly after the '85 tide game. His first team went 24-7 and played in the NCAA tournament. His second went 15-16 but also made the tournament. His next four teams averaged 20 losses. "Mitch is a great X's-and-O's guy and a great recruiter," says Plansky, "but a woeful manager. When he got his own reins, it was mass chaos." Buonaguro resigned under pressure after the 1990-91 season. He spent five years as an assistant at Texas A&M, seven at Cleveland State under Massimino and now, at 50, is an assistant at North Carolina- Greensboro. Along the way he lost his marriage and his naivete, yet continues to live the life of a bench soldier. "I've had a real roller coaster since Villanova," he says. "It's a very tough business at times."

In 1987 Marbach was hired at Canisius, dragging his pregnant wife, Denise, with him, even though her CPA career was blossoming. "I was so consumed with climbing up the coaching ladder, that I lost sight with things," says Marbach. "I should never have gone." His teams went 49-94 in five seasons, and he was fired after the '91-92 season. At that point Marbach, now 51, got off the coaching treadmill. He went to Albany, N.Y., where Denise was a partner at Coopers & Lybrand. Marbach sold real estate and did radio commentary on Siena games for five years. In '97 the family moved back to the Philadelphia area, where Marbach is a junior high school athletic director and coaches his youngest daughter, Elizabeth.

Lappas was the last to leave. He had joined the Villanova staff straight from coaching at Harry S. Truman High in the Bronx. One year after hosting his annual Final Four party in Queens, he was on the floor in Rupp Arena, hugging Massimino after the buzzer. "Unbelievable!" he says, recounting the swift climb. "A year earlier I would have been happy if you'd told me I could get a ticket to the Final Four."

After four years at Villanova he became Massimino's top assistant at age 34. Then Manhattan hired him, and Lappas righted a struggling program, winning 25 games in his fourth—and final—year. When Massimino left Villanova after the 1991-92 season, Lappas replaced him (after Pete Gillen, then coach at Xavier, turned the job down). Once like father and son, Massimino and Lappas have not spoken since.

"He told me not to take the Villanova job," says Lappas, 50. "He said, 'It's a bad job, and I don't want you to take it.' I believe he was so angry at Villanova at that time that he didn't want anybody he knew to take the job. And then I took it. I had to take it."

Massimino says, "That story is not true." He says that Gillen should have taken the job, and since he didn't, John Olive, another former Villanova assistant, should have gotten it. Massimino describes Lappas's move as a disruption in the line of succession. "Lappas wanted to do his thing," he says, "and separate the old stuff from the new stuff."

Lappas won 174 games in nine seasons at Villanova, including the school's only Big East tournament title (in 1995). However, he won just two NCAA tournament games and left under fire after the 2000-01 season. He just finished a 10-19 season in his third year at Massachusetts. Others have tried unsuccessfully to bring him together with Massimino. "I feel bad about it," Lappas says of their estrangement. "Very bad."

VI. GIZMO

On a midwinter morning Gary McLain escaped a heavy, humid rain and walked through the front doors of a West Palm Beach, Fla., hotel, dressed in long khaki shorts and a billowing white T-shirt. In 1985 he had the joyful, expressive face of a child, and that face is still there, now covered by layers of hard living. He has done few interviews in the last 19 years, but he has agreed to talk to SI because "life is beautiful right now, and I want everyone to understand who I am today and that there's a bigger story to my life than one article."