City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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GLASSBORO, N.J. -- One by one, the members of Rowan’s 1996 national championship men’s basketball team strode out to center court at Esbjornson Gymnasium at halftime of the team’s game against La Salle on Saturday afternoon.

Each time Rowan alum Dan Baker, the longtime Phillies public address announcer and Big 5 Hall of Famer, read a name, the 1,150 in attendance showed their appreciation for the players, managers and coaches who’d come back to celebrate the 20th anniversary of perhaps the school’s greatest athletics achievement.

The only problem was, someone was missing: head coach John Giannini, who brought his Explorers back to the school that first gave him a head coaching opportunity back in 1989.

“Rowan’s been unbelievable in their organization--if you have 1000 things planned, it’s natural to oversee one,” Giannini said. “I just didn’t know I was supposed to be out there.”

So the photo was taken without Giannini, though one would imagine he’ll get plenty of opportunities at the team reunion banquet taking place that evening. Count that as the only thing that went wrong during a day of old friends and memories, and some basketball as well.

It was a game that was more than a year in the making, a rare road trip for a Division I program to a Division III gym.

Giannini said he was doing the game “selfish” reasons, though in trying to highlight his background and the school that gave him his first opportunity, the gesture was anything but.

“I thought it was going to be a very special day, this ended up being even better than I anticipated--and it’s only halfway over,” said Joe Cassidy, who was an assistant under Giannini for five years and has run the program since his predecessor’s departure following that national championship. “An hour before the game, usually in Division III basketball, there’s nobody here and there’s nothing going on. Today, an hour before the game this place was hopping.”

As would be expected when a Division I program meets a Division III opponent, La Salle won fairly handily, by a final score of 83-53.

But it wasn't quite as easy as that final score indicated. Rowan battled early and led 13-11 near the midway point of the first half; it was just a six-point game a minute before halftime.

“It was a big game for me, and it was a big game for them, and you could tell,” Giannini said. “I thought the atmosphere was great, and it certainly was very meaningful for me, but Rowan played with great purpose.”

Considering how close things were in the first half, it would have been understandable if Giannini's halftime absence was due to an impassioned locker room speech.

"I’ve been in some halftime locker rooms with Coach Giannini when his team’s not playing particularly well, so I’m sure he had some choice words for the young men," Cassidy said with a laugh. "Obviously they responded in the second half.”

Though Giannini was coaching from the visitor’s bench, it was actually not an unfamiliar vantage point; apparently that used to be the home bench during the first “three or four” years of Giannini’s tenure there, he said, though they moved it to put the visitors closer to the student section during sold-out games--and thus make their opponents shoot potentially important foul shots directly into the Rowan fans.

Either way, Giannini wouldn’t have noticed; to him, this was much more like returning home than to a former place of business.

“There’s nothing in that gym I wouldn’t be used to--if you handed me the mop, I’d be used to it,” Giannini said. “There’s nothing in that gym that’s going to take me by surprise.”

Afterwards, all the former Rowan players in attendance met with Giannini, who had dozens and dozens of people trying just to say hello, to reminisce about the past, and to talk about the game.

This was more than just the reunion of one team, of one program.

It was the reunion of an entire community.

“I see Cass and Laff enough where that’s not anything unusual,” Giannini said, referencing Cassidy and assistant Dave Lafferty, who also served on Giannini's staff during the championship season.  “But to see the multitude of former faculty and alums and former players and former townspeople that used to come to the games, meant more to me than I could possibly say.”