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Your Thursday Morning Roundup

Chris Jastrzembski

By Chris Jastrzembski

Published:

Photo credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

816 career college wins. 481 Division I wins. Five appearances in the Elite 8. One national championship. One legendary coach.

The roundup:

Legendary Villanova head coach Rollie Massimino passed away at the age of 82 yesterday at his home in Florida. He had been battling lung cancer for several years.

He was the head coach at Stony Brook and worked as an assistant under Chuck Daly at Penn before spending 19 seasons on the Main Line. He then coached UNLV, Cleveland State, and NAIA’s Keiser University up until his death.

He built Nova’s program on family, and even after he left the school, he was still welcomed with open arms.

Current Wildcats head coach Jay Wright was an assistant under Massimino at Villanova and UNLV, and his former boss was a big influence in his life.

“Obviously, it’s a really sad day here. To the people at Villanova, ‘coach Mass’ was bigger than life. You just thought that if anybody was going to beat cancer and never die, you just thought it was going to be coach Mass,” Wright said. “He loved his players and his staff like his family. That’s what he lived for. That’s what he loved and he did it right to the end.”

Rollie was also at Nova’s latest National Championship win in 2016. A few seconds after Kris Jenkins hit his clutch shot, the first reaction shot went right to Massimino:

YouTube video

Huge respect to Patrick Ewing and Georgetown for their thoughts and prayers to the Villanova community:

Cap it off with some thoughts from Jay Bilas.

They don’t make ’em like Rollie Massimino anymore. And it was wonderful to see him celebrated in his final years in the game. Massimino was the acclaimed coach emeritus at the 2016 Final Four when Villanova and Wright won the national championship. Last season Massimino notched his 800th victory as a head coach and was named a finalist for the Basketball Hall of Fame. This week he died as he lived, as a head coach, a basketball lifer.

Moving on, the Eagles cut cornerbacks Ron Brooks and Mitchell White and signed depth linebackers Carlos Fields and Christian Tago. The team saves $750,000 in salary cap money by cutting Brooks.

The team also claimed former Soul defensive end Jake Metz off waivers from the Buffalo Bills and signed defensive end Steven Means to a one-year contract extension through the 2018 season.

https://twitter.com/MeansBusiness56/status/903056157807439877

Looks like Sidney Jones’s Achilles is healing up well, according to Torrey Smith’s Instagram story:

Former kicker David Akers will be inducted into the Eagles Hall of Fame in October.

Jon Dorenbos is now doing magic with the Saints and Howie should have never traded him.

And finally, Princess Diana wore Eagles apparel back in the day, thanks indirectly to Grace Kelly.

“She thought football was like soccer,” [Jack Edelstein] said. “She asked, `What are your colors? ‘ I said, ‘Green and silver.’ She said, `Those are my favorite colors.’ ”

Edelstein promised to send her some T-shirts. The Eagles acted quickly, gathering a package of workout shorts, golf shirts, and caps adorned with Eagles logos to send her.

“We also sent her a beautiful Eagles jacket, made for her. It was Leonard Tose’s idea. He never went second-class,” Edelstein said of the then-team owner. “She sent me a very nice note, how she’d been wearing them around.”

About a decade later, in January 1991, Diana was spotted wearing a Kelly green varsity-style jacket outside London’s Wetherby Prep School.

Eagles-Jets is tonight at 7. Get ready for some awful football.

The Phillies lost both games of  to the Atlanta Braves, 9-1 and 5-2 respectively.

Jerad Eickhoff’s hurt again, and Freddy Galvis played center field in game two. J.P. Crawford is coming.

Meanwhile, vintage Big Piece was on display in Albuquerque:

The Sixers signed James Michael McAdoo and James Blackmon to separate deals. Blackmon was on the team’s summer league teams this year.

RADIO WARS: 97.5 The Fanatic’s Program Director Matt Nahigian is out, along with a general sales manager.

Yesterday was the Soul’s championship “parade.” This also happened:

The Wings might be coming back?

In other sports news, the Cleveland Browns released Joe Haden. Eagles fans wanted him, but he signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers for three years.

The Kyrie trade is finally done:

In conjunction with finalizing the trade involving Kyrie Irving, Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and a 2018 1st round pick the Celtics acquired via Brooklyn, the Celtics and Cavaliers have agreed to modify the terms of the trade such that Boston will also send Miami’s 2020 2nd round pick to Cleveland. The trade is now complete.

Here’s a video of Klay Thompson playing against actual dogs.

Is Colin Kaepernick getting blackballed?

Executive 2: “From our end, it never got down to (going to the owner). To me, the protests, all that, it wasn’t even a factor for us. It was the ability to fit within our offense. He doesn’t throw the ball great, he’s more of an on-the-move, zone-read type of quarterback. He needs to be in a specific system. For us, it was a system thing. What he does well is totally outside what most teams do. And so here’s my question: I understand the Kaepernick deal, why it’s news, but nobody’s talking about RG3? I know since it’s Kaepernick, it’s what sells, but the problem that RG3 has getting a job is the same as Kaepernick for a lot of teams.”

The same CFL team that tried to hire Art Briles won’t sign Johnny Manziel because of “too many red flags.” Hmmm.

In the news, Philly is suing US Attorney General Jeff Sessions over their sanctuary city status.

I still don’t like Joel Osteen.

An ESPN college football analyst quit his job due to concerns over head injuries in the sport.

Chris Jastrzembski
Chris Jastrzembski

Chris is the Morning Roundup writer on Crossing Broad. He recently graduated from Syracuse University and was the video coordinator for the men's lacrosse team. He's previously covered the Philadelphia Eagles for Philadelphia Magazine’s Birds 24/7 and KYW Newsradio 1060. Chris is also a Production Assistant at ESPN and the Managing Editor for the college lacrosse website College Crosse.

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