Villanova Time Capsule: Penn State Head Coach Mike Rhoades’ Wildcats Ties

Penn State men’s basketball head coach Mike Rhoades grew up two hours northwest of Philadelphia in Mahanoy City, Pa., and going to games at the Palestra as a child helped him fall in love with the sport. Rhoades’ grandfather, Mark Holland, played basketball and baseball at Villanova from 1927 to 1930, and Rhoades described after Penn State’s loss to Pitt at the Palestra on Sunday, Nov. 9 how Holland introduced him to the Philadelphia Big 5 with a game at the historic arena.

“My grandfather, he played at Villanova, he played in this building. All these years later I get to coach here. It’s pretty cool,” Rhoades said. “I remember being eight years old, I think it was 1980, my grandfather brought me to Temple/Saint Joe’s here and the thing I remember most was when they threw the streamers out. I’ve watched a lot of games here, it’s an honor to play here, it’s an honor to bring a team from Pennsylvania here.”

Lost in the Mists of Time

Few records survive from that era of Villanova basketball. There aren’t any box scores, schedules or photographs. The Wildcats played under their second-ever head coach, John “Rube” Cashman, who according to Sports Reference led them to a 4-11 record during the 1927-28 campaign, his second season. The Wildcats published “100 Seasons of Villanova Basketball” ahead of the 2019 season, which documents how a fire at Tolentine Hall on Jan. 28, 1928 destroyed dorms and classrooms, forcing the University to convert their gym, Alumni Hall, into a space for laboratory classes.

Villanova wasn’t able to host any on-campus home games the following season and went 6-8, leading to Cashman’s ouster; former player Doc Jacobs, who starred at center for the Wildcats took over the following season, Holland’s last, and improved the team’s record to 11-6. Rhoades described how his grandfather’s stories from his Villanova days helped trace the evolution of the sport. The Wildcats played as an independent program in those days and, even if they competed against programs like Penn, Temple or Saint Joseph’s, the Big 5 as we know it today wouldn’t exist for another quarter century.

“I remember watching games, Philadelphia basketball, Big 5 games with him all the time, and he would tell me stories. He played basketball and baseball at Villanova, just grandfather stories and all that stuff,” Rhoades said. “It was way back there, and the game was a lot different than it is now, but I remember being a kid coming to games at the Palestra and falling in love with basketball, and this is a place where that happened to a lot of people like myself.”