25,000 Cheer New Champions in Philadelphia

“Mission Complete,” read the sign waving in the biting wind as the city welcomed home Villanova’s national championship basketball team with a 10-block parade and a rally Tuesday.

Coach Rollie Massimino and the Wildcats, 66-64 upset winners over defending champion Georgetown Monday night at Lexington, Ky., rode in a flatbed truck, holding aloft the NCAA trophy.

Joe Chase, of the city representative’s office, said that police estimated a crowd of 25,000 as the three-truck parade circled City Hall to a plaza for the rally.

“I am proud of you and the city is proud of you,” said Mayor W. Wilson Goode, speaking by telephone from a meeting in Pittsburgh. “I’d like to commend this outstanding team for an outstanding job.”

The festivities had spilled downtown from the parties on the university’s suburban Main Line campus that roared well into Tuesday morning.

Radnor Township police were bolstered by 50 state troopers, about 40 campus security officers and a handful of Delaware County sheriff’s deputies as they kept watch over the campus revelries.

Township Police Chief Maurice Hennessy said Tuesday that there had been 21 arrests, most on drunk-and-disorderly charges. Hennessy said that two officers had been injured slightly, one bitten and the other hit with a sign.

“I think most of the troublemakers were from outside,” Hennessy said, adding that 7 of the 21 people arrested were students.

Sixteen people were taken to Bryn Mawr Hospital for treatment of injuries that involved mostly cuts, a few fractures and some sprains, according to a nursing supervisor.

As the fans, some of them perched in trees, chanted, “Villanova is No. 1” and waved banners that said, “What’s a Hoya?” university President Father John Driscoll said: “Speaking for all the students and faculty of Villanova, alumni and friends, we are unspeakingly proud of Coach Massimino and his team.”

Said Massimino: “It is really a pleasure and an honor for me and our team to be the national champions.

“They deserve it. They did it. They shot 79% (in the final game). I told you when we left school on Wednesday that we were going to have a heck of a party. And they did a tremendous job and won the national championship.”

Massimino said that the parade and rally at the plaza were “mind-boggling.”

“On behalf of Villanova University, I think this was won not only for us as players, as coaches, as family, but it was won for Villanova University and all you people and especially for Philadelphia,” he said.

Center Ed Pinckney, who had 16 points and 6 rebounds and played Georgetown All-American Patrick Ewing to a standstill, spoke for the team.

“There wasn’t anybody in the country but all you people that believed that we could do it, and we did it, and Villanova is No. 1,” he said.