The text messages started coming soon after the news spread that Rollie Massimino, his friend and his coaching rival from a half century ago, had died after a long battle with cancer. But many of the men reaching out to Hubie Brown didn't know Massimino as the legendary Villanova coach who shocked the world.
They knew him as a junior varsity coach at Cranford High School in the late '50s and early '60s. They knew him as a teacher, first and foremost, but also the man that Brown describes as "one of the best teachers of basketball to ever come out of New Jersey.