Villanova's Harry Perretta Reflects On 700th Win
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It was a special afternoon in our nation's capital on Sunday for Villanova University women's basketball coach Harry Perretta.
His Wildcats rallied from down 12 points in the fourth quarter to beat Georgetown, 63-60. The victory was the 700th of Perretta's coaching career.
"It was an amazing win," Perretta tells KYW Newsradio. "If you look at the stat sheet, you tell yourself you might win that game one time out of ten. Then we got down 12 with eight minutes to go and we're not a good offensive team, that's what made it more amazing, that we were able to score that many points in the closing minutes to overtake them and win the game."
Listen to the entire interview with Villanova's Harry Perretta:
Every one of Perretta's wins has come on the Main Line, this is his 38th season as the head coach of the Wildcats. He is just the 14th head coach in Division I women's basketball history to reach the 700-win plateau, but it is a milestone he takes in stride.
"It means I've been coaching a long time and had some really good players play for me for a long time," Perretta says. "That's really all it can mean. I'm not winning 30 games a year, I'm not doing anything like that. But I've been there awhile and had some pretty good players."
Perretta talks about staying focused as the big number approached.
"You try to put it out of your mind, but you can't, people keep bringing it up," Perretta says. "And people want you to make it actually more than you want to make it. Kind of interesting, your friends are really vested in the whole thing. There were a lot of people there (at Georgetown) that either played for me in the past or friends of mine who drove down to Washington (Sunday) to see the game, even though our best player had gotten hurt and wasn't playing. They still came hoping that we would win."
As you can imagine, when you compile 700 wins in a career, a few tend to really stand out.
"The win over UConn to win the Big East Championship (2003), that's really special," Perretta says. "The year we won our first Big East Tournament with Shelly Pennefather (1986). Those games kind of stand out a lot."
So how has he changed as a coach from win #1 to win #700?
"I think I've just mellowed a lot," Perretta says. "I think I've learned to see things for what they really are. I've learned to devalue winning, because you realize that just winning isn't the right thing. You've got to get kids to go to class and you've got to teach them about life. So I think I've grown in those areas."
Sunday's win also improved the Wildcats to 17-10. They are 10-6 in the Big East and that has them in a three-way tie for second place.
Perretta goes for win #701 on Friday against Xavier.
