David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

absorbed the lessons of that famous
game between Fordham and the
University of Massachusetts was a
skinny little guard on the UMass
freshman team named Rick Pitino. He
didn’t play that day. He watched, and his
eyes grew wide. Even now, more than
four decades later, he can name, from
memory, nearly every player on the
Fordham team: Yelverton, Sullivan,
Mainor, Charles, Zambetti. “They came
in with the most unbelievable pressing
team I’d ever seen,” Pitino said. “Five
guys between six feet five and six feet. It
was unbelievable how they covered
ground. I studied it. There is no way they
should have beaten us. Nobody beat us
at the Cage.”