Princeton University Athletics
MEDICINE MAN
June 16, 2000 | General
His first name is Mason, which has something to do with stone. His last name is Rocca, which sort of speaks for itself.
Standing 6' 9" and weighing in at 235 pounds, he certainly looks like a Mason Rocca.
It's just that he keeps having problems with pieces of the Rocca.
When he tells you that it's mostly timing that has limited his minutes in his four years at Princeton, he's almost 100% wrong. Were it not for injuries, Mason Rocca would be putting the finishing touches on a career to rival those of a Steve Goodrich '98 or a Gabe Lewullis '99 or a Brian Earl '99.
Rocca, the lone senior on the 1999-2000 Tiger basketball team, had his latest setback corrected with ankle surgery on Dec. 27. He was expected to miss six weeks, though as he put it, "I've always been on the low side of what the doctors say." Translation: Expect to see him back well before mid-February.
"It's been frustrating," he says. "I'm happy I'll have a chance to play during the Ivy League season and maybe have an impact."
Maybe have an impact? Mason Rocca is as valuable to his team as perhaps any player in the country. Consider these numbers as Princeton headed into its break for first-semester exams with a 7-7 record, achieved against a brutally tough schedule that ranked 13th in Division I.
* Princeton was 5-2 with Rocca and 2-5 without him
* Princeton was averaging 64.6 points per game with him and 51.7 points per game without him
* Rocca led the team in offensive rebounds despite being seventh in minutes played
* With Rocca as the perfect complement to center Chris Young, Princeton knocked off College of Charleston, Bucknell, Texas Christian, Rutgers and Alabama-Birmingham in a 15-day span.
"I don't like to make estimates about how I would've maybe changed things if I'd been healthy the whole season," Rocca says. "I think we have a very strong team without me. The stats may show that we're doing better with me, but I don't put much faith in that. I think it's a strong team without me, and hopefully I can add a little."
When healthy in his career, Mason Rocca has been as good as any other player on any of the Princeton teams for which he's played. Steve Goodrich fouls out against Wake Forest during Mason's sophomore year? No problem. Rocca wins the game with a perfect backdoor pass to Mitch Henderson '98. Need someone to step up in a key Ivy League game against Dartmouth last year? No problem. How about 25 points on 4 for 6 three-point shooting? Need someone to match up with a very physical Georgetown team in last year's NIT? No problem. Put Mason down for 18 rebounds, the most by a Princeton player in the last 35 years.
The truth is that Rocca is the best rebounder Princeton has had in decades, its quickest and best ball-handling big man since Kit Mueller '91, a nearly 50% shooter for his career and a horse who can play 40 minutes or more a night. He has dominated games--like the Georgetown game last year or the Rutgers game this year (28 points, 13 rebounds)--in ways few Princeton big men in recent years could dream of doing.
Of course, there has also been one injury after another during his high school and collegiate years, and even when he's played, it's often been in pain. He's broken his wrist twice. He has had a stress fracture in one of his vertebrae, an injury that forced him to spend three months in a Plexiglas brace from his waist to mid-chest. He has had multiple ankle sprains. He has had multiple groin pulls. And now he has the ankle surgery.
Injuries wiped out his freshman, junior and senior year preseasons. A broken wrist cost him six weeks sophomore year. He has spent far too much time in his career on the bench in street clothes.
Rocca has been limited to 392 career points and 1,217 career minutes. Goodrich, who started every game of his four-year career, finished with 1,209 career points and 2,973 minutes, while Earl, who like Goodrich played four years without so much as a bad cold, had 1,428 points and 4,000 minutes.
"When I first came here freshman year, I thought I might be able to contribute right away," he says. "Then I sprained my ankle. Regardless of that, though, I don't think I could have come into the program then and made an immediate impact, not with the guys that were here then. When you come to college, you don't realize how tough the level of play is. I knew then that I wanted to challenge myself. That was the great thing about playing with those guys, guys like Sydney [Johnson '97] and Stevie and Gabe and Brian and Stags [James Mastaglio '98]. They forced you to raise the level of your game. I attribute a lot of improvement in how I played to them."
Rocca was an all-state soccer and basketball player at Evanston High School, outside Chicago. After seriously considering Penn and Harvard, his father's alma mater, Rocca became the latest Chicago export to Princeton, joining a tradition that includes Mueller, Rick Hielscher '95, Craig Robinson '83 and John Rogers '80.
"I gained so much playing against Stevie everyday," Rocca says of Goodrich. "My hook shot is a product of trying to score against him. He was so physical, such a good shot blocker. When I first got here, I couldn't score against him at all. He forced me to get better."
Despite all the injuries, Rocca wouldn't trade his Princeton experience for anything. An electrical engineering major, Rocca has the highest grade-point average on team. He has built a remote control car, and he's currently working on a project using super computers to create something called Boolean Variable Equations to model situations like traffic problems and weather.
He also spent the time during the exam break rehabbing his ankle, spending two and three hours a day in the athletic training room.
"I can't help but wonder how my career might have gone," says Rocca. "Maybe it's just been bad luck. I've been injured my whole life, maybe I just have a dysfunctional body. I'll still have a chance this year, though, and I'm happy about that."
So are the rest of the Tigers. A chance is all he's ever needed.
by Jerry Price