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Princeton University Athletics
Mason Rocca '00 Signs With Armani Jeans Milano
June 27, 2008 | Men's Basketball
Former Tiger captain Mason Rocca '00, a standout player in Italy for most of this decade, recently signed a two-year contract with Armani Jeans Milano in Italy's top division. He is the second former Princeton player to sign a two-year deal in Italy in recent weeks, joining Judson Wallace '05, who signed with Benetton Treviso last month.
Rocca joins Bill Bradley '65, current head coach Sydney Johnson '97 and Steve Goodrich '98 as former Tigers who have played for Milano.
Rocca, a power forward originally from Evanston, Ill., has played one previous season in the Euroleague, the 2006-07 season for Eldo Napoli, during which he led the league in offensive rebounding with an average of 3.5 per game. He has spent all but one season in his professional career in Italy, first with Aurora Basket Jesi, which he helped gain promotion to the top league in Italy, and then the last four seasons with Napoli, where he finished as the team captain.
Last season, Rocca averaged 11.2 points and 7.9 rebounds per game in 33 Italian League appearances for Napoli.
A naturalized Italian citizen, he also represented Italy at the World Championships in Japan in 2006, where he averaged 6.3 points and five rebounds in 17 minutes per game. He started for the Italians in each game in Japan, including a 94-85 defeat against the United States in which the Italian team held a nine-point halftime lead.
At Princeton, Rocca captained the Tigers to a National Invitation Tournament appearance in 2000 and played on Princeton's NCAA tournament and Ivy League championship teams in both 1997 and 1998. In the 1999 NIT, he had 18 rebounds in Princeton's first-round win over Georgetown, the most rebounds by a Princeton player since Bradley had 21 against Columbia in 1965. Rocca was a Princeton teammate of current Tiger coaches Sydney Johnson '97 and Brian Earl '99.