On his last road weekend, Harry Perretta wanted to eat steak and wear sweatpants. He dined at Spencer's, an upscale Omaha, Nebraska, steakhouse with white tablecloths, and ordered the 24-ounce porterhouse. Perretta is retiring after 42 years as Villanova's women's basketball coach, so the stories were about to flow like a fine bottle of Chianti.
Quietly, almost invisibly, Perretta has been involved in some of the sport's most seismic events. When Connecticut's 70-game winning streak came crashing down in 2003, it was at the hands of Villanova. And remember the 1998 controversy over that staged shot from an injured Nykesha Sales so she could break UConn's scoring record? Perretta is the one who facilitated that for his old pal Geno Auriemma.
But on this particular night in Omaha, there were more important things to discuss. Like Perretta's longtime angst over the cancellation of "All My Children." (Perretta loved the soap opera so much that if he was in a meeting, he'd have someone watch it for him and take notes.) Or the jokes about what Perretta should do post-retirement, including becoming Joel Embiid's social-media adviser. (Perretta is tech-illiterate.)
"I've gravitated to him," said Creighton coach Jim Flanery, who dined with Perretta in Omaha last week. "As much as he's eccentric and quirky, he's also very wise. You don't do things as long as he does without seeing things other people don't see."
When Perretta started at Villanova back in 1978, head women's basketball coach was a part-time job. He was 22 years old, two months removed from college, and would come to practice in boots because he had a morning job laying cement. Perretta, 64, has since won 782 games, been to 11 NCAA tournaments, and made an appearance in the AIAW Final Four in 1982. Ninety-nine percent of his players have graduated. On Friday, he'll begin a quest for his fourth Big East tournament title when Villanova plays Xavier.
In 2002, legendary Tennessee coach Pat Summitt called Perretta to ask for help in learning his motion offense. At first, Perretta thought someone was playing a joke on him. He asked a few people to listen to the message to make sure it was actually Pat Summitt.
"Her whole staff came up for a couple of days to learn the offense," said longtime Villanova associate head coach Joe Mullaney, "and he actually became pretty good friends with her."
His team made it all the way to the Elite Eight that 2002-03 season, which was hosted by Tennessee. Summitt had Villanova over for a cookout and gave Perretta an orange tie. ''He left me for an older woman,'' Auriemma famously quipped that week.
A few days later, the Volunteers beat the Wildcats, denying Perretta a trip to the Final Four.
Perretta is also known for coaching former Wade Trophy winner Shelly Pennefather, one of the best women's basketball players in the 1980s. Pennefather eventually gave up a professional career overseas to become a cloistered nun. Her strict vows allow only one family visit per year, but Sister Rose Marie was allowed one extra annual visit: Harry Perretta.
MORE: Whatever happened to Villanova star Shelly Pennefather?
Villanova struggled at the beginning of the season and lost its first three, and Perretta, who's known to operate without a filter, has said that the 17-12 Wildcats probably won't make the NCAA tournament. On Feb. 23, his final home game was against No. 12 DePaul, the top team in the conference. More than 50 alums planned to be there to say goodbye. Sister Rose Marie got word of it through a note from former teammate Lynn Tighe, and promptly sent her old coach a letter. "I'm praying for you this weekend," Sister Rose Marie wrote.
Villanova upset DePaul 76-58. Madison Siegrist broke Sister Rose's freshman scoring record, which had stood for 36 years, in the game.
"It was like a Disney movie the way everything went perfectly," Perretta said. "We even had a kid make a half-court shot in the game to win a television. ... I'm like, 'Come on, what are the chances of all that happening in one game?'"
DePaul coach Doug Bruno had his team, still stinging from the loss, come back out of the locker room for Perretta's postgame ceremony. Bruno gave Perretta a year's subscription to The Daily Racing Form as a going-away present. Besides watching "All My Children" and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," horse racing is Perretta's other favorite hobby.
Villanova gave Perretta a trip to the Kentucky Derby; Penn coach Mike McLaughlin gifted him a piece of the original floor at the Palestra, the oldest major college arena still in use today.
Flanery, who said Perretta told him that UConn will probably beat his Creighton team by 50 next year when the Huskies return to the Big East, nevertheless got him a parting gift too: a box of Omaha Steaks.
Perretta, 64, will miss the relationships the most. He loved practices far more than games because it was a time when he could joke with his players. And, of course, yell at them.
For decades, people would tell Perretta he was too intense. Now, it seems as if all that energy he burned took something out of him.
"My body's just breaking down," he said. "I'm tired all the time, exhausted all the time. I used to be able to bounce back a lot faster than I do now. I took a two-hour nap this afternoon because I was so tired.
"I don't even want to say I was a good coach, but I don't think I'm near where I was five years ago in terms of mentally seeing stuff. I don't see stuff the way I used to. There's a lot of things that factored into this. I just think it was the right time physically. I can't stand in practice for two hours anymore. I can't physically stand. So you kind of know when your body tells you that kind of stuff."
As sort of a transition, Perretta will stay on at Villanova through 2020-21 in an administrative role, serving as special assistant to the athletic director. Everything in his adult life has been about Villanova. His wife, Helen, played for him in the 1980s.
Around 1995, they started dating. Perretta was taking care of his mother, who had heart problems. A month after Millie Perretta died in 1996, Helen stopped by his house. When she turned around, Perretta was on one knee, proposing to her.
"His mother was the most important thing to him," Helen said. "After she passed, he could move on."
They have two boys -- Stephen and Michael -- who attend Villanova. Stephen is coaching a JV girls team in the Philadelphia area, and Perretta will probably spend some of his time watching his son follow his path.
"I just look at it as, I was serious but I always tried to be not too serious," Perretta said. "I yelled and screamed, but it's always been an act. I could yell and scream at somebody, then the next second hug them. That's the way my personality was. I tried to be intense to show them about being intense.
"I guess people tell me I'm unconventional. I just try to be who I am. I don't try to put on any fake stuff or anything. You either like it or you don't. I don't know any other way of being."