MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University can now claim two major professional championship coaches.
 
Joe Stydahar was the first Mountaineer alum to lead a major professional sports franchise to a title when his Los Angeles Rams outlasted the Cleveland Browns 24-17 in the 1951 NFL Championship game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
 
Last night, Joe Mazzulla joined him when his Boston Celtics defeated the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 in game five of the NBA finals to clinch the series 4-1. It's Boston's 18^th NBA title, making the 35-year-old Mazzulla the youngest coach to win an NBA title since 34-year-old Bill Russell did it for the Celtics in 1968.
 
Mazzulla is also the fifth-youngest coach in NBA history to win a championship. The Johnston, Rhode Island, native is three years older than John Kundla was when he led the Minneapolis Lakers to a title in 1950.
 
George Senesky was 34 when he coached the Philadelphia Warriors to a championship in 1956 and Alex Hannum was 35 when he led the St. Louis Hawks to a crown in 1958.
 
Among modern era coaches, Pat Riley was 37 when he guided the Los Angeles Lakers to the 1982 NBA title over the Philadelphia 76ers.
 
Mazzulla, in just his second season coaching the Celtics, owns a 121-43 regular season record and is now 27-12 in the playoffs following last year's Eastern Conference finals loss to the Miami Heat.
 
Boston was 16-3 in this year's playoffs after posting a league-best 64-18 regular season record. Mazzulla is younger than several players still in the league, including 38-year-old Celtics center Al Horford. 
 
"You get very few chances in life to be great," Mazzulla said afterward. "And you get very few chances in life to carry on the ownership and the responsibilities of what these banners are and all the great people and great players that came here.
 
"When you have few chances in life, you just got to take the bull by the horns, and you just got to own it."
 
Now, Mazzulla can look forward to offseason meniscus surgery and then a family trip to Israel later this summer.
 
He said during an NBC docuseries in May that he would take his family back to Jerusalem if his team won the championship this year.
 
"We're flying to Jerusalem, and we're walking from Jericho to Jerusalem," he said. "We went last year, and we stopped right along this mountainside of the Kidron Valley, and you can see a path in between the mountains. The only way (Jesus) could've gotten from Jericho to Jerusalem was this valley, and right there I was like, 'We have to walk that.'"
 
Mazzulla is a devout Catholic who regularly speaks about his faith.