Lefty Driesell, who coached Davidson into national prominence, dead at 92

Lefty Driesell, who coached Davidson College men’s basketball into national prominence more than a half-century ago, died Saturday.

Driesell, who coached Davidson and three other schools to conference championships and NCAA tournament berths in a 40-year career, died at his home in Virginia Beach, Va., family members said. He was 92.

“Lefty was a legendary coach who meant so much to college basketball,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said Saturday in a statement. “His imprint on the game, including as an ACC player and one of the premier coaches in league history, is undeniable.”

He coached for 16 years at Maryland after leaving Davidson and had later stints at James Madison and Georgia State. He finished with a career record of 786-394.

Charles Grice “Lefty” Driesell was hired by Davidson from the high school ranks, after coaching Newport News (Va.) High for the state title in the 1959-60 season.

He was 28 years old and according to several reports, he told a gathering at his introductory news conference on the Davidson campus, “We don’t have anything to sell but education.”

The year before he arrived, Davidson finished 5-19. The Wildcats improved to 9-14 in Driesell’s first season, 1960-61, and were winning 20 games two years later.

Driesell was generally regarded as a masterful recruiter who was able to sell excellent basketball players on the idea of attending a 900-student all-male school in a small town in northern Mecklenburg County.

One of his first recruits was a 6-5 guard named Don Davidson. Driesell supposedly told the young athlete, “I’ll put your name on the front (of your jersey).”

Davidson committed to Davidson, played three seasons, and was later drafted by the NBA’s Boston Celtics.

In the mid 1960s, Driesell recruited a standout guard from Harlem, Charlie Scott, at a time when most major universities in the South did not have Black players on their roster. Scott, who attended a Driesell-run camp at Davidson, initially planned to enroll with the Wildcats but changed his mind and enrolled at North Carolina.

He was the first Black scholarship athlete at North Carolina, earning all-America honors twice.

Driesell and Scott remained close over the years. Scott had just called Driesell two years ago, when Observer columnist Scott Fowler visited Atlanta to interview Scott as part of the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” series.

“No, I never played for Lefty,” Scott told Fowler. “I beat him two times in the Eastern Regional, which stopped him from even getting to the Final Four when he was at Davidson.

“And in fact, he said that’s why he left Davidson and went to Maryland, because we beat him both times, in the Elite Eight twice.”

That happened in the 1968 and ‘69 NCAA tournaments.

Driesell left Davidson in 1969 for the head coaching job at Maryland, where he vowed to make “Maryland the UCLA of the East.”

Maryland had been to the NCAA tournament just once before Driesell arrived, but he guided the Terrapins to eight NCAA berths in his 16 years there.

Driesell was credited with inventing Midnight Madness. In October 1973, he opened Maryland’s fieldhouse to fans at midnight for the first official practice of the season.

He was head coach at Maryland for what is regarded by many as the greatest game in college basketball history — the 1974 ACC championship, in which the Terrapins lost to N.C. State 103-100 in overtime.

N.C. State, led by David Thompson and Tom Burleson, was ranked No. 1 in the country. Maryland, with Len Elmore and John Lucas, was ranked No. 4. But since only league champions got berths in the NCAA tournament at the time, Maryland was shut out. The NCAA added at-large tournament berths the following year.

Driesell was reassigned to administrative duties in 1986 after the death of Maryland standout Len Bias, due to a cocaine overdose.

Two years later, Driesell left for James Madison, where he coached the Dukes to five regular-season conference championships and an NCAA berth. He then moved to Georgia State, where he coached the Panthers into the NCAA tournament once. Driesell retired in 2003.

He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.

Driesell was 88 at the time, and then-Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski expressed an opinion shared by many other coaches, that Driesell should have been elected years earlier.

“Lefty should have been in years ago,” Krzyzewski told reporters in 2018. “It’s an honor he’s deserved for a long time.”

Driesell played center at Duke in the 1950s, after leading Granby High to a Virginia state championship and earning most valuable player honors in the tournament.

On Saturday, Krzyzewski was among those mourning Driesell’s death.

“He lit up every room he walked into, and I loved any time I was able to spend with him,” Krzyzewski said. “He and his late wife Joyce served as splendid examples for all of us, and their impact on not only basketball, but everything they touched, was immeasurable.”

Davidson College athletics officials issued a statement Saturday, saying, “Lefty and his teams accomplished the unthinkable, and catapaulted a program, college and small N.C. town to new heights.”

Justin Parker, who works with the Davidson College athletics department, wrote Saturday on X (formerly Twitter) that employees in the department asked for Driesell to be put on speaker phone when he called.

“We’d listen in, because, well, you just knew there’d be gold,” Parker wrote.

Driesell’s death came nearly a year after the passing of Terry Holland, who Driesell recruited to Davidson as a player. Holland later became an assistant coach with the Wildcats and replaced Driesell when he left Davidson. Holland later went on to a long coaching career at Virginia and then as athletics director at Davidson, Virginia and East Carolina.