When Lefty Driesell took the job as men's basketball coach at the University of Maryland in 1969, it had been 11 years since the Terrapins had appeared in the NCAA Tournament.
The bald-headed, bold-talking Mr. Driesell immediately declared that his team — which had an 8-18 record the year before he arrived — “has the potential to be the UCLA of the East.” At the time, UCLA was in the midst of an unprecedented streak in which the John Wooden-coached team won 10 national titles in 12 years.
When people stopped laughing, Mr. Driesell set out to achieve his lofty goals – and almost succeeded. In his 17 seasons at Maryland, he won more than 500 games and led his teams to Atlantic Coast Conference and National Invitation Tournament titles, although his efforts did not result in a Final Four appearance, let alone an NCAA title.
With additional coaching stints at Davidson College, James Madison University and Georgia State, Mr. Driesell was the first and only coach with 100 wins at four colleges. Broadcaster Billy Packer called him “the greatest program developer in college basketball history.”
But his success was often overshadowed by his volcanic temper and off-court controversies, most notably the death of star player Len Bias from a cocaine overdose in 1986. For years – until his final induction in 2018 – Mr Driesell was considered the best coach won't be in inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
He was 92 when he died Feb. 17 at his home in Virginia Beach, said his grandson Ty Anderson. No reason was given.
Mr. Driesell (pronounced druh-ZELL) revitalized basketball programs everywhere he went and only had a losing record three times in 41 years as a head coach.
At Maryland, Mr. Driesell built the Terrapins into a perennial force in the ACC, long considered the strongest college basketball conference in the country, competing against Virginia, North Carolina, North Carolina State and his alma mater, Duke.
When he retired in 2003, his 786 Division I wins trailed only Hall of Fame coaches Bob Knight, Adolph Rupp and Dean Smith.
“When you talk about legends and icons in college basketball, you better include one Charles 'Lefty' Driesell,” broadcaster Dick Vitale told Sports Illustrated in 2017.
In his third season at Maryland, Mr. Driesell invented Midnight Madness, the now-ritual practice of opening the team's fall practices at the earliest opportunity.
Three minutes after midnight on Oct. 15, 1971 – the first day basketball teams could practice under NCAA rules – Mr. Driesell had his players run on the track at Byrd Stadium for a mandatory one-mile run. The scene was illuminated only by the headlights of cars – yet 800 reveler students came out to watch.
A year later, 3,000 fans turned out for the team's midnight contest at Cole Field House in College Park, Maryland, starting a tradition that has now become nearly ubiquitous on college campuses.
“I enjoy that people still do it,” Mr. Driesell told The Washington Post in 2008. “But I should have gotten a patent on it.”
He developed a reputation as one of college basketball's greatest recruiters, with seven of his Maryland players – Bias, Tom McMillen, Len Elmore, John Lucas, Brad Davis, Buck Williams and Albert King – selected in the first round of the NBA draft became. McMillen later became a Rhodes Scholar and a member of Congress; Elmore became a lawyer and TV basketball commentator; Lucas was a head coach in the NBA.
Mr. Driesell's teams won the NIT championship in 1972 and the ACC tournament a year later. Still, he never won a national championship and drew plenty of criticism for his on-field antics, such as stomping on his jacket on the sideline after a referee's call against his team. He chafed at the notion that he was a savvy, hustling recruiter rather than an effective court instructor, like his colleagues Smith of North Carolina, Mike Krzyzewski of Duke or Digger Phelps of Notre Dame.
Mr. Driesell is notoriously thin-skinned and repeatedly told critics, “I can coach.”
When a Sports Illustrated article described Maryland's “Helper Offense,” he sent a letter to the magazine with statistics that proved his team had a selfless, disciplined offense.
“Once, after a particularly critical column,” Post sports columnist Ken Denlinger wrote in 1983, “Driesell charged at me in the Terrapin locker room, jabbed a finger into my chest and challenged me to a fight in front of Cole Field House.” It never came off.”
For better or worse, Mr. Driesell's personality was formed as a young man. While coaching high school basketball in his native Virginia, the affable and persuasive Mr. Driesell moonlighted as a door-to-door salesman of World Book encyclopedias. He rarely took “no” for an answer – and was credited with selling more encyclopedia sets one year than anyone else in the state.
“I just kept knocking on doors until I found people who wanted to buy what I was selling,” he told the Post in 1983.
He later applied the same tireless charisma to recruiting and coaching basketball players.
“He was just an incredible force,” McMillen, once the most recruited high school player in the country, told Sports Illustrated in 2017. “He was like a dog that grabs your pant leg and won't let go. He's just adamant.”
However, the player who might have been Mr. Driesell's greatest recruit never played for him. In 1974, Mr. Driesell signed Virginia high school star Moses Malone on a scholarship to play for Maryland. But on the day classes were scheduled to begin, Malone dropped out and signed a professional contract with the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association. He became the first player to rise from high school to the professional ranks.
Malone would have joined a team that Mr. Driesell had built into a national powerhouse. His 1973–74 squad was perhaps his best squad ever, but he is remembered more for the game he lost than the 23 games he won.
Led by Elmore, Lucas, McMillen and Maurice Howard, the Terrapins defeated Duke and North Carolina in the first two rounds of the ACC Tournament. On March 9, 1974, they played North Carolina State for the conference championship.
The Terrapins had a 23-4 record and were ranked No. 4 nationally.
“Lefty’s team was probably as good as 20 national champions that year,” Krzyzewski told Athletic in 2018.
North Carolina State, led by 6-foot-4 senior David Thompson and 7-foot-4 center Tom Burleson, entered the game as the top-ranked team in the country with a 25-1 record. Due to conference rules at the time, only the winner would advance to the NCAA Tournament.
Maryland took an early lead and led by five points at halftime. In the second half, NC State's standout Burleson threw hook shot after hook shot and finished with 38 points, his highest score of the game. When the buzzer sounded at the end of regular time, the score was 86.
“I remember turning around on the bench once,” NC State coach Norm Sloan told Sports Illustrated decades later, “and just saying out loud, 'Gosh, this is a hell of a game.' ”
Mr. Driesell was reluctant to make any substitutions during the five-minute overtime: McMillen and Howard each scored 22 points, Elmore and Lucas each had 18. But with seconds left in overtime, an exhausted Lucas missed a free throw and threw an errant pass. NC State held on to win 103-100.
The high-scoring contest, played before the shot clock and the three-point shot, is considered one of the greatest games in college basketball history.
“I don’t think anyone will ever forget this damn thing,” Mr. Driesell said later.
In a departure from tradition, Mr. Driesell walked to the NC State bus to congratulate Sloan's team.
“I’m proud of all of you,” he said. “You played a great game tonight and beat my team. Now you better go and win the national championship.”
NC State reached its final game by defeating seven-time defending champion UCLA 80-77 in double overtime. The Wolfpack then defeated Marquette 76-64 to win the national title.
“We wouldn’t have been in the Final Four if we hadn’t escaped that night,” Sloan told Sports Illustrated in 1999. “I'm telling you, it was a tragedy that a team of Maryland's caliber couldn't compete in the NCAA Tournament.
Throughout his coaching career, Mr. Driesell remained extremely close to his players and earned the respect of his colleagues. He stayed in touch with his players long after they left campus and reportedly paid the tuition of a former player who wanted to complete his college degree.
In 1974, the NCAA presented Mr. Driesell with the Award of Valor for his actions a year earlier in Bethany Beach, Delaware. He and two fishing partners saw flames coming from a nearby resort complex, broke down a door and rescued at least 10 children from the burning building.
“Don’t call me a hero,” Mr. Driesell said, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
But some of the comments he made during his tenure as coach and Mr. Driesell's devoted support of his players occasionally led to controversy and questionable decisions.
In 1983, a student at Maryland accused a player, Herman Veal, of sexual misconduct. Mr. Driesell came under fire when the student said the coach pressured her to drop the complaint, sparking outrage at the campus women's center.
“I don’t care about the women’s center,” Mr. Driesell said. “I am a men’s center. In my opinion, Herman Veal is the victim.”
Several players were suspended from his team for marijuana possession, but nothing matched the outrage over Bias' death in 1986 from apparent cocaine intoxication, just days after he was selected second overall in the NBA draft.
It was reported that Mr Driesell allegedly told an assistant coach to clean up the room where Bias had used cocaine, but he strongly denied the claim and actually said nothing was to be disturbed. A grand jury investigation cleared Mr. Driesell of any wrongdoing.
Still, a shadow hung over the program, especially when it was announced that five of the Terrapins' 12 players, including Bias, had left the school after the 1986 spring semester.
Although Mr. Driesell had won 348 games in 17 years and had just signed a 10-year contract, Maryland Chancellor John B. Slaughter said the university needed “a greater commitment to the development of the young men who play in the program.”
Mr. Driesell was forced off the sidelines and assigned to an administrative job.
Ever defiant, Mr. Driesell said, “I have a wonderful program. It's a beautiful program. It's a clean program. What more do you want to know?”
Charles Grice Driesell was born on December 25, 1931 in Norfolk. His father was a jeweler and his mother was a housewife.
A left-handed, 6-foot-3 forward and center, he won an athletic scholarship to play basketball at Duke University. He and his childhood sweetheart Joyce Gunter eloped while Mr. Driesell was still a student.
His wife died in 2021 after almost 70 years of marriage. Survivors include three daughters, Pamela Driesell Anderson, a Presbyterian minister in Atlanta, Patricia Driesell of Valdosta, Georgia, and Carolyn Driesell of West Chester, Pennsylvania; a son, Chuck Driesell, who played for his father at Maryland in the early 1980s and later became a coach at Bethesda, Maryland; and 11 grandchildren.
After graduating from Duke University in 1954, Mr. Driesell tried out for the NBA but failed to make a team. He took an office job at a Ford assembly plant in Norfolk, but after two years took a 50 percent pay cut to become a junior basketball coach at his alma mater, Granby High School.
He built basketball dynasties at Granby and later Newport News High School before transferring in 1960 to Davidson College, a small men's school in North Carolina. With a recruiting budget of $500, Mr. Driesell drove around the country in a Chevy station wagon, sleeping overnight at gas stations with a pistol within easy reach.
“At dawn he shaved in the toilet,” says a 1969 Sports Illustrated article, “and then expressed his gratitude for the gas station’s hospitality by buying a dollar’s worth of gas.”
Within three years, he had built Davidson into a basketball program of national repute. In 1966, he recruited the college's first black player, Charlie Scott, who decided at the last moment to go to North Carolina, where he became the first African American to play for the Tar Heels. Davidson advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight in 1968 and 1969, but was denied both times by the Scott-led Tar Heels.
“People say all I could do was recruit,” Mr. Driesell told Sports Illustrated in 2017. “Well, the two best players I ever recruited never played for me.” Moses Malone turned pro. And Charlie Scott kept breaking my heart.”
After the Maryland bias debacle, Mr. Driesell returned to coaching in 1988. He revitalized a struggling program at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and moved to Georgia State University in 1997, where he revitalized another ailing program and led the team to a 29-5 record in his fourth season and the NCAA Tournament.
He abruptly withdrew on New Year's Day 2003, saying: “I am 71 years old. Why am I still doing this?”
Less than a year earlier, Maryland had won the 2002 NCAA men's basketball title under coach Gary Williams, finally accomplishing what Mr. Driesell had set out to do decades earlier.
After winning the title, Williams received a letter in his office.
“Gary, YOU made Maryland the UCLA of the East. Congratulations.”
It was signed “Lefty.”
Matt Schudel contributed to this report.