Hall of Fame College Basketball Coach Lefty Driesell Dies at 92

Lefty Driesell, the Hall of Fame coach who built nationally prominent basketball teams at the University of Maryland in the 1970s and who was the nation's fourth-winningest NCAA Division I men's coach when he retired in 2003, died Saturday at his home in Virginia. Beach. He was 92.

His death was announced by the university.

Driesell (pronounced drih-ZELL) was the first coach to win more than 100 games at each of the four major college programs. Over five decades, his teams won a total of 786 games.

He coached at Maryland from 1969 to October 1986, posting an overall record of 348-159 in College Park. His Terps reached eight NCAA postseason tournaments, won the 1972 National Invitation Tournament championship and captured an Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship in 1984. They finished high in The Associated Press national basketball rankings of the early 1970s.

He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.

At Davidson, Maryland, James Madison and Georgia State, Driesell had an overall record of 786-394. He coached James Madison to four consecutive NIT appearances and led the team to the NCAA national tournament in 1994.

He concluded his coaching career at Georgia State, where he was head coach from 1997 to 2003. He led the team to a huge upset of Wisconsin in the opening round of the 2001 NCAA Tournament.

His coaching win total ranks in the top 20 all-time among NCAA Division I coaches and 23rd overall among all levels of NCAA basketball.

But for all his coaching success at Maryland, Driesell's record was not without controversy. In 1983, a female college student accused him of making harassing phone calls to her after she accused one of his players, Herman Veal, of sexual misconduct, which resulted in Veal being ineligible to play for the rest of the season to play. The student said Driesell told her her “name would be dragged through the mud” if she did not recant.

Driesell issued a statement saying: “At no time in this matter did I ever intend to harass, intimidate or mistreat anyone, and I do not believe I did so. I realize that some of my comments in the heat of the moment were inappropriate, and if my call to the young woman upset her, I apologize.” He was reprimanded but faced no further disciplinary action, according to reporting from The New York Times.

Just a few years later, in October 1986, Driesell was forced to resign following the death of his former star player Len Bias from a cocaine overdose in his college dorm. Investigations revealed that Bias, who was drafted by the Boston Celtics, was 21 credits short of graduating despite spending four years at Maryland, which exhausted his athletic eligibility.

Questions were raised about whether Driesell and the school board had properly monitored the behavior and academic standing of Maryland's basketball players.

“It is with mixed feelings that I make this announcement because I have enjoyed all of my 17 years as head coach at Maryland,” Driesell said at a news conference announcing his resignation. “But it's clear the administration wants to make a coaching change, and I don't want to coach if I'm not wanted.” He accepted a position as assistant athletic director at Maryland and remained there until 1988.

Charles Grice Driesell was born on Christmas Day 1931 in Norfolk, Virginia. His father, Frank, a jeweler, had emigrated from Germany. He was a basketball star at Granby High School in Norfolk and then coached basketball there and in Newport News, Virginia.

A left-handed 6-foot-4 forward and center (he became known as Lefty in fourth grade), he received an athletic scholarship to play basketball at Duke University. After graduating in 1954, he had hoped to play in the NBA, but no team wanted to sign him.

Driesell was credited with generating the idea for college basketball's first “Midnight Madness” in 1971. In Maryland, it called for basketball players to have a one-mile run on the track in front of the campus stadium just after the stroke of midnight. the first day of practice for the coming season.

Driesell's survivors include his daughters, Pamela Driesell Anderson, Patricia Driesell and Carolyn Driesell; his son, Chuck, who played for his father in the early 1980s and became his assistant at James Madison and later head coach at the Citadel; and 11 grandchildren. His wife, Joyce (Gunter) Driesell, died in 2021.

As Driesell approached his 86th birthday, he reminisced with sportswriter Dave Kindred about the day in 1969 when Maryland tried to convince him to become a basketball coach. Ted Williams managed the Washington Senators of the American League, and Vince Lombardi coached the Washington team of the National Football League.

“They told me the summers belonged to Ted Williams, the Falls belonged to Vince Lombardi and the winters belonged to Lefty Driesell,” he recalled. “That sounded damn good.”