You always hear when someone of importance dies that he or she “was larger than life.” Very rarely is it true. In the case of Charles Grice “Lefty” Driesell, it may be understating it by more than a bit.
Lefty was one of the rare folks who just seemed like somehow he’s always been here.
Maryland hosted an “Ode to Lefty” on Jan. 21 in College Park, with about 50 of his former players on hand. Lefty was unable to attend due to failing health. We knew then that the end was near.
There is no debate that Lefty put Maryland basketball on the map. After a successful run at Davidson from 1960-1969, Lefty was hired by Maryland, where he had amazing success from 1969-1986. He loudly proclaimed when he was hired that he was going to make Maryland “the UCLA of the East.”
And while he never won an NCAA championship, he came within just a couple plays and players from doing so. While Maryland was never quite UCLA, he made Terps men’s basketball relevant for the entirety of his Maryland tenure.
As powerful as he was, the negative blowback from how he tried to protect his players and program after the death of Len Bias brought him down. A sadder end to his tenure at Maryand would be hard to imagine.
But after two years off, Lefty was hired by James Madison, where he stayed from 1988-1996. Then after a one-year hiatus, he returned to coach at Georgia State at the age of 66 in 1997 and coached his final game in 2003.
All told, Lefty went 786-394. He is the only Division I coach to win more than 100 games with four different programs. While the gold ring always eluded him, he is known as one of the top program builders the college game has ever seen.
Lefty was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in the summer of 2018 at the ripe old age of 86 years of age. If you want to cry a little and laugh a lot, Google Lefty’s Hall of Fame induction speech. It is 14-plus minutes from a master showman.
His presenters into the Hall were John Thompson, George Raveling and Mike Krzyzewski. Lefty grabbed the audience when explaining in that Southern drawl why Coach K was so successful as a head coach.
“Everybody asks me, ‘Why is Mike such a good coach?’ And I’ll say, ‘I’ll tell you why. He graduated from West Point and in West Point you lead guys and if they don’t listen to you they get killed,'” Lefty joked.
Lefty talked about perhaps the best player he ever recruited, the late Moses Malone. Malone was the No. 1 recruit back 1974 out of Petersburg, Va. Malone committed to Maryland, and then before he could suit up, he was drafted by the Utah Stars of the upstart ABA.
Lefty alluded to Malone in his speech and said had Malone played for Maryland he would have made it into the Hall a hell of a lot sooner.
Lefty tipped his cap to Raveling, his former assistant coach. He gave equal credit to Raveling for creating “Midnight Madness,” which allowed a team to highlight the return of college basketball season as soon as it was allowed to begin practicing.
On a personal note, I must have talked to Lefty a dozen times on the phone. One memorable phone call came when he was a guest on my old drive-time sports radio program on WFBR in 1987. I had read a small blurb in a sports section of some paper that Lefty was interested in returning to coach at South Alabama, so I had my producer Tom Cherry reach out and before I knew it Lefty was on the air with us that same day in the 6 p.m. hour of the program.
About a minute into the interview, I noticed Lefty’s Southern drawl wasn’t as clear as normal. Turns out, Lefty never stopped eating his dinner for the entirety of the 10 minutes he was on the air. You could hear him chewing, cutting and drinking.
That was Lefty, homespun and authentic as always.
A piece of my heart went when I heard the news of his passing.
Rest in peace, Lefty.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Maryland Athletics