Hall of Fame hoops coach Charles 'Lefty' Driesell dies at 92 - ESPN

Hall of Fame college basketball coach Charles Grice «Lefty» Driesell, who won 786 career games while leading four different Division I schools to 100 victories, died Saturday morning, his family announced. He was 92.

Driesell coached Division I basketball for 41 seasons — at Davidson, Maryland, James Madison and Georgia State — and when he retired in 2003, only Bob Knight, Adolph Rupp and Dean Smith had won more games. He reached the NCAA tournament at all four schools and took Maryland and Davidson to the Elite Eight twice each.

He was known as much for his personality as for his success on the court, with his big, booming voice, his Virginia Tidewater drawl and his comic style of storytelling.

Driesell was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018, at the age of 86 — an honor that seemed long overdue. He came to the stage leaning on a walker, accompanied by coaches Mike Krzyzewski, John Thompson and George Raveling, and gave a typically funny, rambling, memorable Driesell speech, interrupted often by laughter from the crowd.

«Lefty should have been in years ago,» Krzyzewski said at the time. «His contributions to the game go way beyond wins and losses, and he won a lot. It's an honor he's deserved for a long time.»

Driesell was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

Born Dec. 25, 1931, in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of a jeweler, Driesell played college ball at Duke, and after success as a high school coach got his first college head-coaching job in 1960 at Davidson, a college of only 900 in North Carolina. Driesell led Davidson to four final top 10 finishes and a 176-65 record in his nine years at the school.

He was recruited to Maryland in 1969, and though the school had been