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The guy who talked a big game. Brash, loud, ambitious, and, yes, sometimes obnoxious.
He fell short on his promise to make the Maryland Terrapins the “UCLA of the East” but the fact that he had the audacity to say such a thing made him box office theatre. How could you not be intrigued by a guy with the brass to make this kind of outlandish claim? How could you not like him? We were all drawn towards Lefty Driesell, who passed away today at 92.
My entire youth was filled with this man’s talking, provocative proclamations, victory signs walking off the court, the signing of Albert King, losing to Dean Smith’s Carolina teams again and again, never quite good enough to win the ACC Tournament until years later with the legend in every way, Lenny Bias.
Lefty’s finest hour was that win.
But none of that mattered, really, because Lefty made us feel good. His vulnerabilities were ours. His losses were ours. He lost. We lost.
Through it all he kept being Lefty, coaching the Terps, winning a lot of games but almost never the ones that really counted. He made a living falling short but kept working hard and believing in himself and his players.
He was the losing coach in one of the greatest college basketball games of all time when North Carolina State beat Maryland 104-103 in the ACC Tournament Championship game.
Back then you had to win the tourney to get into the NCAA Tournament, so Lefty missed that by one point. Just missing. That was Lefty.
One time someone took him on questioning his coaching ability, which led to one of the greatest press conferences in sports history when he said something along these lines: “You tell anybody who says I can’t coach to come and play me. I can coach. I can coach.”
With his Southern drawl.
That presser got replayed around DC for forty days and forty nights.
He stood up for himself. He swung back. Mess with Lefty and you were going to get Lefty full-on right back in our face. The dude was pugnacious.
Flawed, not the best but good, always trying to make it to Number One and always coming up short, never the UCLA of the East. Isn’t that the pattern of most of our lives?
I remember being in grade school when he was the guest speaker at my grade school’s athletic banquet. At the time he had a player on his team named Brian Magid who was a big star at Blair High School in Maryland but during his freshman year on Lefty’s team didn’t get much playing time, a big comedown year.
Lefty talked about how his team’s season had ended recently and one day after that he saw Magid running the Cole Field House stairs up and down to get in better shape to prepare for the next season.
Lefty’s point was that we as young kids should never let setbacks get us down and that no matter how bad a season we have we need to keep striving to improve if we want to succeed.
This lesson resonated with me then and applies to my life practicing writing right now, running Cole Field House stairs in a sense. No matter how many setbacks I face I have to keep trying to get better.
Lefty Driesell taught me 50 years ago to keep working hard, and it’s been wisdom I called upon throughout my countless bouts of adversity.
Keep going. Practice harder.
Run the Cole Field House stairs.
Lefty Driesell taught me this.
Lefty kept believing in himself and his teams despite losing the big games year after year all the while being criticized by people who knew nothing about coaching who said he couldn’t coach.
A bunch of friends I grew up with remain steadfast Lefty fans. He’s like a folk hero in our minds. When we get together we usually talk about Lefty. The man made us feel something in ourselves. He helped us understand losing isn’t the most important thing. Continuing to strive is.
And when people doubt us we don’t need to take their guff. He taught us to stand up for ourselves and our talents and keep striving no matter what.
Lefty unified my group of friends. He made us laugh and when he lost we felt so bad for him because we cared about him because we knew losing hurt him.
Lefty bonded the entire state of Maryland, the Washington DC area. We all were and still are galvanized around this bald-headed guy named Lefty because he was one of us, not the best, but tough and funny and articulate and not a quitter and a human being we admired for being who he was, for showing us how to live and telling us in a way only Lefty could.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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