Last Of The Lefties

Lefty's Legacy
Driesell retires with the fourth-most wins in Division I history, behind Dean Smith (879-254), Adolph Rupp (876-190) and Bob Knight (796-299 through Sunday).
SCHOOL	YEARS	W-L	PCT.
Davidson	1960-69	176-65	.730
Maryland	1969-86	348-159	.686
James Madison	1988-97	159-111	.589
Georgia State	1997-2003	103-59	.636
TOTALS	41 seasons	786-394	.666

It was just before Christmas, which would also be his 71st birthday, right before Georgia State 's longest road trip, when Lefty Driesell first made up his mind to quit. As Lefty is wont to say, "That's about it." He was so tired of nights on the road. Well, he was just so tired. He missed his wife. As he got on the plane to Jackson, Miss., he said, "If this plane crashes, so's I don't get a chance to get back home and retire, I'll be real mad." � Vocationally Lefty was piqued too. After the Mississippi State game, his Panthers had to go on to Norman to serve as a sacrifice for Oklahoma in what is euphemistically called a "guarantee game" for poor, second-tier schools. � "They make you come in, pay you and then they clean your clock," Lefty moaned. Forty-one years of coaching college ball, almost 1,200 games, and he'd never been a guarantee patsy before this season. Things weren't going well on the team, either. "I never had anything like this," he said last month. "This might be my toughest job of coaching ever." One of his players was killed in an automobile accident just before last season, right outside the gym. Another player was kicked off the team this summer, another quit last week and now another's GPA had come in at 1.86, when he needed 1.90 to stay eligible. "Can't we round it off?" Lefty groaned.

Of course, even under the happiest of circumstances Driesell has always exhibited a mournful countenance. He is a tall, large man with what used to be called a "corporation" for a midsection, so with his big ears and sloping bald head Lefty looks rather like a big bull elephant who has lost his trunk. Probably, he opines, he should've quit two years ago, after Georgia State went 29-5 and won its first-round NCAA game. That was the fourth college he'd taken from ignominy to the tournament. Driesell is the only man ever to have won 100 games at four schools, 786 altogether. Only Dean, Adolph and Bobby have won more in Division I. What additional glory could he find? But, as everyone knows, Lefty just adored coaching. That's about it.

What he likes, he sticks with. Driesell met his wife, Joyce, when she was in the eighth grade and he was in the ninth. She's the only girl he's ever had. They eloped when he was an undergrad at Duke and had four children together, but here it was, Dec. 14, his 51st anniversary, and he was on the road with the Panthers in Mobile , getting ready to play South Alabama . He told Joyce he would rush home to take her out to a fancy dinner. She said thanks, but no thanks.

"Why not, Joyce?" asked Lefty.

"Because if you lose, I don't wanna eat with you."

After 51 years Joyce has him pegged. So, for his anniversary dinner, he had a sandwich at Wendy's , alone.

But as old as he is, as bad as things had gotten, Lefty was just plumb scared of quitting. He has never forgotten about his father, Frank, an immigrant jeweler from Germany . "He didn't retire till he was 75," Lefty explains, "and then, right away, his health ran down. He was dead in two years. I think: Maybe if I quit coachin', I die." He'd been telling a number of people that. "I don't play golf, I don't have any hobbies," he says. "Well, I do fish in the summer. But nobody'll go out with me in my boat 'cause I run it into buoys and sandbars and stuff."

All Lefty ever wanted was to coach. He left an office job, where he was taking home a handsome $6,200 a year, to coach a high school jayvee team for $3,200. But his wife knew her man, so Joyce gritted her teeth and let Lefty chase destiny at 50 cents on the dollar. And, soon, yes, he was up from the jayvees. High school. Davidson College in 1960. What? Where? A little Presbyterian school someplace in North Carolina . He had a $500 recruiting budget, slept in his old station wagon, ate peanut-butter sandwiches. In just four years Davidson was Top 10, selling out the Charlotte Coliseum.

He moved up the ladder to Maryland in 1969 before going back down it to James Madison , then to Georgia State . In 41 years his players changed from white to black, the three-point shot came in, fundamentals went out, shorts got long and all that, but..."I really don't think the players have changed that much," Lefty says. "I've got a lot of nice young Christian kids on my team."

But last month things went from bad to worse. The personnel problems, the indignity of the guarantee games, the sandwich on his anniversary. He took on a bad cough after Christmas too, and so, when he woke up on New Year's Day he decided to quit right then. The first thing Lefty said to Joyce was, "It's twenty-oh-three now, and I don't have to do this anymore."