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Terry Holland was unlike most college basketball coaches. He had a temper that often showed during games, but Holland – who died on Sunday aged 80 after a bout of Alzheimer’s – also had a unique way of looking at his job and himself.
In 1984, a year after Ralph Sampson graduated from the University of Virginia, the Cavaliers managed an unlikely entry into the Final Four, with former walk-on Kenton Edelin and freshman Olden Polynice replacing the three-time international of the year at center .
Unsurprisingly, the Cavaliers struggled through the regular season. They went into the ACC tournament 17-10, losing – practically – to Wake Forest in the first round. Holland spoke openly after that game about trying to get his team to regroup to play at the NIT.
The NCAA Tournament Committee made Virginia the seventh seed in the East Region in a rare display of basketball insight, and the Cavaliers beat Iona (with one); Arkansas (at two, in overtime); Syracuse (at eight) and Indiana — which upset No. 1 North Carolina — at two to make the Final Four.
Terry Holland, who coached U-Va. to two Final Fours, dies at 80
Virginia had reached the Final Four in 1981, Sampson’s sophomore year, but had come up short over the next two seasons. Now, with a freshman and a law student-to-be replacing Sampson, they were back in the Final Four.
I visited Holland in Charlottesville this week and asked him about his surprisingly calm demeanor on the bench during the two weeks of tournament play. “You could say,” I asked, “that trainers get softer as they get older?”
Holland was only 41 but had been head coach for 15 years. He laughed at the question.
“I was trying to stay calm about Othell,” he said, referring to his talented but hot-tempered guard Othell Wilson. “I think he takes a lot of his pointers from me. If I get upset, he gets upset. When I’m calm, he’s usually calm.” He smiled. “Or at least calmer.”
So after five years at Davidson and ten years in Virginia, four of them under the incandescent spotlight of Sampson’s presence, wasn’t he more relaxed?
He laughed. “I think I should tell everyone that I feel like a big load has been lifted off my shoulders or that I’ve softened,” he said. “But you know what, I don’t think trainers are getting softer. If anything, they become more paranoid. The key is to recognize this and maybe stop yourself if you start overreacting to something. Maybe I’m a little better at it now than I used to be.”
Growing up in the tiny town of Clinton, NC, Holland was a basketball player good enough to catch the attention of Lefty Driesell, who was building a power at Davidson. He captained Driesell’s 1964 team — averaging 13.5 points and 6.6 rebounds on a 22-4 team that ranked 10th in the last AP poll that season. Holland learned a great deal from Driesell and, for as long as I’ve known him, has imitated Lefty better than anyone.
After graduating, he worked for Driesell and eventually succeeded him in 1969 when Driesell went to Maryland. Five years later, he was hired to take over a dying Virginia program and won the ACC tournament in his sophomore season as the sixth seedling.
“He never had a system,” Old Dominion coach Jeff Jones, a former Holland player and assistant, said Monday morning. “He looked at who is on his team and figured out how best to help them succeed. Flexibility was probably his greatest strength.”
Sampson’s recruitment in the spring of 1979 changed basketball in Virginia – and Holland’s life. Suddenly Virginia wasn’t a scrappy, competitive team anymore; it was a national power. The Cavaliers won the 1980 NIT — a season considered by many to be a failure — and reached the Final Four a year later.
With Sampson gone two years later, there was less pressure to win but there were still plenty of issues. For much of that season, Virginia was a divided team.
“We really didn’t expect to make the NCAAs,” Jones said. “When we did that, everyone decided to just put their differences aside and try to win games. By then Coach Holland had figured out how to deal with all the different personalities in that dressing room. It was’nt easy.”
The Cavaliers lost in overtime in the 1984 Final Four to a Houston team led by Hakeem Olajuwon. The game was quite winnable – Virginia usually had the last shot – but turned the Cougars in the extra five minutes. After his press conference, I saw Holland in the hallway. He pointed at me, “Do you think I’ll be any softer after this game?” he asked with that Dutch smile on his face.
As it turned out, Holland coached for just six more seasons, retiring in 1990 in part because of recurring stomach problems. Jones, who had played for Holland for four years, succeeded him. Holland had won 418 games and was under 50, but he never trained again. Instead, he became an athletic director—first in Davidson, then in Virginia, and finally in East Carolina, less than 100 miles from his birthplace.
Holland was an excellent coach and a very good administrator. He also did not hide from inconveniences. In the fall of 1984, when Polynice was a sophomore, the story broke that he had been tried and acquitted of plagiarizing a paper as a freshman. Polynice had admitted turning in another student’s work, but the Virginia Student Honors Committee agreed that there were extenuating circumstances and acquitted him.
When the story broke just before Thanksgiving when the Cavaliers were on their way to Hawaii, I set out to find Holland. Shortly after the team reached their hotel, I finally got through to assistant coach Dave Odom on the phone. “I will ask him,” said Odom. “But I don’t think he’ll talk to you.”
A few minutes later Holland called. “How was your journey?” I asked, trying to break every ice I could.
“It was fine,” he said. “Until Dave came in and said you were chasing me halfway around the world.” I started to apologize, but he cut in. “You’re doing your job, I get that. What do you need.”
In 2015, while researching my book about Dean Smith, Jim Valvano and Mike Krzyzewski, I had dinner with Holland, who had been training against all three men. I asked him about the screaming match he had with Krzyzewski at the 1983 ACC tournament after Virginia knocked down Duke 109-66. Krzyzewski had accused Holland of scoring against a helpless side.
“He played the whole 40 minutes against Sampson,” Krzyzewski told me.
“It’s not fair,” Holland said that evening. “Mike and later became good friends but his memory of it is just wrong.”
The next day I received an email from Holland containing the box score from that game. Sampson had played 14 minutes.
“I guess I got it wrong,” said Krzyzewski. “It’s fair to say I was quite angry that night.”
Holland forgave Krzyzewski just as he forgave me for chasing him in Hawaii. He never stopped competing, but he always understood the things that mattered most. That put him in a class.