Sad news filled the airwaves, websites and sports pages across Virginia and the Southeast on Sunday, February 18, as word leaked out that Lefty Driesell, the longtime head coach of the University of Maryland’s men’s basketball team and the first man in college basketball history to win 100 games at four different schools, had passed away the day before at the age of 92.
Driesell’s passing marked the end of an era in Atlantic Coast Conference history, as Lefty was the last of the living among a legendary crop of coaches that dotted the league’s landscape in the early-to-mid 1970s, when a school had to win the ACC Tournament just to compete in the NCAA Tournament.