College basketball takes N.C. by storm after World War II

North Carolina State University’s Thompson Gymnasium in Raleigh was just a small place where farmers would come in to see the horse shows and the newest farm equipment on display. 

When it wasn’t being used for agricultural purposes, the gym was where the men’s basketball team got some court time.

Games were played mostly at the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, which could hold up to about 4,300 people.

Construction of a new college basketball arena for NC State was in the works when World War II broke out in late 1941. The project went dormant until after the war.

The original plan was to build almost a carbon copy of Duke Indoor Stadium in Durham, which opened in 1940 with a seating capacity of 8,800.

 

The first order of business after the war ended, however, was to bring in a winning coach. NC State had lost a bunch of basketball games in a row to its archrival North Carolina.

The best man for the job was Everett Case, who was in his mid-40s and nicknamed the “Old Gray Fox,” because he had silvery hair and was sly and clever as a fox.

He came to Raleigh in the spring of 1946 and told university officials that the basketball building needed to be bigger than Duke’s. 

But since the steel frames were already in place, the only way to expand was to extend the “end zones.” Hence, the architects redesigned the project, with its distinctive, elongated shape, creating a seating capacity of 12,400.

To get the job done, though, more funding was needed. The ball was passed into the court of William Donald Carmichael Jr., the controller for the UNC system, which included the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC State and the Woman’s College in Greensboro (now the co-educational UNC Greensboro).

 

Carmichael made a visit to Greenwich, Conn., to meet with Mary Reynolds Babcock (shown above), the daughter of R. J. (Richard Joshua) Reynolds (show below), who founded the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem in 1875.

 

Carrying a table-size model of the proposed basketball facility, Carmichael asked for some financial support for the project. Three weeks later, Mary Reynolds Babcock sent a telegram saying she and her husband Charles would donate $100,000, the same amount contributed by the state.

She suggested, in turn, that the building be named for her uncle, William Neal Reynolds, a younger brother of R. J. Reynolds, and the second president of the company.

 

A native of Durham, Carmichael attended UNC-CH and was a member of the varsity basketball team. 

He graduated in 1921 and had a successful advertising business on Wall Street in New York City. Within the UNC system, he served as its acting president on two occasions.

Major achievements included his work in the establishment of the teaching hospital at Chapel Hill and in bringing educational television to the campuses at Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Greensboro. Carmichael died in 1961 at age 60.

When UNC-CH built a new basketball arena with 8,170 seats in 1965 to replace the old Woollen Gymnasim, the university’s board of trustees chose to name the facility Carmichael Auditorium, as a tribute to William Donald Carmichael Jr.

 

The names Reynolds and Carmichael are permanently etched into the basketball histories of NC State and Carolina. 

A sportswriter and editor responsible for several chapters was Irwin Smallwood, a graduate of UNC-CH, who covered college basketball for the Greensboro Daily News from 1947-89.

 

When he died in 2024 at age 98, Smallwood was still telling stories about NC State Coach Everett Case’s influence on the game of basketball in North Carolina.

 

Coach Case turned around NC State men’s hoops program

With the upcoming “Tobacco Road Classic” men’s basketball game scheduled on Dec. 15 in Greensboro between Atlantic Coast Conference foes North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina, this is a good time to brush up on the history of the rivalry.

Everett Norris Case was the guy who put NC State’s men’s basketball program on the map as an emerging powerhouse, beginning in 1946.

 

Case was a successful boys’ basketball coach at Frankfort (Ind.) High School, where his teams won four Indiana state championships.

 

At age 41, Case volunteered to join U.S. Navy during World War II. Commissioned as a senior-grade lieutenant, he drew the assignment to become athletic director at Naval Air Station Alameda (Calif).

In 1943, DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., began a naval flight preparatory school, and Case, now a lieutenant commander, was transferred there as athletic director of the program. 

He was discharged in 1946 and was recruited by NC State to become the new head coach for the men’s basketball team.

 

How that came to be is quite a story.

Bob Warren, who coached NC State from 1940-42, left to join the military during World War II. Warren was replaced by Leroy Jay, who coached from 1942-46, while also holding down a regular office job with the state highway commission. After the war, Jay stepped down as coach.

The NC State search committee was advised by Dick Herbert, sports editor of The (Raleigh) News & Observer and a Duke alumnus, to consult with the iconic Charles Hollis “Chuck” Taylor of the Converse Rubber Company. He had contacts with every coach in the country.

 

Taylor was a decent basketball player coming out of high school in Columbus, Ind., in 1919. His talent as a guard was noticed by the Firestone Non-Skids, a semi-pro team owned by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio. Taylor was hired as its player-coach.

 

Converse started out in 1908 selling rubber galoshes but added a basketball shoe in 1917, which it named the All Star. Converse recruited Chuck Taylor away from Firestone in 1922 to guide its company hoops team, which was based in Chicago.

The Converse team wasn’t in a league. Rather, Taylor took his team on the road traveling throughout the country, challenging local teams.

Additionally, at each location, Taylor would put on a clinic, complete with a sideshow, exhibiting his impressive array of trick shots. 

Local sporting goods stores sent representatives to the clinics to hawk Converse All Star shoes to a captive audience – touting the black canvas Converse model as “the best basketball shoes around.”

Converse added the now famous circular logo patch to the ankle of the shoe, complete with the Chuck Taylor signature in the early 1930s. Players loved that their All Stars had the “grippiest soles around.”

 

When basketball was introduced at the 1936 Summer Olympics, Converse provided the U.S. team’s footwear. 

The players debuted “Olympic White Chuck Taylor All Stars”…and brought home the gold medal from Berlin, Germany.

Joe Dean, a former Converse executive, said Taylor was “loveable, fun and a nice guy. At one point, he knew every college basketball coach in the country. If you wanted to hire a coach, you went through him. He’d recommend somebody.”

Taylor did not mince words: “The best basketball coach in the country is a Lt. Commander in the Navy. His name is Everett Case.”

 

It was up to Chancellor John W. Harrelson (shown below), John Von Glahn, representing of NC State’s athletics association, and faculty chair Dr. Hilbert A. Fisher, head of the university’s mathematics department, to reel in Coach Case.

 

More on NC State’s connection to Chuck Taylor:

One of the first Converse All Stars’ exhibition games and clinics ever run by the legendary Chuck Taylor occurred in Raleigh, hosted by North Carolina State University’s men’s basketball program. 

The event was arranged early during the tenure of Gus Tebell, head coach of the Red Terrors (the team’s nickname before they became the Wolfpack).

 

Tebell coached basketball at NC State from 1924-30, posting a 79-36 record. He also was the head coach of the football team from 1925-29 when his teams went 21-25-2. 

(Tebell was lured away from Raleigh in 1931 to take over the reins of the basketball program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He coached the Cavaliers for 21 seasons.)

No one seems to remember the exact date or result of the Converse All Stars v. NC State Red Terrors exhibition game, but the Converse Rubber Company sold some basketball shoes.

Taylor’s secret to success was cozying up to the people who had the most influence over young basketball players – their coaches. Taylor worked long and hard to convince coaches that black canvas Converse All Stars were the best. He was very good at building relationships.

 

Young players often had one pair of All Stars for use indoors in the school gym and yet another to scuff and scruff around in when playing outdoors on concrete.

 

Chuck Taylor’s name and signature became associated with the shoe in 1932, and the iconic ankle patch became a mark of distinction. 

By 1955, Converse owned 80% of the entire sneaker industry. Low top All Stars made their debut in 1957.

“Chucks,” as they came to be known, took on a more rough-and-tumble image in the 1961 film adaptation of “West Side Story.” 

The Sharks wore the original black All Stars, and the Jets were outfitted in white All Stars, according to Whitney Matheson, a pop culture journalist.

At one point, an estimated 90% of professional basketball players wore Converse shoes during a stretch that spanned about three decades.

Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson all occupy a page or two in the annals of Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars. 

Wayne “Tree” Rollins of the Atlanta Hawks is probably the last notable pro player to wear the original canvas Chuck Taylors, during the 1979-80 season.

Several NC State players have preferred the brand. 

One was Lou Pucillo, who was the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Player of the Year in 1959. He could go either way, wearing black or white Chucks.

Vic Molodet was the coach on the court who led the Wolfpack to three-straight ACC Championships, beginning with the 1st ever ACC Tournament in 1954.

The Converse model changed with the times, and Converse was the shoe of choice worn by the Wolfpack’s legendary David Thompson, who played for Coach Norm Sloan from 1972-75. 

Thompson led the Wolfpack to an undefeated 27-0 season in 1973-74 and captured the NCAA National Championship in 1974.

 

Today, a 13-foot bronze statue titled “Skywalker” is located on campus near Reynolds Coliseum. It depicts David Thompson – catching an alley-oop pass – that is mounted on a 44-inch stainless steel pedestal to represent his famous vertical leap. 

The sculptor is David Alan Clark of Lander, Wyo. Details include the unmistakable Converse shoes.

 

Shaunacy Ferro of Mental Floss reported that Chuck Taylor also enjoyed a friendship with Dean Smith, head coach of the University of North Carolina men’s basketball team. 

Larry Brown, who played for the Tar Heels from 1960-63, remembered a crazy encounter.

 

Chuck Taylor “told Coach Smith that he’d make us special weighted shoes in ‘Carolina blue.’ The idea was that we’d wear the weighted shoes in practice, and then during the games, we’d run faster and jump higher,” Brown said. “Well, we tried them for one practice, and everyone pulled a hamstring.”

Perhaps the original Chuck Taylors have been re-purposed.

The U.S. Navy SEALs have embraced Chuck Taylors as the “unofficial athletic shoe” of U.S. Naval Special Warfare Operations, remarked Blake Stilwell, associate editor at Military.com and an Air Force veteran.

“The reason is in the sneaker’s design,” Stilwell wrote. The Chucks’ “flat soles mean better balance and stability with a more equal distribution of your weight. And as anyone who’s sported a pair of Chucks knows, there’s not a lot of arch support, so you can feel the boat, the sand or whatever else is underneath your feet.”

 

“Chucks are lightweight and minimalist. They crush down and are easy to carry, provide stability to the wearer, and if they get wet, they dry off in a hurry.”

Greensboro revives its role as hoops ‘Tournament Town’

Basketball memories in Greensboro, N.C., will be overflowing come Dec. 15 when the men’s hoops teams from University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University tangle on a neutral but familiar court in Greensboro.

 

Old-timers remember when Greensboro was first dubbed “Tournament Town,” having hosted its first Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) men’s tournament in 1967. 

The league has now played 72 ACC tournaments, and 28 of them have been played in Greensboro, making the city the “preferred ACC tournament site.” (The tournament returns to Greensboro in 2027 and 2029.)

Adding to all this “Tournament Town” talk, Greensboro also was the venue for the popular Big Four Tournament from 1971-81, featuring the four ACC teams from North Carolina – Carolina, NC State, Duke and Wake Forest. The tournament was always held before Christmas, and these contests were classified as “nonconference games.”

 

The Big Four tournament came to an end in 1981, when participating schools and their coaches decided that the extra stress and tension associated with playing two of their “top conference rivals a third time each season outweighed their share of the gate and media revenues and substantial fan interest.”

Interestingly, the record book shows that Wake won the most Big Four titles (4), while Duke had the worst overall record (9-13).

Although the UNC v. NC State game that is coming up on Dec. 15 is also regarded as a “nonconference game,” there’s already a buzz about the “event,” marketed as the “Tobacco Road Classic,” stirring up the competitive juices. 

Over the years, the two teams have met 14 times on the court in Greensboro, with the Tar Heels holding a 10-4 series edge over the Wolfpack.

The last time the teams played each other in Greensboro was in the 1998 ACC Tournament, with Carolina scoring a lopsided 73-46 victory on its path to the tournament title. 

Notable players on Coach Bill Guthridge’s squad were Antawn Jamison, Shammond Williams, Vince Carter, Ed Cota and Ademola Okulaja.

 

That Wolfpack club was coached by Herb Sendek. Players included Clint Harrison, Ishua Benjamin, Kenny Inge, Archie Miller and Justin Gainey.

 

Justin Gainey, right, and teammate Clifford Crawford

                                                                                   

A native of High Point, N.C., Gainey, played point guard at NC State from 1996-2000 and was team captain during his senior year.

Gainey will lead the Wolfpack onto the court again in a few months, this time as the team’s new head coach. He previously served as the associate head coach at Tennessee.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been inside (what is now known as First Horizon Coliseum),” Gainey said. “I’m so excited that we were able to put this game together. From my side of things and from NC State’s, this is going to be a special moment.”

“It’s an honor to be playing this game. I know we would love to be doing it within ACC play, but man, what an opportunity to come back to ‘Tournament Town,’ to come home and play this game.”

 

The Tar Heels also have a new head coach, Michael Malone. 

Born in New York City, Malone played point guard at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore. 

He has an extensive resume as a head coach in the National Basketball Association with the Sacramento Kings and the Denver Nuggets. He won an NBA championship at Denver in 2023.

“The ACC and college basketball have been part of the fabric of this community for generations,” said Richard Beard, president of the Greensboro Sports Foundation. 

“Having rivals UNC and NC State meet here in the regular season for the first time in more than four decades is a great addition to Greensboro’s basketball legacy.”