‘Old Gray Fox’ changed college basketball for good

Before he even stepped on the basketball court for his first season (1946-47) as head coach at North Carolina State University, Everett Case knew we had a mountain to climb.

He was inheriting just one holdover player from a team that had posted a 6-12 overall record the previous season and tied for ninth place in the Southern Conference (a 16-team league at the time).

Case promptly retooled, forming a team packed with Navy veterans, fellows he had coached aboard Naval air stations during World War II, as well as new recruits from Indiana, where he had built an impeccable reputation as a highly decorated high school coach.

In that 1946-47 season, NC State rebounded to post a 26-5 overall record and win both the regular season and tournament titles in the Southern Conference. 

Best of all, for Wolfpack fans, Case’s team began a streak of 15 straight victories over North Carolina that would extend for six years.

His teams played an up-tempo, fast-paced, run-and-gun offense, coupled with a full-court press on defense. 

That style of play ignited fans on Tobacco Road who began to see basketball in a new light. They didn’t call Case the “Old Gray Fox” for nothin,’ said Greensboro sportswriter Irwin Smallwood (shown below).

 

Case was an innovator and one of the game’s finest showmen. 

He championed the backcourt 10-second rule and was among the first coaches to review film to prepare for a game. 

He started the traditions of putting numbers on the back of players’ jerseys, pregame introductions of players and shining a spotlight on them.

He hired an organ player to provide music during timeouts, and Case was the first coach to cut down the nets after a big win.

 

His ambition extended beyond the university setting. Case wanted to change the culture within North Carolina. His goal was to see a basketball hoop nailed on every tree, barn and tobacco warehouse in the state, “and he damn near did it,” Smallwood said.

 

Case always carried a basketball rim and backboard around in the trunk of his “booster-bought Cadillac” to donate to the cause. 

Case also initiated summer basketball camps for youth players to keep interest going year-round.

The record books show that in his 18 years at the helm of NC State, Case compiled a 377-134 (.737) record, the best in school history.

 

He won nine straight conference titles from 1946-55 – six as a member of the Southern Conference and the first three in the newly established Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).  

He added a fourth ACC title in 1959. Case himself was aptly rewarded, earning three ACC Coach of the Year awards during that span.

 

Lou Pucillo, a former NC State standout player, said Everett Case was very competitive and loved basketball; he was not married, so his philosophy was to “eat, sleep and dream basketball.”

Case stepped down as coach in 1964, due to illness. He suffered from cancer and died in 1966 at age 65. 

He was buried in Raleigh Memorial Park and left instructions that he wanted to be laid to rest facing U.S. Route 70, so he could “wave” to later NC State teams as they traveled by bus to Chapel Hill.

One of his Case’s former NC State players, Norm Sloan, was hired as the Wolfpack head coach in 1966.

 

After winning the NCAA Championship game in Greensboro in 1974, having toppled UCLA and then Marquette in the Final Four, Sloan asked the bus driver to stop by Coach Case’s resting place so that the team could pay its respects…and show him the nets they had cut down.

 

This bronze sculpture of Coach Everette Case outside NC State's Reynolds Audiitorium was dedicated in 2016. He is clutching net cords in his left hand. 

The sculptor is Benjamin Matthew Victor of Boise, Idaho (shown below).

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.”