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.
