By Dan Heuchert

August 19, 2004 - When U.Va. sports fans settle into their seats at the expanded Scott Stadium, or in the new John Paul Jones Arena, they might take a moment to appreciate Terry Holland — and old nemesis Lefty Driesell.

Holland, the winningest men’s basketball coach in U.Va. history and later director of athletics during a boom time in Cavalier sports, announced in July that he would step down from his current post as special advisor to University President John T. Casteen III at the end of August, wrapping up three decades at U.Va.

It was a career that may not have happened were it not for Driesell.

Best known as the University of Maryland’s folksy basketball coach, Driesell was the head coach at Davidson College when he made Holland, a Clinton, N.C., native, his first recruit. Holland helped Davidson to a top-10 national ranking, but when graduation came, Holland was unsure about his future. He considered becoming a certified public accountant or applying to law school.

Driesell had just received clearance to hire a second assistant coach and offered Holland the job, thinking it might help his business career. “I didn’t really think of him as a coach,” Driesell said recently from his home in Virginia Beach. “I was trying to get him prepared to go to graduate school and be a CPA.”

Holland took the job, Davidson continued to win, and he stayed another year, and another. “The more I did it, the more I thought, ‘I like doing this now, and I’ll just do it as long as it’s fun,’” Holland said. “So that’s the way we always approached it — as long as it’s fun.”

After five years, Maryland hired Driesell and Holland took over at Davidson, where his teams continued winning. When Virginia coach Bill “Hoot” Gibson retired after the 1973-74 season, Driesell recommended Holland to then-U.Va. athletic director Gene Corrigan.

Corrigan had three finalists: Holland; Larry Brown, now coach of the U.S. Olympic team and the NBA champion Detroit Pistons; and Tom Davis, who went on to a long and distinguished career at Iowa.

Holland got the first interview. Corrigan hired him on the spot. “That was one of the best hires I ever made in my life — anywhere, anytime,” Corrigan said.

At the time, Virginia had been a member of the ACC for 21 seasons, but had posted just one winning season in the conference. Many in the U.Va. community believed that big-time athletics and big-time academics could not coexist; Virginia could not compete for enough top-level recruits to win on a national scale.

Holland wasn’t buying it. “When I came from Davidson to Virginia, as restrictive as the academic requirements were, they weren’t as strict a Davidson’s. I was in heaven,” he said. “I looked at it as a great positive.

“ I don’t think it was restrictive at all. It was very fair. There were rarely situations where we were denied the admission of a kid who I felt could do the work here and should be here.”

Perhaps the watershed moment in modern U.Va. athletics came at the end of his second season, in March 1976, Holland mollified the naysayers with “The Miracle of Landover.” Arguably a watershed moment in modern U.Va. athletics, the unheralded Cavaliers went into the ACC Tournament that month and upset three nationally ranked teams on consecutive days to claim the school’s first — and still only — conference championship.

“ We had gotten to the point where nobody liked to play against us,” Holland recalled. “We were competitive, but we weren’t winning many of those games.
“ In the tournament, we did. We took on the best the ACC had to offer, three top seeds, and we beat ’em. So it said for the first time that we can win.”

It also opened doors in recruiting. Soon thereafter, Holland spirited Jeff Lamp and Lee Raker out of Kentucky to become the cornerstones of the rebuilding program. The biggest “get” — literally — came in May 1979, when 7-foot-4 Harrisonburg native Ralph Sampson announced he would attend U.Va. The Cavaliers instantly became a national power.

Holland “made the difference in my coming there,” said Sampson, now living in Atlanta, where he runs a sports and education foundation for youth. “And he made the difference in my staying all four years,” spurning multi-million-dollar professional offers.

With Sampson as the three-time national player of the year, the Cavaliers were consistently ranked in the top 10 nationally.

The year after Sampson’s graduation, U.Va. surprised everyone by reaching the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. Sports Illustrated magazine hailed Holland as “the Einstein of the pines,” and TV commentator Billy Packer commented, “Before Terry Holland, there was no Virginia basketball.”

The basketball team’s success brought much public attention to the University. Applications soared. The rising tide buoyed other ships in the athletic department, too, noted former football coach George Welsh, who himself was trying to establish a winning program.

“ We couldn’t recruit just on what happened in the football program,” said Welsh, who came to Virginia in 1982. “The notoriety during the Sampson years definitely helped us.”

Holland coached for 16 seasons, winning a school-record 326 games, before stepping down to become the athletic director at Davidson in 1990. Nine of his former assistant coaches and players went on to become head coaches in the college or professional ranks.

“ I don’t think that’s an accident,” said University of South Carolina head coach Dave Odom, a former Holland assistant who still talks with him weekly. “Not that we as a group of coaches were that talented, but we were put into a position to learn to be head coaches by Terry. … There was never a question about his desire to see us grow as coaches.”

Holland also served as a mentor Craig Littlepage, who was an assistant coach, then an assistant athletic director under Holland when Holland returned to Virginia as athletic director in 1995.

“ One of the things I keep with me is the level of professionalism with which he went about his job every day,” said Littlepage, who succeeded Holland as athletic director in 2001. “The nickname ‘Virginia Gentleman’ is apt and very appropriate.”
Many of Holland’s colleagues say it wasn’t just winning that made Holland special, but how he won. He earned a reputation for integrity, both inside and outside the University. He suspended star players who got into trouble,; spoke his mind, politely, on controversial issues,; and insisted that his players go to class.

“ I think his legacy is of real integrity,” said D. Alan Williams, U.Va.’s faculty athletic representative from 1967 to 1999. “With Terry, you have to start with integrity and … his sense of what’s right and what’s not, and how it fits in a university.”

“ He was a great basketball coach, but an even better person,” said longtime Cavalier women’s basketball coach Debbie Ryan. “He’s so respected — respected as honest, true, very reliable and dependable. He’s like the dean of college coaches. A lot of them feel like they can pick up the phone and talk to him about anything, and you can’t say that about a lot of coaches.”

Holland’s tenure as U.Va. athletic director was also successful. He oversaw the $86 million expansion of Scott Stadium, and the construction of the Aquatics & Fitness Center, the Sheridan Snyder Tennis Center, and the University Hall Turf Field.
He hired several current coaches, including football coach Al Groh and men’s basketball coach Pete Gillen.

In 1998-99, Virginia placed eighth — its best finish ever — in the Directors Cup, which measures program-wide performance in national championship competition.

Holland’s crowning achievement, however, is rising across the street from University Hall: a new basketball arena. Plans to replace U-Hall have been on the boards in one form or another since the Sampson years. Holland firmed them up, then stepped aside as athletic director to help raise funds to make them a reality.
The John Paul Jones Arena will open in 2006. “It’s so close to being done, I almost feel like it’s done,” Holland said. “I certainly want to be around when it opens and go see games in it.”

Holland says that when he left the athletic directorship — voluntarily trading a third of his salary for a third of his time — he thought he would ease toward retirement. But, at age 62, he found he’s not ready: “I’m too used to being hands-on involved in things.”

One involvement that will continue is Holland’s advocacy for college athletic reform. He speaks passionately about changing scheduling to protect class time, rewarding schools that recruit student-athletes who fit their overall academic profile, and about making freshmen ineligible in order to get established academically. “But nobody’s listening to me,” he said.

Otherwise, Holland’s plans for the future remain up in the air. He may do some commentary on college basketball broadcasts; he would consider taking another coaching job or athletic directorship, either on an interim or full-time basis.

“ I think I’m going to take this year to listen — is there a five- to seven-year project that I need to at least consider, whether that would be as an AD or coaching or whatever? I think I’m more comfortable, particularly if I can work out of [Charlottesville], doing a hodge-podge of things,” he said.
How would Holland like to be remembered?

“ I did my job,” he said. “You know, it’s like Frank McCue said the year we won the ACC Tournament. He said, ‘Everybody’s making such a big deal out of it. Hell, that’s what we hired him for.’”