By John Reagan
February 18, 2024



Every hero needs a villain. In the 1970s, as John Thompson's star was ascendant on the Hilltop, a fellow warrior stood 11 miles away, worlds apart in some ways but no less formidable on the local and national stage. For eight seasons in the 1970s, the Georgetown-Maryland rivalry captured the attention of Washington basketball as it had never done before, and has not since.


Charles Grice Driesell was already a coaching legend of sorts when he arrived at College Park in 1969. A former center at Duke who quit his job to become a high school coach, selling encyclopedias door to door to make ends meet, Driesell was a relentless recruiter who took Davidson College to five Southern Conference championships in six seasons and lost two consecutive NCAA regional finals to #4 North Carolina by a combined margin of six points. Driesell's 1968-69 team was ranked as high as #2 nationally and finished #5 with a 27-3 record. Unfortunately for Davidson, with a recruiting budget of $500 for a head coach making $12,000 a year, "Lefty" was on the move.

Driesell wasted no time setting high expectations for a Maryland program which had earned just one NCAA invitation in its history. At his introductory press conference, the 37 year old proclaimed that Maryland, then coming off a meager 8-18 season, could be "the UCLA of the East".

Fans soon filled Cole Field House for a high flying show every night, from Driesell's theatrical entrance (waving a Nixon-like "V for Victory" gesture to the crowd) to the point at which Maryland was to win the game, whereupon the Terrapin band would play (and the crowd would sing) the "Amen" chorus to the game's conclusion. Driesell's ranting and foot stomping made for great theater, but it was the winning that brought the fans back for more.

By Driesell's third season, Maryland was 27-5, ranked #14 nationally, and won the 1972 NIT by 31 over Niagara, but was ineligible for the NCAA tournament because it had finished as a runner-up to #2 North Carolina in the ACC Tournament--the NCAA tournament restricted selection to conference champions and not at-large selections. A year later, the Terrapins were ranked #8 when they lost to #2 North Carolina State in the 1973 ACC tournament, 76-74, and #2 in a 103-100 overtime loss to #1 State in the 1974 championship--all of which were played, to Driesell's eternal consternation, at Greensboro, NC, just over an hour from the campuses of North Carolina and NC State.



The 1974 ACC title game is considered not only one of the greatest NCAA games of all time, but one of its most important in the history of college basketball. The national indigestion over seeing the second best team not selected for the tournament caused the NCAA to expand the tournament from 25 to to 32 schools in 1975, and opened the door to multiple teams per conferences. Secondarily the change also facilitated the introduction of tournament qualifying by Eastern independents, opening the door for Georgetown's first modern NCAA invitation that season.

Lefty Driesell became the bridesmaid of the ACC Tournament, with five finals appearances from 1973 to 1981, losing each by three points or less, including back to back one point losses to Duke in 1980 and North Carolina in 1981. While the Tobacco Road schools were bitter in-conference rivals to Maryland, none had the local interest within Washington DC, an area with no pro basketball presence and generally mediocre college teams, at least before Driesell.

Changes at Georgetown offered what was missing in local college basketball: a rivalry.


Driesell's first game against the Hoyas was February 7, 1970, where a crowd of 14,500 at Cole Field House was the largest crowd to date to see any Georgetown basketball game outside Madison Square Garden. A run of 12 straight points from senior Will Hetzel piloted the Terrapins to a 81-71 win, with the Hoyas shooting 21 for 88 in the game.

By the time John Thompson arrived in 1972, the Terrapins were nationally prominent, and Georgetown was not. Its first meeting of the Thompson era was a 99-73 Maryland win at McDonough Gymnasium, behind 29 points and 15 rebounds from UM center and future U.S. Congressman Tom McMillen. While rookie coach John Thompson tried to keep his men form being discouraged in the setback promising they would improve, Driesell was not worried about the Hoyas.

"It wasn't a match at all," he said. "If I hadn't subbed out early, we could have run up the score."

In its December 12, 1973 game at Cole Field House, the Terrapins put the game away early, A front line of Len Elmore, Tom McMillen and Tom Roy was 15 of 23 from the field in the first half alone, with John Lucas scoring 28 as the Terrapins forced 28 Georgetown turnovers in a 115-83 rout, Maryland's fifth straight win over the Hoyas in as many games. But in the games to come, a change of scenery began to make this a more competitive rivalry: simply put, neither side wanted to play in the other team's building.

For the 1974-75 season, the teams agreed to a neutral site game at the new Capital Centre in Landover, MD. The game eliminated a need for Driesell to return to McDonough Gymnasium, while giving Georgetown a chance to sell more tickets in Landover for a team which was beginning to get better. This would not be the turnaround game, however. The Hoyas did not score a field goal in their first 27 possessions of the first half and trailed 32-6 en route to a 104-71 loss before just 5,632 at the new arena. Jon Smith shot a career low 2 for 15 in the game for the Hoyas.

But progress was coming, The Hoyas closed to 72-63 the following year at Capital Centre, then lost in overtime on November 28, 1977, 91-87, when Craig Shelton scored 25 points despite playing with a broken wrist. In 1978, with the arrival of a freshman guard named Eric Floyd, Georgetown was ready to give the Terrapins their due.

In only his second collegiate game, Floyd scored 28 in a 68-65 win at Capital Centre, GU's first win against Maryland in nearly a decade. The Terrapins missed two layups late and two turnovers in the final two minutes. Suddenly, the Hoyas were contenders.

"We just choked," Driesell said after the game.

By the 1979-80 season, Georgetown was nationally ranked and everyone knew it. Two games with the Terrapins were among the most memorable of the series.

The annual early season matchup was moved to the DC Armory, where a raucous Georgetown crowd of 6,905 (and an audible expletive from Thompson in the direction of Driesell following a technical foul call) kept the game at a fever pitch. Despite 28 points from Albert King, a combined 38 points from Craig Shelton and Eric Floyd led Georgetown to a convincing 83-71 win. Instead of an Amen chorus from the Maryland crowd, Georgetown fans serenaded Driesell off the floor singing:



"If we had [Buck Williams] in the game," (who was injured), "I think we would have whipped their tails," Driesell said.

The series reached its peak later that season: both teams were nationally ranked at season's end: Maryland #8, Georgetown #11. The NCAA tournament set up both teams in the Eastern regional, and following third seed Georgetown's 74-71 win over Iona and second seed Maryland's 86-75 win over Tennessee, the teams squared off at the Spectrum in Philadelphia for a trip to the NCAA regional finals versus either Syracuse or Iowa. The stakes could not have been higher.

"Georgetown took Maryland's punch tonight, reeled momentarily, then came off the mat to knock the Terrapins out of the NCAA tournament," proclaimed the Washington Post in Georgetown's 74-68 win, behind 17,549 in attendance.

Despite a combined 47 turnovers between the teams, Georgetown held Maryland's Albert King scoreless in the final 18 minutes of the game, then put the game away for good at the line as Eric Smith scored seven of nine attempts and send the Hoyas fans into jubilation. Georgetown had finally wrested the crown of local supremacy.

The loss ended a 15 game Maryland win streak and halted its best chance for its Final Four --the Terrapins never advanced further in the NCAA's for the remainder of Driesell's tenure at Maryland.

"They're a great team," said King, the ACC Player of the Year. "This hurts...but it doesn't hurt half as much now as it will in the morning."



The game was not a month old when news reports began to resurface that the teams might not play in 1980-81, having met all but one season since 1947.

Concerns were growing, going back to the summer of 1979 that future Maryland schedules made a regular non-conference game less and less likely, and after being heckled by Georgetown fans at the Armory the year before, Driesell pushed for the next game to return to Cole Field House, where the teams had not played since 1973 but where the Terrapins were 13-1 versus the Hoyas since the building opened in 1956. Georgetown athletic director Frank Rienzo argued for a nationally televised game at Capital Centre.

"We want to continue playing Maryland and I'm interested in any idea that will lead to that," Rienzo told the Washington Post.

A month later, the schools announced neither could fit each other on their 1980-81 schedules. A planned Jan. 26, 1981 nationally televised game at Capital Centre fell through when Driesell had scheduled games versus Notre Dame on Jan. 24 and Pitt on January 27. A Maryland source told the Post that "we wouldn't draw 8,000 playing at [Capital Centre]. Neither of us wanted to play [there] and lose money."

Both schools pronounced it as a one year hiatus. Midway through the 1980-81 season, Driesell told the Post he wasn't interested in playing Georgetown any more.

"If I had my way, we won't play them. They wouldn't play us this year, so why should we play them next year?"

"Driesell loses Albert King, Greg Manning, and Earnest Graham. Thompson has virtually his entire team back and is likely to add super 7-footer Patrick Ewing," wrote Post reporter John Feinstein. "Driesell is hardly dying to play the Hoyas."

By year's end, Rienzo and Maryland athletic director Dick Dull had proposed looking two years in the future for a game in the 1983-84 season, either at Capital Centre or, if Driesell objected further, the Baltimore Civic Center. This could have been epic. Ranked as high as #5 during that season, Maryland went 24-8 in 1983-84 and won its first ACC championship since 1958 behind sophomore Len Bias; Georgetown, of course, finished #2 in the polls, went 34-3 and won the Big East and NCAA championships. What might have been...

"[The series] is an obligation both institutions have to the area basketball fans", said Dull, but without the support of the respective coaches, it went nowhere.

Aside from two tournaments, the schools have met just three times in the 44 years since.


While Georgetown was at its peak in the 1980s, Maryland had not gone away, thanks to the career of Len Bias. The 6-8 standout from Northwestern HS in Hyattsville led the Terrapins to four NCAA berths, a long coveted ACC championship in 1984, and finished his collegiate career a two-time ACC Player of the Year and a consensus All-America selection. Drafted second in the 1986 NBA Draft by the Boston Celtics, Bias was projected by many as as the next Michael Jordan. Two days following the draft, Bias returned to campus with college teammates Brian Tribble, Terry Long and David Gregg, and died from a cocaine overdose at his College Park dorm room.

The news shook the city, and the entire Maryland program.

"I was sitting at my parents home in Chicago, about to begin vacation, when my friend Gary Pomerantz called me from The Post news room on the morning of June 19," said Post columnist Michael Wilbon. "[Gary] said, 'Sit down. Seriously, you'll need to sit down before I tell you this. Len Bias just died.' They were the most chilling words I'd ever heard, at least until Sept. 11, 2001."

"For people of my parents' generation, they mark time by when President Kennedy was assassinated. For me, and I think for many people who are about this age, I mark time by the death of Len Bias," said ESPN analyst Jay Bilas, who played against Bias at Duke from 1982-1986. "We knew exactly where we were when told he had died."

The shocking circumstances of Bias' death led to multiple investigations that summer. Reports surfaced that several Maryland players had failed drug tests without consequence, another story linked to grades changed for players to maintain eligibility, still another report claimed that Bias had failed and/or withdrawn from 21 hours of classes and had earned no credits as a second semester senior. On August 26, a grand jury witness alleged Driesell, having learned of Bias' death, had instructed assistant coach Oliver Purnell to go to Bias' dorm room to clean up evidence. (According to the report, Purnell visited the room but did not interfere with evidence.)

Driesell hired noted defense attorney Edward Bennett Williams and testified for four hours to the grand jury. The case was eventually no-billed and two other Maryland players were charged with evidence tampering.

"Lefty didn't buy the drugs for Len Bias, and he didn't encourage him to take drugs," said Baltimore Sun reporter Mark Hyman. "But the question is, was his style of discipline such that the kids thought it was OK to do this?"

Lefty Driesell was forced out as head coach on October 29, 1986. Dick Dull resigned a week later.


Driesell's era at Maryland ended shockingly, but this was not the end of his story. Reassigned to a back office job to run out a ten year, $1.5 million contract extension offered by Dull a year earlier, the 58 year old Driesell surprised many by leaving the school and accepting a job four years later to be the head coach at James Madison University at just $65,000 a season.

"I don't have anything to prove to anybody. I'm a basketball coach. I've won games," Driesell said at the introductory press conference. "I didn't know if I would get back into coaching, but I knew when I resigned that I wasn't ready to retire."

JMU had seen little success in the years after former head coach Lou Campanelli left for the University of California in 1983. Driesell coached the Dukes for nine seasons, with four 20-win seasons, four NIT appearances, and a 1994 CAA tournament championship that gave the Dukes its first NCAA appearance in 11 years. In 1997, he moved to Georgia State, a school with one post season invitation in its history, playing in the far-flung Trans America Athletic Conference. Upon taking the job, a phone call from an unlikely source, offering a two game series with Driesell and the Panthers.

It was John Thompson.

Driesell was the first of a number of foes that Thompson buried the hatchet with over his later years. Thompson not only wanted to give Driesell a chance to play in the Washington area (an 89-72 Georgetown win at US Air Arena in Driesell's debut) but offered something few non-conference opponents ever got from Thompson: a return date. On November 18, 1998, the largest crowd to date in GSU history drew 10,027 to the Georgia Dome to see the Panthers host the Hoyas, an 83-68 Georgetown win behind 29 points from freshman Kevin Braswell.

Thompson retired at Georgetown seven weeks later, but not before recommending Driesell to Shernard Long, a transferring Georgetown guard. Long played two seasons at Georgia State averaging 17 points a game and becoming the first two-time All-TAAC selection in school history. For his part, Driesell won 103 games in six seasons at Georgia State, including Long's senior year, a 29-5 record which saw the Panthers upset sixth seed Wisconsin. In the second round, Driesell's final NCAA tournament game saw Georgia State lose to, of all opponents, Maryland, 79-60. The Terrapins defeated Georgetown a week later en route to the school's first Final Four.

At his retirement in 2003, Lefty Driesell was the fourth winningest coach in NCAA Division I history (786-394), behind only Dean Smith, Adolph Rupp, and Bob Knight; despite this, career recognition was hard to come by in the wake of Bias' tragic death. Driesell was not inducted in the Maryland Sports Hall of Fame until 2012, and despite numerous coaches pleading his case, he was not named to the Basketball Hall of Fame until 2018, at the age of 86.

Driesell selected three Hall of Famers to present him at the Hall of Fame ceremony: Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, former Maryland assistant George Raveling, and John Thompson.



"I used to be a hero around DC before John Thompson came there," Driesell told the audience. "He took little old Georgetown, which we used to beat easy, and then I quit playing him. I said, I don't want to play Georgetown anymore. But he has done more for basketball in the country, really, of anybody I know."

"He made Georgetown. Most of y'all probably never heard of Georgetown until he got there."

In his acceptance speech, Driesell made note of his advancing years. "Is there anybody else [in the crowd] 86 years old? Raise your hand, will ya? So listen, if I screw up, wait until you get to 86."

"As you get older," he reminded the crowd, "all you try to do is remember names and go to the bathroom."

"All Lefty did was win games, and not while running programs like North Carolina or UCLA or Kentucky where people expect wins," wrote Joe Posnanski at Sports Illustrated. "No, he won them at Davidson, at Maryland, at James Madison, at Georgia State. He won those games as the perpetual underdog, and along the way he also invented Midnight Madness, and he almost singlehandedly made Washington D.C. a college basketball town."

Charles (Lefty) Driesell died on February 17, 2024 at the age of 92.