Roundball Trivia Answers   1.  Many forget that Lefty Driesell (6-4 190 pounds during his playing days) was a member of the Duke squad for two seasons.  Lefty played in 22 of the Blue Devils 26 games in 1953 averaging 3 points and 2.7 rebounds.  In 1954 Driesell played in 23 of 28 games and averaged 5 points and 2 rebounds.  Shooting the roundball was definitely not Lefty’s strength.  In his two seasons in Durham he shot 41% from the field and an even 50% from the free throw line (51-102). Driesell was much more successful as a head coach at Davidson, Maryland, James Madison and Georgia State.  Lefty ranks fourth all-time with 786 career wins; 22 seasons of 20 or more wins; Driesell is the only coach to win 100 games at four different schools and shares the NCAA record of taking four different teams to NCAA Tournament; He also has won conference coach of the year in four different leagues and coached teams to four different conference tournament titles. 2.  Bob Bender played one minute in 1976 in Indiana’s 86-68 win over Michigan. Other than that one minute he did not tally in any other statistical category in that game.  Scott May scored 26 points and Kent Benson 25 to help Coach Bob Knight win his first National Championship with a perfect 32-0 record.  After his freshman season in Bloomington, Bender transferred to Duke and in 1978 the Blue Devils played Kentucky for the National Championship.  Kentucky won 94-88.  Bender came off the bench and played 16 minutes scoring 7 points.  The future Division 1 head coach hit 5 of 5 free throws and 1 of 2 from the field.  He also handed out 4 assists, grabbed a rebound and committed 3 fouls.     Bender was an assistant coach at Duke under Mike Krzyzewski for six seasons and then he became a head coach at Illinois State.   He earned two Missouri Valley Conference championships, one conference tournament title and an NCAA Tournament berth in 1990.   In 1996 Bender was the Pac-10 Coach of the year and in his nine-year tenure at the University of Washington he lead the Huskies to four straight trips to the NCAA Tourney.  Bender is currently an assistant coach with the Atlanta Hawks and coincidentally his boss is Mike Woodson, a former Indiana Hoosier. 3.  New Orleans has made four appearances in the NCAA Tourney in 1987, 1991, 1993 and 1996.  In 1987 Benny Dees led the Privateers to their first NCAA Division 1 Tournament. Tim Floyd, who succeeded Dees took New Orleans to the tourney in 1991 and 1993 and Tic Price had the Privateers in ‘the dance’ in 1996.  But only Dees was able to win a tourney game. New Orleans was the 7th seed in the Southeast Regional and was matched in the first round with Brigham Young led by future Boston Celtic Michael Smith.  New Orleans won the game 83-79.  In the second round the Privateers took on Alabama.  The interesting twist to the game was that Dees had been an assistant coach at Alabama prior to taking the job at New Orleans.  So Benny knew all the Bama players and he knew how good they were.  Alabama rolled to a 101-76 win and afterwards all the Crimson Tide players came over to give Benny a hard time.  Alabama was eliminated in the next round by Rick Pitino and Billy Donovan and the Providence Friars.  4.  In his playing days, Larry Brown was quite a distributor.  He led the ABA in assists in each of the leagues first three seasons and he did it in three different cities.  In 1967-68 Brown played for the New Orleans Buccaneers with another future coach by the name of Doug Moe.  Brown topped the fledgling league with 6.5 assists.  Brown, at 5-9, was billed as the smallest man in professional basketball which added to his popularity.  He made the All-Star Game as a last moment replacement and was named the game’s MVP which earned him a brand new red convertible. In 1968-69 Brown and Moe were traded to the Oakland Oaks and teamed with Rick Barry.  Barry only played 35 games that season before he tore knee ligaments.  But with or without Barry the Oaks were awesome going 60-18 and beating Indiana in five games for the ABA Championship. Brown led the league with 7.1 assists. Unfortunately the city of Oakland could care less about the Oaks.  The team only averaged 2,800 fans during the championship season forcing entertainer Pat Boone to sell the franchise to Earl Foreman in Washington.  The Oaks became the Caps while Moe became a Carolina Cougar.  So it was Brown to Barry but the Caps were just a .500 team.  Brown led the ABA with 7.1 assists.         5.  Ron Reed, a LaPorte, Indiana native, played three sports while in high school and excelled in all three, receiving scholarship offers in all three sports. Reed turned down a bonus offer from Kansas City Royals to sign a scholarship to play basketball, his first love, at Notre Dame. Reed still holds the single season rebound record averaging 17.7 boards per game during his junior year. In November of 2004 Reed was one of 25 to make Notre Dame’s All-Century Basketball Team.  Reed scored 1,153 points and averaged 18.9 points per game  and 14.3 rebounds in his Fighting Irish career.  After graduation he signed with Detroit Pistons of NBA and in 1965 he also signed a minor league baseball contract with the then Milwaukee Braves.  Reed played two seasons with the Pistons averaging 8 points and 6.5 rebounds in 118 NBA games between 1965 and 1967.  On the diamond Reed was 146-140 with a 3.46 ERA in 19 seasons with the Braves, Cardinals, Phillies and White Sox.  The 6-6 right hander’s best season was in 1969 when he went 18-10 with a 3.47 ERA for the NL West champion Atlanta Braves.    6.  Zang Auerbach, Red’s younger brother, created the design of the famous leprachun that first was placed at center court on the parquet floor of the old Boston Garden. Zang also designed the logo for the Washington Senators baseball team. He later became an editorial and sports artist and cartoonist, penning images of sports heroes and entertainers for Washington newspapers.  As a freelancer, Zang worked for three different magazines and created cover art of four US presidents.  Zang died in February of 2003 of heart ailments, he was 81.   7.  Mike Krzyzewski in 1991 and 1992.  Duke, ofcourse, made the 1990 championship game, but was hammered by UNLV 101-73.  In 1991 Duke beat Kansas 72-65 for the first championship and in 1992 the Blue Devils routed Michigan 71-51 for the second.  Seven players joined Coach K in sharing the duel titles: Christian Laettner, Grant Hill, Bobby Hurley, Antonio Lang, Brian Davis, Thomas Hill and Marty Clark.  Laettner led both teams in scoring averaging 19.8 points in 1991 and 21.5 in 1992.  Those two Blue Devil teams went 66-9 and won 88% of their games.     8.  Arizona's Lute Olson     9.  Kentucky's Tubby Smith   10.  Boston College's Al Skinner   11.  Larry Bird was the first player to accomplish this shooting feat.  In three of Bird’s first seven seasons in the NBA he shot over 50% from the field.  However, it wasn’t until his eight season that Bird was able to hit 90% of his free throws.  In the 1986-87 season, Bird hit 414 of his 455 free throw attempts (91%) and 786 of his 1497 field goal shots (52.5%).  The next season Bird was an even more proficient marksman.  He improved his free throw mark to 91.6% and his field goal percentage to 52.7%.  Bird only played four more seasons in the league and although he improved his free throw percentage to 93% in 1989-90, his field goal mark dropped to 47.3%.   12.  Bill Sharman, Lenny Wilkens and surprisingly John Wooden all entered the Hall of Fame as both a player and coach. Sharman was enshrined in the HOF as a player in 1976 and as a coach in 2004.  He was an All-American forward at USC and scored 1108 points in 81 games for a then school-record 13.7 per game average.  Sharman spent 11 seasons in the NBA averaging 17.8 points and he was one of the first guards to shoot over 40% from the field.  Sharman led the NBA in free throw percentage seven times, and his mark of 93.2% in the 1958-59 season remained the NBA record until Ernie DiGregorio topped it in 1976-77. He still holds the record for consecutive free throws in the playoffs with 56.  As a coach, Sharman led the Utah Stars to an ABA championship in 1970-71.  The next season he returned to the NBA and coached the Los Angeles Lakers to 33-straight wins, a 69-13 record and a NBA title. Wilkens was a standout college and NBA player.  At Providence he was a two-time All-American and scored 1,193 points.  He played 15 seasons in the NBA and averaged 16.5 points. For four seasons Wilkens was a player-coach for both Seattle and Portland. In all, he coached 32 seasons in the NBA winning 1,332 games and losing 1,155.  Wilkens passed Red Auerbach in 1995 to become the all-time winningest NBA coach.  Wilkens was enshrined to the HOF as a player in 1989 as a coach in 1998. Everybody knows that John Wooden was a legendary winner as a coach on the college level.  He won 10 NCAA titles in a 12 year span, at UCLA, including seven in a row.  Wooden started his coaching career at Dayton High School in Kentucky.  His first season his team went 6-11 and that would be the only losing season in his coaching career.  Wooden also coached at South Bend, Indiana High School and his overall prep record was 218-42.  Prior to taking the UCLA job, he spent the years 1946 through 1948 coaching at Indiana State. Wooden’s coaching accomplishments have always overshadowed his playing career.  At Indiana’s Martinsville High School Wooden was a three-time All-State player and led his team to three state finals and one championship win.  In college at Purdue he continued to be a winner; he was a three-time All-American and played on the Boilermakers’ 1932 national championship team.  Wooden entered the HOF as a player in 1961 and as a coach in 1973.      13.  Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan has coached 22 seasons and won 76.5% of his games.  His record during this span is 495-152.  Although, all are NCAA wins, not all were achieved at the Division I level.  Ryan’s first head coaching job was at Division III Wisconsin-Platteville.  In 15 seasons he won 352 games and lost only 76.  His 82% winning percentage at Platteville includes two perfect seasons (31-0 in 1994-95 and 30-0 in 1997-98) and four Division III national championships (1991, 1995, 1998, 1999).  In his first Division I job at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Ryan went 15-14 and 15-13 and since 2001-02 coaching at Wisconsin, in the Big 10, he has a 112-49 record (69.6%). Legendary coaches chasing Ryan’s 76.5% winning percentage: Coach/School  Years  Wins  Losses  Percentage  2. Mike Krzyzewski (Duke)    31     753  250  .751  3. Jim Boeheim (Syracuse)  30  726  253 .742 4. Lute Olson (Arizona)  33  761  269  .739  5. Bob Knight (Texas Tech)   40  869  350  .713  Of course three of these coaches (Coach K, Boeheim and Knight)have all won their games at the Divison I level.  Lute Olson won 103 games and lost 20 at a junior college, Long Beach College (1969-73). 14.  Dick Groat is best known for being the 1960 NL MVP. However, he had a fine basketball career before baseball took over in his life.  Groat was a big time scorer at Duke, improving his average each of his three seasons.  He averaged 14.5 in his first season, 25.2 the next and 26 in his senior season in 1952. Groat was the Helms Player of the year in 1951 and a All-American in 1952.  He was the first Duke player, ever, chosen in the NBA draft.  The Fort Wayne Pistons selected him in the first round in 1952.  Groat played only one season (26 games) in the NBA and averaged 11.9 points with over 1/3 of his points coming from the free throw line. Groat’s NBA career was cut short by a two year military stint.  He was actually signed by Branch Rickey and the Pittsburgh Pirates just a couple of days after he graduated from Duke, but he didn’t join the Pirates until 1955.  Groat won a World Series title in 1960, was an All-Star five times and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated three times.  Today he is still involved in sports.  Groat is the color analyst on the Pitt Panthers' radio broadcasts.