Gene Littles to honored at halftime at High Point tonight

Former High Point College great Gene “Geno” Littles, who played basketball in the old Carolinas Conference against Guilford, Elon, Lenior Rhyne, Catawba, Pfeiffer, Atlantic Christian and others, will honored at halftime of the High Point Unversity basketball game tonight.

Gene Littles was the greatest player to ever suit up for the Purple Panthers. Sorry, but no one else even comes close.

High Point University has little or nothing on their sight about Gene and that’s a shame, but here’s what I was able to retrieve from wikipedia:

Eugene Scapes (Gene) Littles (born June 29, 1943 in Washington, D.C.) is a retired American basketball player and current coach. He played professional basketball for six years. He played collegiately at High Point University, and was selected in the 5th round of the 1969 NBA Draft by the New York Knicks. He opted to play in the ABA instead, and spent five years with the Carolina Cougars and one year with the Kentucky Colonels.

After his playing career, Littles got into coaching, and became an assistant with the Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA. He got his first taste of head coaching when George Karl was dismissed at the end of the 1985-86 season. The Cavaliers next year hired Lenny Wilkens, however.

In 1990, Littles got a second NBA head coaching job, with the Charlotte Hornets — replacing Dick Harter. He lasted as season and a half with the recent-expansion Hornets, until he was replaced with Allan Bristow at the end of the 1990-1991 season. Littles would later become an assistant with the Denver Nuggets, and served as an interim coach during the 1994-95 season, in between Dan Issel and Bernie Bickerstaff.