Got to remember those UVA Cavalier teams when Terry Holland got them rolling, with Jeff Lamp, Jeff Jones, Lee Raker, big Terry Gates, and the even bigger Ralph Sampson, from Harrisonburg, Virginia…Coach Holland passed away on Sunday…Coach Holland was 80 years old….
from David Teel, coming from out of the Daily Progress newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia, and originally from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, again with David Teel reporting…..
Former Virginia basketball coach Terry Holland dies after battling Alzheimer’s
Terry Holland, who coached the University of Virginia basketball program to a pair of Final Fours and nine NCAA tournaments in 16 seasons, died Sunday in Charlottesville.
Mr. Holland, 80, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2019 and had recently entered the memory care center of the seniors community where he resided with his wife, Ann.
“He was a visionary, a positive coach,” said Bobby Stokes, Mr. Holland’s physician and a captain of his 1978-79 UVa team. “He made it his mission to make it like a family. He cared about you off the basketball court and helped you grow along the way.”
Walking a unique career path, Mr. Holland toggled for decades between his alma mater, Davidson College, and UVa. He served as an assistant coach and then head coach at Davidson before then-Virginia athletic director Gene Corrigan hired him in 1974 to lead the Cavaliers.
Mr. Holland left coaching in 1990, just prior to his 48th birthday, to become Davidson’s athletic director. He returned to Virginia as AD in 1994, a position he held for seven years.
Following a short-lived retirement, Mr. Holland led East Carolina’s athletic department from 2004-13.
In 21 seasons as a head coach, five at Davidson and 16 at Virginia, Mr. Holland compiled a 418-216 record. His 1981 and ’84 UVa teams reached the Final Four, and in just his second season in Charlottesville, he steered the Cavaliers to the 1976 ACC tournament championship, the program’s first.
Mr. Holland coached Virginia icons such as Wally Walker, Jeff Lamp, Bryant Stith and, most famously, 7-foot-4 Ralph Sampson, the national Player of the Year in 1981, ’82 and ’83.
“I think if you boil it all down, I’m not sure UVa athletics would be in the position it is now across the board if not for Coach Holland, and along with that, Ralph Sampson,” Old Dominion coach Jeff Jones, a teammate of Sampson’s at Virginia, said in December.
Many of Holland’s assistant coaches thrived as head coaches after working under him. Among them: Jim Larranaga (Bowling Green, George Mason and Miami), Dave Odom (Wake Forest and South Carolina), Craig Littlepage (Penn and Rutgers), Seth Greenberg (Long Beach State, South Florida and Virginia Tech) and Jones (Virginia, American and ODU).
“He was more tactician than anything,” said Jones, Mr. Holland’s successor as head coach in 1990. “It was very difficult to play for Coach Holland if you couldn’t think the game.”
Mr. Holland was born April 2, 1942 in Clinton, N.C., where as a teenager he met Ann, his wife of 56 years. He played basketball for Lefty Driesell at Davidson and as a senior in 1963-64 led the nation in field goal percentage at 63.1.
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