When I heard the news that longtime University of North Carolina head coach Dean Smith had died last week, the first person I thought of was former Tiger men's basketball coach Terry Truax. Terry adored Dean Smith. He had worked under the legendary coach at UNC as a graduate assistant in the early 1970's. Then came Monday night and the shocking news that Coach Truax had passed away, and it hit all of us who knew and loved him hard.

Terry was one of the most unique men any of us would ever meet. He was a kind man and he was a good man. I first met Coach Truax in the fall of 1983 when he came to Towson to replace Vince Angotti, who had just retired. I was an outgoing senior that semester and I vividly remember interviewing Coach Truax on a Sunday morning sports talk show on then student run 89.7 FM. He was confident that he could make Towson a successful Division I program, and he did.

In his 14 years as the head coach at Towson, Terry's lifetime record was 202-203. But that number is misleading. In his first five seasons, the Tigers were 53-92 as he tried to build the program. In his last nine seasons, Terry led the Tigers to a 156-118 mark.

His tenure saw the Tigers win 20 games at the D1 level for the first time, make a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances and pull off victories against some of the biggest names in the history of college basketball. It's easy to see why Coach Truax was inducted into the Towson Hall of Fame.

There are a million Terry Truax stories that I could tell, but I will hold it to just a couple.

On February 21, 1985, the Tigers traveled to College Park to take on the Maryland Terrapins. It was an odd late season out of conference game for both teams. But the game had some drama. Legendary Maryland coach Lefty Driesell had 499 wins in his career, and Maryland had lost their previous four games, so everyone was getting itchy about Lefty getting number 500. The Tigers weren't very good at the time, ending that year with a 7-21 record. It was also Terry's first time coaching against his alma mater.

Towson's roster was decimated for various reasons. If you look at the final stats for the season, the last line simply said "others 39 games 19 starts". Remember, this was a Maryland team led by Len Bias and Adrian Branch. Towson didn't have much of a shot. Well, Lefty decided come hell or high water he was going to get win number 500 that night. The Terps pressed from the opening tap and handled Towson easily. The best moment came after the game though. I remember on the way down on the team bus, Terry had a box sitting next to him. After the game we found out what was in the box. Coach Truax was no dummy. He pretty much knew the way the game was going to go. The box had a cake, and Terry presented the cake to Lefty after the game congratulating him on his 500^th victory.

In 1995, the Tigers played Maryland at the Baltimore Arena. The Tigers lost to the Terps, 70-67. They also lost to the referees who made numerous questionable calls down the stretch. So in 1996, Towson travels down to College Park to take on the Terps again. Maryland's coach at the time was Gary Williams. Terry and Gary had been teammates at Maryland in the late 1960's. Well, early in the game the refs were again not being a friend to the Tigers. Terry was getting all over the officials. Then, he and Williams start getting into it. At one point during the game, the officials had to stop play and tell both coaches to quit yelling at each other. They did, and Towson and Maryland have not played each other in hoops since.

I only recall Terry getting thrown out of a game once in his career, and it was a classic. The Tigers were playing up at the University of Maine in 1997. Towson was having a down season in what would be Terry's final year. It was late in the game and I guess Coach had seen enough. He had been T-eed up earlier in the game, but then late in the second half, a call went against the Tigers. Terry looked at the official who made the call and came up with one of the greatest lines I've heard a coach use. In his standard Terry dry sense of humor, he just said "so how long have you been a member of the Black Bear Club?" Not a split second later coach had been T-eed up again and ejected.

What Terry Truax did for Towson basketball can never be downplayed. He had the tough job of taking the team through three different conferences (ECC, Big South and America East). It was a time when the Tigers looked to basketball to raise money so Terry had to play X number of "guarantee games" per year. For example, during the 1991-92 season, the Tigers played at Colorado, North Carolina, Maryland, SMU, and Tennessee.

He pulled off arguably the biggest wins in program history by defeating Louisville at the Towson Center in 1995. He got the Tigers on the front page of the USA Today sports section when Towson defeated St John's in the first round of the Preseason NIT in 1994 and he led the Tigers to a win over West Virginia later that same season. I haven't even really talked much about the fact that he took the Tigers to the Big Dance in 1990 and 1991 and as a 16^th seed put a scare in both Oklahoma and Ohio State.

Above all, Terry's players loved him. The program never had a hint of a scandal in his 14 years. The man represented this University with dignity and class. He was a great father to his children, and he was devastated by the loss of his beloved wife Pam a few years ago.

I last saw Terry just last week at SECU Arena when the Tigers played James Madison on February 7^th. His wit was as sharp as ever and he was so excited and happy with the direction the program has gone under Pat Skerry. He told me he was planning on coming back to hopefully all three of the Tigers remaining home games.

Terry was named coach of the year four times in his career, twice in the East Coast Conference and twice in the Big South. He was inducted into the Towson Hall of Fame in 2004.

Terry, all of us at Towson University were touched by knowing you and will miss you very much. Rest in Peace my friend.


-TowsonTigers.com-