Commentary : Holland, One Hopes, Quit Because It Was Time for a Grown-Up’s Job

Let’s hope his health had nothing to do with it. Let’s hope Terry Holland simply decided to quit coaching college basketball because, at age 47, it was time to take a grown-up’s job.

Not that running an athletic department, as Holland will be doing as of next May, is any feet-on-the-desk, nine-to-noon snap. And especially at Davidson, which has not seemed to know where it was headed since Holland left 15 years ago for Virginia.

Holland and Virginia made an ideal match that proved more successful than either surely imagined at the start. The Cavaliers wanted a classy coach who would make them consistently competitive in the Atlantic Coast Conference; Holland twice took them all the way to the Final Four--and within a game of that grail again last season.

Holland on the court, during five seasons at Davidson and 15 at Virginia, was not as he seemed off it. Away from games, Holland affected the air of a personable professor in dignified academia by day. By night, he was in deep thought by a fire, drawing on a pipe.

Tipoffs transformed his personality, from serenity to vein-popping anger. He called his dog Dean Smith, because it whined so much, but nobody could pout quite like Holland in a huff.

Holland seemed above the knee-bending swirl that goes with coaxing teen-agers to play games for profit. Yet, he was crafty enough to once hire as an assistant the coach of a couple of high school hotshots from Kentucky. He was lucky enough to have Ralph Sampson born fairly close to the doorstep of Virginia’s gym.

The reputation Holland carries around the game is that of not quite getting the most from teams with exceptional talent but squeezing more than seems possible from teams with ordinary players. On balance, his averaging 20 victories over 20 seasons at schools that demand serious scholarship is remarkable.

Last season ran the gamut for Holland. He endured his second intestinal operation, which kept him from the team for six games. He came back and took the Cavaliers to the final of the NCAA’s Mideast Regional.

The two games in the regional were as satisfying and frustrating as coaching gets. In the first, Virginia was smarter, tougher and more patient than an Oklahoma team with two all-Americans. In the second, the Cavaliers were embarrassed by a Michigan team on a lights-out shooting binge.

Holland also was close-up witness to a coach whose good fortune was as none ever, Michigan’s Steve Fisher. Here was Holland, who had paid most of the dues possible in an unforgiving profession, who had sacrificed and suffered and never quite been fully satisfied, beaten by an assistant with a battlefield promotion, whose first six games as a head coach would bring the national championship.

So, yet another coach who has pushed North Carolina’s Smith, but not caught him, leaves the Atlantic Coast Conference. Holland did scare the league’s all-time coach a few times, most notably with Sampson in the early 1980s.

With such as James Worthy, Sam Perkins and Michael Jordan, North Carolina usually had the superior team. Because Smith elevated Sampson to such a rarefied level--”his only point of reference will be himself”--and played stallball during the second half of the 1982 ACC title game, Tar Heel success at the time seemed greater than it does in retrospect.

Holland’s leaving is the latest coaching change in a league generally stable the last several seasons. Bob Staak was replaced by Holland aide Dave Odom at Wake Forest. Bob Wade was replaced by Gary Williams at Maryland. Still whispered is North Carolina State Coach Jim Valvano beating it to the NBA.

If leaving had been on Holland’s mind for some time, would Odom have gone to Wake Forest? Possibly, because a new arena and some fine players were there. Before a disastrous experience at Rutgers, assistant Craig Littlepage would have been a logical successor to Holland. No longer.

Under Holland, Virginia has become a job much coveted. Like Smith for nearly 30 years at North Carolina and Mike Krzyzewski for nearly 10 at Duke, Holland has shown that an academically minded school that bends its admissions rules now and then--but not too far--can succeed in megabucks basketball.

Davidson slipped, and in a hurry, after Holland left. One of Lefty Driesell’s early recruits at Davidson, Holland assumed control of the program not long after Driesell became coach at Maryland--and was 92-43 in five years.

After Holland, Davidson was noted for future-famous coaches (Bobby Knight and Larry Brown) declining the job.

Holland’s skills as an administrator of more athletic teams than his own are unknown. Still, he brings to his old school and his native state a sense of order and promise. Not just any challenge would stop him from chasing Dean.