Lefty Driesell

Charles G. "Lefty" Driesell will enter his 40th year of NCAA Division I coaching coming off what may have been the best season of his career. His 29 wins (just 5 losses) in 2000-2001 were the most of any team he has ever coached (27 by a Maryland team and 27 by a Davidson team).

Driesell's 762 career wins trail only legends like Dean Smith (879), Adolph Rupp (876), Hank Iba (767) and Bobby Knight (764 as he starts at Texas Tech) in D-1 ball. Mt. St. Mary's Jim Phelan has 816, but for many years was a D-II coach and Clarence "Big House" Gaines from Winston-Salem had 828 in his 47-year career. Driesell's record at the start of this '01-02 season is 762-377 (67%).

Last year, Driesell earned a fourth consecutive Georgia Division I Coach of the Year Award from the prestigious Atlanta Tipoff Club and was named TAAC Coach of the Year (a 12th time in his career he has been a Conference Coach of the Year winner). At Georgia State, Driesell has set winning records in each of his four previous seasons and now owns a 79-42 (65%) mark at the downtown Atlanta University (the second largest among the 34 Georgia colleges). He went unbeaten at home and has built a 19-game home winning streak (eighth longest in the nation) to take into the 2001-2002 season.

On March 26, 1997, Charles G. "Lefty" Driesell, the 11th winningest college basketball coach in Division I men's basketball history at that time, became the 11th head coach at Georgia State University. Driesell was named to the post by President Carl V. Patton, whose efforts to establish a new direction for the Georgia State men's basketball program included the mandate of finding and selecting "a proven Division I head coach with a winning resume." --mission accomplished