RIP Carl Tacy

"Gentleman Carl" of Wake Forest men's basketball. His team ended Ray Meyer's career in the 1984 Sweet Sixteen and had a habit of winning the "Big Four" early-season tournament in which the four ACC schools in North Carolina gathered for a two-day slugfest (with none of the games counting in the conference standings) that would be inconceivable in today's game.

Carl Tacy, a former Wake Forest basketball coach who is in the school's Hall of Fame, has died

 

Remarkable coach who retired at the age of 53 and never coached again, I don't think.
Pretty amazing to have held his own at Wake Forest in the early 1980s while the rest of the league had Jordan, Worthy, Perkins, Sampson, Bias, etc. The fans presumably realized what they had when his successor, Bob Staak, failed so miserably.

 

Underappreciated is correct. UNC was humming along because of Dean. NCSU was enjoying the Norm Sloan Era and the beginning of Jim Valvano. Duke was down early in Tacy's tenure before Bill Foster revived them for a while, then struggled for a couple of seasons while a young guy named Mike Krzyzewski was getting acclimated.

Also recruited a guy from my hometown, Anthony Teachey, who was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks and went on to successful tenures with European clubs. Ended up back at my hometown some years later to work at the same Boys' and Girls' Club he went to as a teenager.