The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1318516
34 ■ THE WOLFPACKER often made at that time in the Port City. He had already been hired by the Coen Broth- ers to teach Tim Robbins how to hula hoop for the 1994 movie "The Hudsucker Proxy," playing pickup basketball games with the star in between hooping lessons. About the same time director Robert Zem- eckis cast Biedenbach as a football coach in his 1994 movie of Winston Groom's novel starring Tom Hanks, the former Sloan as- sistant took a call from then-Wolfpack coach Les Robinson asking Biedenbach to come back to NC State as the team's top assistant. He couldn't say no. So the one-time head coach at Davidson came back to Raleigh, then went on to UNC Asheville, where he served as head coach for 17 seasons before eventually retiring back on the North Carolina coast at the home he and his wife, Barbara, bought decades ago. He had hoped to spend most of his time at that Wrightsville Beach location, at least in between visiting their two daughters and their families in Raleigh and Charlotte. Hur- ricane Florence, however, changed most of those plans. When the Category 1 storm hit along the coast two years ago, it practi- cally demolished the Biedenbachs' house. They've spent the better part of those two years going back and forth from Raleigh to Charlotte, looking to proceed with repairs. They could have razed the entire prop- erty and started over. But they couldn't have rebuilt the same house because of modern coastal size restrictions that did not apply to the previous home. They could have at- tempted to salvage the old home, but for the last 30 years they have dealt with first-floor flooding every time the coast gets sizable rainfall. What they decided to do was drive nearly 70 pilings into the sand, raised the home nine feet above the ground and installed an elevator. Repairs are still on-going, but at least the couple — who met at NC State when he was a two-sport athlete and she was a cheerleader — have a pathway to return to their dream home. "It's been a real education," Biedenbach noted. "But, to be honest, it's something I really didn't need to learn about." Biedenbach, a native of Pittsburgh, has collected a lifetime of learning and memo- ries since he and his basketball coach father made the decision for him to move south and play for the legendary Case. He had no idea that the Wolfpack's all-time win- ningest coach and member of the National Basketball Hall of Fame would step down just two games into Biedenbach's college basketball career. Biedenbach — who Case tried to tame of his wild nature — had an outstanding career under Press Maravich and Norm Sloan (he missed the 1966-67 season following back surgery), earning first-team All-ACC honors after averaging double-figures his final two seasons. After a preseason stint with the Los Biedenbach played for coaches Everett Case, Press Maravich and Norm Sloan, and then helped recruit All- Americans David Thompson, Kenny Carr and Hawkeye Whitney to Raleigh. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS