The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1318516
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 ■ 35 Angeles Lakers and seven regular-season games with the Phoenix Suns during the 1968-69 NBA season, Biedenbach returned to Raleigh and joined Norm Sloan's staff before the 1969-70 season. He was the primary recruiter of David Thompson from Shelby's Crest High School and recruited the first of many Wolfpack players from DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md., starting with Kenny Carr and Charles "Hawkeye" Whitney. Biedenbach's first head coaching job was at Davidson, where he spent three seasons, before becoming an assistant for head coach Hugh Durham at Georgia in 1981. The Bull- dogs advanced to the NCAA Final Four for the first time in school history in 1983, only to lose to Jim Valvano's Cardiac Pack in the semifinals. Biedenbach was at Georgia for seven seasons. He was out of basketball for four seasons before Wolfpack head coach Les Robinson brought him back to Raleigh as an assistant in 1993. After Robinson stepped down at NC State, Biedenbach was hired as the head coach of UNC Asheville, where he served 17 seasons, becoming the program's all-time winningest coach and earning the 2008 Big South Coach of the Year award. He led the Bulldogs to five regular-season conference titles and three NCAA Tournament appear- ances. He spent one more season as an assis- tant at UNC Wilmington while getting his feet wet in retirement in 2013. Since then, the 75-year-old coach has been doing what coaches always say they will do: Look back on their career and appreciate their highs and lows and what they learned. "What I enjoy now is watching the games," Biedenbach explained. "I'm a fan of football, basketball, baseball and now hockey. I really enjoy watching the great players, how they play the game and what makes them tick. "It's interesting to me to compare what they do now to what Thompson and [Mi- chael] Jordan, or Tommy Burleson and Ralph Sampson, or Bill Russell and Wilt Chamber- lain, did during the prime of their careers." Hockey may seem to be the outlier in Biedenbach's interests. He grew up in Pitts- burgh pulling for the NFL's Steelers and the MLB's Pirates, but the NHL's Penguins didn't arrive in the Steel City until after Biedenbach went to NC State. He was forced to take an interest in the sport while with the Lakers, because owner Jack Kent Cooke also owned the Los An- geles Kings and wanted his Laker players to show up at games. His interest became a little keener, however, a few years ago when his daughter Amy married NHL star Rod Brind'Amour, who is now the coach of the Carolina Hurricanes. Though it's a different sport and a dif- ferent level, he's spent hours talking to his son-in-law about coaching, how he handles players and learning the nuances of a game that is mostly foreign to him. "I have really enjoyed sitting around, just as I have always done with football and basketball coaches, and trying to understand what they do in hockey," he said. "I had no trouble becoming a Hurricanes fan because of the attitude of their players, their coaches and the toughness of the sport. "It's been pretty easy to pick up hockey and become a fan, particularly in learning from someone like Rod." Biedenbach also stays in touch with his athletics roots as a volunteer member of the board of directors at the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in Raleigh, which has elected and inducted sports legends into the hall every year since 1963. The most recent class, which includes former Wolf- pack Club executive director Bobby Purcell and former NC State women's basketball player-turned-broadcaster Debbie Antonelli, was not inducted as scheduled this May, because of the COVID-19 outbreak, but will be next spring. "I do like to sit back and think about what all those people did, way back in the day, when they were competing for the love of sports," Biedenbach said. "And I wonder if we take enough time to sit back and ap- preciate those things, especially the players who now earn millions and millions of dol- lars and the coaches who earn millions of dollars. "I know what those people did for me. They helped give me a life I have thor- oughly enjoyed." ■ " What I enjoy now is watching the games. I'm a fan of football, basketball, baseball and now hockey. I really enjoy watching the great players, how they play the game and what makes them tick. Biedenbach " Biedenbach (shown with his wife, Barbara, a former Wolfpack cheerleader) has either played for, worked for or advised every NC State basketball coach since the end of World War II. PHOTO COURTESY THE BIEDENBACH FAMILY Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.