The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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MAY/JUNE 2025 ■ 49 two-year agricultural short-course class. They played against each other for one year, and Bergthold chose the top eight players to compete as the school's varsity team for a handful of games dur- ing the 1910-11 school year. The first two games of that season, one in November in Norfolk, Va., against what is now Vir- ginia Tech and another in January against UNC-Chapel Hill, were both cancelled, the former because of rain and the latter because of a longstanding disagreement over eligibility standards. Bergthold was not the coach, however; he turned all decisions over to upperclass- man players Guy Bryan and Percy Bell Fe- rebee, a team manager, and the school's first stated coach, E.V. "Buck" Freeman. A senior in electrical engineering from nearby Wake Forest, Freeman needed a strong nickname to mask his given names, Elmo Vernon, and to add a little virility to his resume, which included being a star baseball player and the secretary for the Thalarian German Dance Society. He never played basketball. Freeman was astute enough, however, to record the first victory in NC State basketball history by beating Wake Forest, 19-18, on Feb. 16, 1911, five days after losing to the same team on the road, 33-6. He graduated later that spring with a degree in electrical en- gineering. Frequent Change The coaches that followed were simi- larly inexperienced in the game of bas- ketball. The second team, which lost all six of its games but made a profit of $195, was managed without a coach by Walter Ray Mann, a horticultural stu- dent from Cleveland who had been a member of his class bas- ketball teams for two years. The third coach was Har- grove, a native of Huntington, W.Va., who left school after his ignominious three-game stint and was replaced by faculty member Edson "Chuck" San- born, who taught dairying and animal husbandry, to finish out the season. Sanborn was succeeded by football coach Jack Hegarty, who ran the hoops squad for one year in 1913-14, followed by the one-year tenure of an- other faculty member, civil engineer- ing instructor Harry S. Tucker, in 1915. Hegarty joined the U.S. Naval Reserves Dental Training unit during World War I, coached Washington's first profes- sional football team (which included two former NC State players) and opened a private dental practice after his coaching days were done. Sanborn returned for another sea- son in 1916 and was succeeded by the school's first full-time paid leader, ath- letics director Harry Hartsell, an Ashe- ville native who had played baseball and football at A&M just before basketball was introduced as a varsity sport. Hartsell had been hired to replace football coach Britt Patterson midway through the 1917 football season and took over all coaching for football, bas- ketball, baseball and track and field, as well as athletics administrative duties. After winning the 1918 state cham- pionship with a 12-2 overall record, Hartsell was called into active duty by the U.S. Army for combat during World War I, leaving the athletics department in the hands of his former football and baseball teammate and classmate Tal- madge H. "Tal" Stafford, who had re- turned to campus as one of Hartsell's assistant coaches. Stafford also led mul- tiple sports while Hartsell was away but eventually stepped aside to become the editor of the college's alumni magazine. For two seasons, 1919-20 and 1920- 21, the basketball team was coached by trainer Dr. Richard "Red" Crozier, the former Wake Forest basketball coach and physician who had long before brought the sport to the state of North Carolina from his home in Evansville, Ind. He was followed for two more years by Hartsell, who was discharged from the Army in 1920, coached two seasons, then turned the team back over to Crozier. Finally, in the fall of 1924, the basket- ball program was taken over by its first long-term coach, Gustave Kenneth "Gus" Tebell, who was hired as head basketball coach and assistant football coach. Tebell arrived just in time to open NC State's first on-campus arena, Thompson Gym, in the winter of 1925, featuring an exhi- bition by his longtime friend, Converse basketball ambassador Chuck Taylor. Tebell eventually became one of only two coaches in the history of the South- ern Conference to win championships in both football (1927) and basketball (1929) before leaving to take similar positions at Virginia. Moving On Most of the early coaches simply left school or returned to their campus re- sponsibilities after serving the fledgling basketball program. Freeman, long forgotten but officially the first coach in NC State basketball his- tory, was drafted into the U.S. Army for World War I. After he was discharged, he married and moved to Kentucky. For 25 years, he was the electric sales manager for the Louisville Gas and Electric Company. On May 22, 1952, Freeman loaded sev- eral large pieces of slate into his automo- bile that he was going to use for landscap- ing at his home in the Louisville suburb of Shelbyville. However, as he drove through town, his car sped out of control and crashed into a tree at the en- trance to Iroquois Park, the Fred- erick Law Olmsted municipal park in the center of Louisville. He was 64 at the time of his death. A coroner's jury later de- termined that Freeman had suf- fered a heart attack prior to the collision with the tree. He is buried at Grove Hill Cemetery in Shelbyville, Ky., a son of the Old North State planted in the heart of the Blue- grass. ■ Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu. NC State's First Basketball Coaches Season Coach/Manager Status Record 1910-11 Elmo Vernon "Buck" Freeman Student 1-1 1911-12 Walter Ray Mann (manager) Student 0-6 1912-13 Nathan "Piggy" Hargrove Student 0-3 Edson "Chuck" Sanborn Faculty 3-0 1913-14 Jack Hegarty Coach 5-8 1914-15 Harry S. Tucker Faculty 5-5 1915-16 Edson "Chuck" Sanborn Faculty 7-6 1916-17 Harry Hartsell Coach/AD 10-8 1917-18 Harry Hartsell Coach/AD 12-2 1918-19 Talmadge "Tal" Stafford Coach/AD 11-3 1919-20 Richard "Red" Crozier Coach 11-5 1920-21 Richard "Red" Crozier Coach 6-14 1921-22 Harry Hartsell Coach/AD 6-13 1922-23 Harry Hartsell Coach/AD 5-8 1923-24 Richard "Red" Crozier Coach 7-16