The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1540860
32 ■ THE WOLFPACKER He knew how to evaluate talent as well as any coach in the nation, despite his inexperience at the college level. If you asked anyone in the Hoosier State at the time, they would have told you Evvy Case was better at finding players from across the Midwest — and getting their families decent-paying jobs at the height of the Great Depression — than anyone in the state's basketball-rich history. Case knew exactly what he wanted when he began building his first team. The first gem? A redheaded forward from Alexandria, Ind., whom Case re- membered as a 5-9 high school player, named Richard Dickey. After three years in the Navy, Dickey had grown into a 6-2 forward who learned how to make a run- ning jump shot. Case had already persuaded Dickey to join him at Purdue, where the coach was headed until friends back in Indiana con- vinced him that he wouldn't exactly be welcomed in his home state. When NC State hired Case on the recommenda- tion of a Converse shoe salesman named Chuck Taylor, Dickey followed him to Raleigh. The wily old coach, who was 46 when he directed his first college game, also brought with him some other players he knew well. Indianapolis native Pete Negley played for Case at the Iowa Naval Air Station during the war. Wisconsin- born Warren "Wimpy" Cartier played for the coach's first war team at DePauw College. Charlie Stine played for Case at Frankfort High before the war. One of Case's assistants in Iowa had coached a player from Ann Arbor, Mich., who was too big for the U.S. Army and spent the war building bombers at the Willow Run Munitions plant in Detroit. Case was shocked when he first saw 6-9, 240-pound center Bob Hahn, who ended up becoming the tallest player in the his- tory of the Southern Conference to that point. Case rounded out his recruited ros- ter with some other familiar faces from the state of Indiana: Harold Snow from Case's hometown of Anderson, Jack Mc- Comas of Shelbyville and Norman Sloan of Indianapolis. The only player not tied to Case from military play or from the fields of Indiana was Ed Bartels of Long Island, N.Y. State's new coach didn't want to build a team, however, without including the student body. He invited more than 100 players to participate in an open tryout at Thompson Gymnasium, including guard Leo Katkaveck of Manchester, Conn., who had played at State before and af- ter the war, as well as Lewis "Hotdog" Herzog of Lexington, N.C., the second- leading scorer for coach Leroy Jay the year before. Case was brutal in evaluating the tal- ent at tryouts; he even cut a player who had survived Pearl Harbor. Herzog left the team after three games, and Katka- veck was the only tryout player who fin- ished the season with the Red Terrors, as the Wolfpack was then known. In all, Case's first roster had nine new- comers — all classified as freshmen — among its 10 players. "I think we will have a good, fast club, but we will be working against the hand- icap of having a squad that is unaccus- tomed to playing together," Case said of his first team. "We will use a combina- tion of the set and fast-breaking play on offense and a combination of man-to- man and zone on defense. "We should become stronger as the Nicknamed the "Hoosier Hotshots," Case's first team went 26-5 overall and won the Southern Conference title with an 11-2 record. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS