Norm Sloan

Norm Sloan

Florida Gators men's basketball coach Norm Sloan, circa 1961.
Biographical details
Born	(1926-06-25)June 25, 1926 Anderson, Indiana
Died	December 9, 2003(2003-12-09) (aged 77) Durham, North Carolina
Playing career
1947–1949	NC State
Position(s)	Guard (basketball), Quarterback (football)
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
1951–1955	Presbyterian
1955–1956	Memphis State (assistant)
1956–1960	The Citadel
1960–1966	Florida
1966–1980	NC State
1980–1989	Florida
Head coaching record
Overall	627–395
Accomplishments and honors
Championships
NCAA Division I Tournament (1974) ACC Tournament (1970, 1973, 1974) ACC regular season (1973, 1974) SEC regular season (1989)
Awards
SoCon Coach of the Year (1957) SEC Coach of the Year (1961) ACC Coach of the Year (1970, 1973, 1974)

Norman Lesley Sloan Jr. (June 25, 1926 – December 9, 2003), nicknamed "Stormin' Norman," was an American college basketball player and coach. Sloan was a native of Indiana and played college basketball and football at North Carolina State University. He began a long career as a basketball coach months after graduating from college in 1951, and he was the men's basketball head coach at Presbyterian College, The Citadel, North Carolina State University, and two stints as at the University of Florida. Over a career that spanned thirty-eight seasons, Sloan was named conference coach of the year five times and won the 1974 national championship at North Carolina State, his alma mater.

Early years

Sloan was born in Anderson, Indiana in 1926 to Norman and Mary Sloan. He is of English descent through his 4th great-grandfather. He attended Lawrence Central High School in Indianapolis, where he lettered in basketball.

College playing career

Sloan received an athletic scholarship to attend North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he played guard for coach Everett Case's NC State Wolfpack from 1947 to 1949. He was one of Case's original six "Hoosier Hotshots," a group of high school stars Case recruited from Indiana. As a member of the Wolfpack, Sloan was a classmate and teammate of Vic Bubas, who later coached the Duke Blue Devils from 1959 to 1969. Sloan was a member of three Wolfpack teams that won Southern Conference championships in 1947, 1948 and 1949. During the fall semesters, he played on the NC State Wolfpack football team as a reserve quarterback and was a member of the school's track and field team.

Sloan quit the basketball team before his senior year (1950–51) due to an ongoing dispute with Case over playing time. Instead, he concentrated on football for coach Beattie Feathers and saw the field more often as the backup to starter Ed Mooney. Sloan graduated from NC State with a bachelor's degree in education in 1951.

Coaching career

Sloan was the head basketball coach and assistant football coach at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina from 1951 to 1955, where his Presbyterian Blue Hose men's basketball teams compiled a 69–36 record in four seasons. He coached for a single season at Memphis State University in Memphis, Tennessee during 1955–56, working as an assistant basketball coach for the Memphis State Tigers basketball team.

Sloan left Memphis in 1956 to become head coach at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, where he built The Citadel Bulldogs basketball program from a conference also-ran to a respectable 15–5 in 1959. His first Bulldogs team in 1957 won the George Mikan Award for Most Improved Team in the Nation and he was named the coach of the year by the South Carolina Sportswriters Association that year. His Citadel teams compiled a 57–38 record in four years.

University of Florida

In 1960, Sloan became the first full-time basketball coach at the University of Florida, where in the past, an assistant football coach had usually coached basketball as well. His Florida Gators men's basketball teams tallied an 85–63 record in six seasons, including the school's first victory over an Adolph Rupp-coached Kentucky Wildcats team in 1965. He was unable to get the Gators into postseason play during this time; during the 1960s, only one team per conference was guaranteed an NCAA bid. Nonetheless, he revived a Gators program that had been, according to Florida historian Norm Carlson, essentially an intramural program playing at the intercollegiate level. The Miami Herald dubbed Sloan the "father of UF hoops" for his achievements in the 1960s.

North Carolina State

Sloan was named head coach at his alma mater, North Carolina State, in 1966, and his NC State Wolfpack basketball teams won three Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Championships in 1970, 1973 and 1974. His 1973 Wolfpack team was undefeated (27–0) but missed that year's NCAA tournament due to questions about the recruiting of high school phenomenon David Thompson. A year later, he led the Wolfpack to a 30–1 record and the school's first NCAA national championship. En route, the Wolfpack defeated the UCLA Bruins in the NCAA Final Four, ending UCLA coach John Wooden's run of seven straight NCAA championships. Sloan's Wolfpack beat Marquette, 76–64, in the 1974 NCAA championship game.

Sloan's overall win-loss record at NC State was 266–127 in fourteen seasons. His greatest teams included legendary players such as Thompson, Tommy Burleson, Moe Rivers, Tim Stoddard (who went on to pitch in Major League Baseball), Kenny Carr, and Monte Towe. "Stormin' Norman" was as well known for his garish red-and-white plaid sports coat as he was for his ACC battles with Lefty Driesell at Maryland and Dean Smith at North Carolina. He was selected the National Coach of the Year in 1973 by Basketball Weekly, and again in 1974 by the USBWA and the Associated Press.

Return to Florida

A salary dispute with the athletic director at NC State caused Sloan to leave the school, and the construction of the modern O'Connell Center basketball arena at the University of Florida helped convince Sloan to return to Gainesville in 1980. After three losing seasons, he turned the Florida Gators basketball program around for a second time, primarily by convincing several top in-state high school recruits such as Vernon Maxwell and Dwayne Schintzius to attend college in Florida. From 1984 through 1989, Sloan's Gators posted winning records in six straight campaigns and made the first six postseason tournament appearances in program history when they were invited to the NIT Tournament in 1984, 1985, and 1986 and the NCAA Tournament 1987, 1988, and 1989. Sloan's last three squads each won over twenty games, which had previously been accomplished only once at Florida, and his final team won the school's first Southeastern Conference regular season basketball championship.

Sloan compiled a 150–131 record over nine seasons in his second stint at Florida, giving him an overall record of 235–194 in fifteen years with the Gators.

Resignation

Sloan was forced to retire on October 31, 1989—just days before the start of the 1989–90 season—in the wake of an NCAA investigation into the Gators program.

In September 1990, the NCAA imposed two years' probation on the Gators for violations dating back to 1985 under Sloan. The Gators' 1987 and 1988 NCAA Tournament appearances were erased from the record books due to Maxwell being retroactively declared ineligible; Maxwell had admitted to taking money from agents without Sloan's knowledge. Sloan had also purchased a plane ticket to Boston for Maxwell in the summer of 1987 so that Maxwell could serve as a counselor at a basketball camp. Two years earlier, one of Sloan's assistants had allowed a recruit's mother to use the return leg of the recruit's airline ticket to return home after the recruit enrolled in summer school. In the NCAA's view, this amounted to the university paying for the travel expenses of recruits and players. It also harshly criticized Sloan, finding that he had engaged in unethical conduct by paying Maxwell's airfare. The basketball program lost two scholarships in 1991-92 and one scholarship in 1992-93 because of the infractions. As severe as these penalties were, the NCAA said it would have imposed even harsher penalties, such as a ban from postseason play and live television in 1990–91, had Sloan not been forced out. Sloan was personally penalized with a five-year show-cause penalty, which had the effect of blackballing him from the collegiate coaching ranks until 1995 at the earliest.

Later, Sloan stated that the situation was "mishandled". In a 1990 interview, Sloan said that the university's athletic compliance office was partially to blame for his "unconscious" violations of NCAA travel rules because they "went through the channels of athletic administration at the university unquestioned". He also opined that university athletic director Bill Arnsparger and other officials had "panicked" at the problems in the basketball program because of previous NCAA violations in other sports. He believed that the prospect of being handed a "death penalty" led them to force him to resign unfairly. "The findings certainly don`t justify what has happened... My reputation was completely destroyed and the careers of two young, promising assistants (Monte Towe and Kenny McCraney, who were also forced to resign) were destroyed. That`s tragic, and the university worked hard at getting it done."

Awards and accomplishments

Sloan's career win-loss record was 627–395, and his victory total ranks him twenty-sixth on the career list of Division I coaches. His 266 wins at NC State are still second in NC State history, trailing only Case. His 235 wins at Florida (232 if vacated games aren't counted) were the best in Florida history until Billy Donovan surpassed him in 2006.

Sloan was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 1984, and the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 1994.

After coaching

Sloan coached briefly in Greece after leaving Florida, then retired to Raleigh, North Carolina. He died of complications related to pulmonary fibrosis on December 9, 2003 at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. He was survived by his wife, Joan.

Head coaching record

Statistics overview

Season	Team	Overall	Conference	Standing	Postseason
Presbyterian Blue Hose (Little Four) (1951–1955)
1951–52	Presbyterian	21–7	4–2
1952–53	Presbyterian	11–15	4–2
1953–54	Presbyterian	17–8	4–2
1954–55	Presbyterian	20–6	6–0
Presbyterian:		69–36	18–6
The Citadel Bulldogs (Southern Conference) (1957–1960)
1956–57	The Citadel	11–14	5–9	7th
1957–58	The Citadel	16–11	9–6	4th
1958–59	The Citadel	15–5	7–4	3rd
1959–60	The Citadel	15–8	8–4	3rd
The Citadel:		57–38	29–23
Florida Gators (Southeastern Conference) (1960–1966)
1960–61	Florida	15–11	9–5	4th
1961–62	Florida	12–11	8–6	4th
1962–63	Florida	12–14	5–9	T–8th
1963–64	Florida	12–10	6–8	T–9th
1964–65	Florida	18–7	11–5	T–3rd
1965–66	Florida	16–10	9–7	T–5th
Florida (first):		85–63	48–40
NC State Wolfpack (Atlantic Coast Conference) (1966–1980)
1966–67	NC State	7–19	2–12	8th
1967–68	NC State	16–10	9–5	T–3rd
1968–69	NC State	15–10	8–6	T–3rd
1969–70	NC State	23–7	9–5	T–2nd	NCAA Regional Third Place
1970–71	NC State	13–14	5–9	T–6th
1971–72	NC State	16–10	6–6	T–4th
1972–73	NC State	27–0	12–0	1st	Ineligible
1973–74	NC State	30–1	12–0	1st	NCAA Champion
1974–75	NC State	22–6	8–4	T–2nd
1975–76	NC State	21–9	7–5	T–2nd	NIT Semifinals
1976–77	NC State	17–11	6–6	5th
1977–78	NC State	21–10	7–5	T–2nd	NIT Finals
1978–79	NC State	18–12	3–9	T–6th
1979–80	NC State	20–8	9–5	T–2nd	NCAA Second Round
NC State:		266–127	103–77
Florida Gators (Southeastern Conference) (1980–1989)
1980–81	Florida	12–16	5–13	8th
1981–82	Florida	5–22	2–16	10th
1982–83	Florida	13–18	5–13	10th
1983–84	Florida	16–13	11–7	T–3rd	NIT First Round
1984–85	Florida	18–12	9–9	T–5th	NIT First Round
1985–86	Florida	19–14	10–8	4th	NIT Semifinals
1986–87	Florida	23–11*	12–6	2nd	NCAA Sweet 16*
1987–88	Florida	23–12*	11–7	T–2nd	NCAA Second Round*
1988–89	Florida	21–13	13–5	1st	NCAA First Round
Florida (second):		150–131&	78–84
Florida (combined):		235–194&	126–124
Total:		624–393
National champion         Postseason invitational champion         Conference regular season champion         Conference regular season and conference tournament champion       Division regular season champion       Division regular season and conference tournament champion       Conference tournament champion

* NCAA appearances in 1987 and 1988 were subsequently vacated due to Vernon Maxwell being declared ineligible. Official record for 1986-87 is 21-10, official record for 1987-88 is 22-11.
& Record at Florida is 232-192 (147-129 for second stint) without vacated games.

See also

• The Citadel Bulldogs
• Florida Gators
• History of the University of Florida
• List of college men's basketball coaches with 600 wins
• List of NCAA Division I Men's Final Four appearances by coach
• List of North Carolina State University people
• NC State Wolfpack
• University Athletic Association
• Hotel Roosevelt fire

Bibliography

• Dortch, Chris, String Music: Inside the Rise of SEC Basketball, Brassey's, Inc., Dulles, Virginia (2002). ISBN 1-57488-439-5.
• Koss, Bill, Pond Birds: Gator Basketball, The Whole Story From The Inside, Fast Break Press, Gainesville, Florida (1996). ISBN 978-0-8130-1523-1.
• Peeler, Tim, Legends of NC State Basketball, Sports Publishing L.L.C., Champaign, Illinois (2004). ISBN 1-58261-820-8.