Former USF Men's Basketball Coach Lee Rose Passes at 85
By Joey Johnston
Lee Rose, who ushered USF's men's basketball into a modern era that included an on-campus arena and the program's first three postseason bids, has passed away in Charlotte, N.C. He was 85.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Rose, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2015, was in a wheelchair after suffering spinal-cord damage due to a fall, according to his wife Eleanor, his primary caretaker.
Rose, who had taken Charlotte (1977) and Purdue (1980) to the Final Four, rocked the basketball world when he accepted a job with the fledgling USF Bulls, a program heading into its 10th season that was living a gypsy-like existence (utilizing five different "home courts'' in one season).
But Rose saw an opportunity because USF was opening its on-campus Sun Dome (now known as the Yuengling Center) and there was a chance to build tradition at a program clamoring for relevance.
From the beginning, Rose made the Bulls into a winner. He was 106-69 in six USF seasons (1980-86), but his first season was the obvious highlight. With a dapper, professional appearance (he was known as the "Silver Fox'' due to his well-coiffed white hair) and a demand for hard work and details, Rose's Bulls went 18-11 in 1980-81, registering a 12-game winning streak (still a program record) and engineering the nation's biggest turnaround (the Bulls were 6-21 in the previous season).
The Bulls earned a National Invitation Tournament bid with a home game against UConn. The Huskies prevailed 65-55 before a sellout crowd of 10,259, although the Bulls cut a 13-point deficit to just two with 47 seconds remaining.
The Bulls enjoyed a surge of fan interest in Rose's first season because the team was much improved and the Sun Dome became a campus centerpiece. The Sun Dome's dedication game on Dec. 2, 1980 — an 83-72 loss against the Duke Blue Devils — was carried on a relatively new cable-television network called ESPN. One of the announcers was an ex-coach, Dick Vitale. It was the second Duke game for first-year coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Rose's Bulls also earned NIT bids in 1982-83 (when they just missed the program's first NCAA Tournament, falling to UAB in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament final) and 1984-85. Rose resigned in 1986 to become an assistant coach with the NBA's San Antonio Spurs and he held a variety of coaching/front office roles in professional basketball before his retirement.
Under Rose, the Bulls recruited Tampa Robinson prep basketball sensation Charlie Bradley, who led the nation in scoring for 11 weeks as a sophomore and finished with 2,319 career points, still a USF record, to earn himself a spot in the USF Athletic Hall of Fame's inaugural class.
Rose coached six of USF's 10 players who were drafted in the NBA — Bradley, Jim Grandholm, Tony Grier, Curtis Kitchen, Willie Redden and Vince Reynolds.
"Coach Rose made USF basketball matter,'' said Grier, now an Orlando filmmaker who wrote a book on USF basketball history. "He brought us together and showed us how to do it. He put us on the map.''
Rose's Bulls also won two championships in the "Florida Four'' — a state-championship event that included the Bulls, Florida Gators, Florida State Seminoles and Jacksonville Dolphins.
Rose was a native of Lexington, Ky., who became a 1,000-point scorer at Transylvania College. At Charlotte, he coached Cedric "Cornbread'' Maxwell, who led the 49ers to upset victories against No. 5-seeded Syracuse and No. 1 Michigan en route to the Final Four, where they were defeated on a last-second bucket by Coach Al McGuire's Marquette team, the eventual national champions.
At Purdue, Rose coached 7-foot center Joe Barry Carroll, a future No. 1 overall NBA draft pick, as the Boilermakers made the 1980 Final Four before falling against UCLA in the national semifinals.
Less than two weeks later, Rose accepted the job at USF.
– #GoBulls –
