What the late UVA basketball coach Terry Holland cherished the most, his daughter Kate Holland Baynard said on Saturday, “was having everyone together under his wings.”
“The greatest gift dad gave us was our basketball family,” said Baynard, at a public tribute to her father, who passed away on Feb. 26 at the age of 80, after a nearly four-year battle with Alzheimer’s.
The tribute brought the Virginia basketball family back together under Holland’s wings for an afternoon at the John Paul Jones Arena, a glittering venue that Holland made possible during his tenure as athletics director at Virginia, after having laid the groundwork for it during his 16-year tenure as head coach.
Holland, in his later years, sat courtside for home games at JPJ alongside his wife, Ann, who with Terry raised their daughters, Kate and Ann-Michael, and several generations of UVA basketball players and assistant coaches, and others outside the immediate Virginia family, in the world of college basketball.
Kentucky coach John Calipari was on hand to hail Holland as an out-of-the-box thinker who helped him connect with the respected sports psychologist Bob Rotella.
And then there was Seth Greenberg, who is best known as the former coach at Virginia Tech and an ESPN TV analyst, but he was also a grad assistant at Virginia under Holland, who would serve as Greenberg’s mentor thereafter.
Greenberg and three-time national player of the year Ralph Sampson served as the masters of ceremonies, bringing up guests from Holland’s days at UVA, Davidson, Holland’s alma mater and where he first served as a head coach, and East Carolina, where Holland served as athletics director.
Among the long line of speakers was Wally Walker, the star of Holland’s memorable 1976 ACC Tournament championship team, who imagined Holland watching Saturday’s tribute from above, and smirking.
“He’s got that smirk because he’s figuring out how he’s going to prank all of us, because he was a prankster of the goofiest, silliest type,” said Walker, who went on to the NBA as a player and executive and also served on the UVA Board of Visitors.
The staid and serious Holland famously kept a gorilla costume in his office, and every few years, he’d put it on to try to put a scare in whoever the unwitting victim may be, for laughs and a break in the tensions that come in the high-pressure world of intercollegiate athletics.
“He’s also thinking to himself, What are y’all doing? There’s a beautiful spring afternoon in Charlottesville, Virginia, and you’re inside a building,” Walker said.
Jim Larrañaga, fresh off a Final Four run at Miami, recalled Holland hiring him as an unknown 21-year-old recent Providence College grad for his staff at Davidson, and then not taking no for an answer when he offered Larranaga a job on his staff at Virginia.
“I’m a Division 2 head coach. I like being a head coach. He said, No, you’re coming here. I’m sending a private jet to pick you up and fly you down here. I said, you’re sending what? That was it. We packed our bags, and we moved to Charlottesville,” said Larrañaga, who also coached George Mason to a Final Four in 2006.
“I loved every minute of it,” Larrañaga said. “Annie, Kate, Ann-Michael, you know what a big part you were of the University of Virginia basketball program, all the things we did, all the meals we had together. And from an assistant coach’s standpoint, all the coaches and all the players, when you’re treated like family, you really feel a part of the program. So, all I want to say, and I know everybody will agree with me, T, you were the greatest. And I know everybody here loves you, and no one will ever forget the impact you had on all our lives.”
Greenberg was also elevated by Holland, after stints as an assistant at Columbia and Pitt, for a job as a graduate assistant on his staff in 1983-1984, the second of Holland’s two Final Four teams.
“I have one disclosure: I was the worst graduate student in the history of the University of Virginia. And I really apologize for devaluing your degree. But it was only eight months, so maybe they’ll forget about it,” said Greenberg, who referred to his time at Virginia under Holland as his time working toward “a master’s in coaching.”
“From that point forward,” Greenberg said, he consulted Holland on every major decision he made, including “asking my wife to marry me.”
On that one: it starts with the Hollands inviting Greenberg and his girlfriend, Karen, now his wife of 38 years, for a beach trip.
“And at the end of that weekend, Coach Holland calls me into, like, this hallway. And my wife of 38 years now, she was somewhere in the kitchen. Mrs. Holland is standing here, Coach Holland is standing here, and Coach Holland says, she’s the one, and only as Mrs. Holland could do, she said, Berg, don’t screw it up,” Greenberg said.
“He changed my life,” Greenberg said. “I have no idea where I’d be today, or what I’d be doing or what my family would look like, without him investing in me. And it was a great lesson for me that everyone needs a mentor, everyone needs someone to invest in them while asking nothing in return. And that’s what Coach Holland did for me for 39 years.”
“I’ve spent 20 years in medicine, and I feel pretty comfortable with human anatomy, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how our dad managed to give such enormous, yet equal parts of his heart to so many people,” daughter Ann-Michael Holland said.
“I promise you, my sister and I would both swear we were the most loved daughter. Our kids each felt like the favorite grandchild. And that same feeling translates to his players, his colleagues, his siblings, and our friends,” she said.
“All of you here felt that incredibly special way that only Coach was able to provide from that normal-sized human heart that had superhuman capabilities. You never guessed where you stood with Coach, because he never missed an opportunity to say I love you.
“He always told us, girls, you share your dad with lots of people, and that might make it hard sometimes. But in return, you will have the biggest family of all. And he was right,” Ann-Michael said.
It took Virginia nearly two decades to find the right person to build on the foundation that Holland put down in his years as the basketball coach.
“Though I didn’t know Terry as well as some of his players and some of the coaches and the people here in attendance, I knew him well enough to know he was awesome, and that I loved him, and every time I was around him, I just wanted to give him a big hug and say, thank you, thank you for what you’ve done for Virginia basketball,” said Tony Bennett, who was hired at Virginia in 2009, and has led the program to six ACC regular-season championships, two ACC Tournament championships and one national championship, in 2019.
“To be the coach at UVA, it’s such an honor to follow in Coach’s footsteps,” Bennett said. “What he did for Virginia basketball for this university, and for this community is so special, and I’ll never take it for granted, and I’m forever grateful to be following in his footsteps.
“I’m just grateful to be here to celebrate,” Bennett said. “It’s a sad day, but it’s also a day to honor and celebrate. And I do look forward to that day when I’m with Coach, and we’re going to be talking about the memories of Virginia basketball, we’re gonna be talking about good hard-nosed man-to-man defense, but we’ll be in a place where there’s no more suffering, no more tears, no more Alzheimer’s, only joy in the presence of true love, and we’ll rejoice on that day when we’re all together.”
That would be a fitting way to end this recount of the tribute to Terry Holland, but then there’s this story, told by Greenberg, which ended with Greenberg choking back tears.
“The only time he ever basically gave me bad information, now, full disclosure, Miss Holland, because you’re part of the story as well, was we were playing at Duke my second year in the ACC,” Greenberg began the story. “And if you remember that game, with 1.2 seconds left, although we were playing at Duke, so they made it 1.9 seconds, we were up one, and they call the timeout, and Sean Dockery makes a halfcourt shot.
“I never took my phone into the arena when we were playing on the road. I’d just leave it on the bus. That’s before we chartered. You guys charter. We bussed everywhere,” Greenberg said. “But so, I get back into the bus, and I’m distraught, understatement, not that I’ve really ever been even keel in my life. But I sit down, and I look at that on my phone – this is not embellished at all – and it says, missed call, Big Whistle, voice message.
“So I figured, I was kind of miserable, I figured I’m gonna hit this voice message, and Coach Holland is gonna give me this uplifting message like he always did. Maybe after a tough loss or if we were struggling a bit, he’d pick up the phone and call me and talk me through me having out-of-body experiences.
“And so, I hit the button. And here’s the message almost verbatim. ‘Berg. Unbelievable. You just went into Cameron Indoor Stadium. …’ And then I hear Mrs. Holland in the background going, ‘Terry! Oh, no!’ That’s when the shot went in.
“True story. And all he said then was, ‘Berg, I’m so sorry.’
“And to be honest with you, it still gave me what I needed at that moment in time. It gave me a perspective, perspective. And that’s what for? I’m gonna hang in here 30-some years.”
This is where Greenberg choked back the tears.
“That’s what Terry Holland gave me. He gave me a life. He gave me perspective.”
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Chris Graham
