SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Don Meyer, one of the winningest coaches in college basketball who came back from a near-fatal car accident and liver cancer before closing out his career, died Sunday in South Dakota. He was 69.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Don Meyer, one of the winningest coaches in college basketball who came back from a near-fatal car accident and liver cancer before closing out his career, died Sunday in South Dakota. He was 69.
Meyer led his teams into the playoffs 19 times and compiled a 923-324 during his 38-year career, most of which he spent at Lipscomb in Tennessee and Northern State in South Dakota.
The former Northern State coach died Sunday morning of cancer at his home in Aberdeen, where he had recently gone into hospice care, family spokeswoman Brenda Dreyer said.
“He won his greatest victory and is now running again and gearing up to pitch nine innings,” the Meyer family said in a statement. “The family appreciates the outpouring of love, prayers and concern.”
Four months after a near-fatal car accident and a cancer diagnosis, Meyer passed Bob Knight as the NCAA’s winningest coach in men’s basketball history in 2009. The native of Wayne, Neb., retired following the 2010 season at Northern State and a 13-14 record — only his fourth losing season.
Some of the greatest names in college basketball were his biggest fans, including Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who surpassed Meyer’s record in 2012 and once said Meyer did “a wonderful job of giving back to our great game.” Former Tennessee women’s coach Pat Summitt, who holds the all-time wins record for college basketball, has called Meyer “truly one of the best teachers in the history of the game.”
Jerry Meyer played for his dad at Lipscomb from 1989-92, and credits his dad’s success with a seamless, on-and off-court philosophy that lent itself to an exciting game.
“He was a tough coach to play for, very demanding physical and mentally. But that’s what made him a great coach, and that’s why all his players, he influenced their lives so much and produced so many coaches,” Jerry Meyer said.
Lipscomb athletic director Philip Hutcheson, who also played for Meyer there, said it wasn’t hard to see the coach’s legacy at the school — “that’s well-established and it’s enormous.” What’s difficult, Hutcheson said, is “trying to determine where his impact ended.”
Praise also came from opponents, including Nebraska coach Tim Miles, who coached against Meyer at Northern State.
“It didn’t matter if you were friend or foe,” Miles once said. “He would open up his playbook and show you his plays, and then he would turn around and beat you with that same play when your team played his.”
Krzyzewski on Sunday said Meyer shared his knowledge with coaches and “helped the game become better at every level.”
“His players benefited from his teachings both on and off the court,” Krzyzewski said. “His goal was for them to be successful as players and as men.”
Summitt also paid tribute to Meyer on Sunday.
“My heart goes out to the family of my dear friend, Don Meyer,” Summitt wrote on her Twitter account. “May we celebrate his life as a man of integrity and a legend in our game.”
Meyer kept coaching after being critically injured in traffic accident in September 2008. He was alone in a compact car, leading a caravan of vehicles heading to an annual team retreat, when he collided head-on with a grain truck. Multiple operations followed to remove Meyer’s spleen, repair cracked ribs and deal with a mangled left leg that had to be amputated below the knee.
He would later call the accident a blessing, because doctors also found cancer in his liver and small intestines.
Four months later — while coaching from a wheelchair — he became the winningest men’s basketball coach on Jan. 10, 2009. Yet always the humble teacher, Meyer noted during the postgame huddle defensive lapses on some 3-pointers.
“How selfish it would be if I was celebrating all this stuff and they were trying to be a better team,” he said at the time.
But a few minutes after the historic victory, Meyer finally smiled — and thought of his wife.
“I haven’t had this much fun since Carmen and I were married,” he told the crowd of 6,654, standing on his right leg and leaning against the scorer’s table as streamers and confetti drifted to the floor.
He was honored in July 2009 with ESPN’s Jimmy V Perseverance Award, named for former North Carolina State coach Jimmy Valvano, who died in 1993 from cancer. Meyer also was given the John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in August 2010.
Meyer was a standout baseball and basketball player at Northern Colorado. He graduated in 1967 then began his head coaching career with three seasons at Hamline in St. Paul, Minn., in 1972.
He later moved to Nashville, Tenn., to coach 24 seasons at Lipscomb — earning NAIA coach of the year twice and leading the Bison to the 1986 title. He took over at Northern State in 1999, and two years later started a run of seven straight 20-win seasons.
Meyer compiled records of 37-41 at Hamline, 665-179 at Lipscomb, and 221-104 at Northern State.
He’d had other health problems in recent years, including surgery in August 2012 to implant a heart pacemaker. That came after doctors replaced three of Meyer’s heart valves with mechanical ones and repaired a hole in his heart.
Funeral arrangements are pending, Dreyer said. Memorial services will be held at Lipscomb University and Northern State University, according to a statement from Lipscomb University.
Meyer is survived by his wife and three children. His son Jerry said: “He competed to the very end, literally.”