 | |
| Biographical details | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1947-07-04)July 4, 1947 (age 77) The Bronx, New York, U.S. |
| Playing career | |
| 1967–1970 | South Carolina |
| Position(s) | Point guard |
| Coaching career (HC unless noted) | |
| 1971–1973 | Point Park (assistant) |
| 1973–1975 | South Carolina (assistant) |
| 1975–1981 | Appalachian State |
| 1981–2000 | Georgia Tech |
| 2006–2012 | College of Charleston |
| Head coaching record | |
| Overall | 579–375 |
| Accomplishments and honors | |
| Championships | |
| NCAA Division I Regional – Final Four (1990) 3ACC tournament (1985,1990,1993) 2ACC regular season (1985, 1996) SoCon tournament (1979) 4SoCon regular season (1978, 1979, 1981, 2011) | |
| Awards | |
| Naismith College Coach of the Year (1990) 3×ACC Coach of the Year (1983, 1985, 1996) 4× SoCon Coach of the Year (1976, 1978, 1981, 2011) | |
Robert Joseph Cremins Jr. (born July 4, 1947) is an American retiredcollege basketball coach. He served as ahead coach atAppalachian State,Georgia Tech, and theCollege of Charleston.
Cremins attendedAll Hallows High School in theBronx, New York, where he was born to Irish immigrants fromCounty Kerry. In 1966, he entered theUniversity of South Carolina (USC) on a basketball scholarship, where he played under coachFrank McGuire. While Cremins was there, theSouth Carolina team won 61 games, with 17 losses, while Cremins was the startingpoint guard for three years for the Gamecocks. Cremins, known as "Cakes",[citation needed] was also the captain ofSouth Carolina's 1969–70 team which went 25–3 and won USC's first (and only) ACC regular season title. He graduated from USC in 1970 with aB.S. degree inmarketing, before playing professional basketball for one year inEcuador.
Cremins started his coaching career in 1971 as an assistant coach atPoint Park College inPittsburgh,Pennsylvania. He next returned to South Carolina to become McGuire's assistant coach and to earn aM.S. degree in guidance and counseling in 1972.
At age 27, Cremins became one of the youngestNCAA Division I head coaches in history when he took charge of the basketball team atAppalachian State University. He inherited a program that had only won 22 games since joining Division I five years earlier, and had just come off the worst season in school history at 3–23. In his first year at Appalachian his team had a record of 13–14, but then they accumulated an 87–56 record over the next five seasons, with threeSouthern Conference regular season championships. The Mountaineers posted a 23–6 record, and received an NCAA Tournament slot in 1979 after sweeping the Southern Conference regular season and tournament titles.
Cremins's performance at Appalachian State gathered him some national attention in the NCAA coaching ranks, including catching the eye of Georgia Techathletic directorHomer Rice. After Rice persuaded him to come to Atlanta, Cremins was hired as the Yellow Jackets' new head basketball coach at the close of the 1981 season, on April 14, 1981.
When Cremins arrived at Georgia Tech, he walked into a situation that was as bad, if not worse, than what he'd inherited at Appalachian State. Georgia Tech had only notched one winning season in the previous 10 years, and had just suffered the worst season in school history—a 4–23 overall record and a winless record inAtlantic Coast Conference play.
Considering the poor state of the program he'd inherited, Cremins engineered a very quick return to respectability. In only his third year in Atlanta, he led the Yellow Jackets to the 1984NIT—their first postseason berth of any sort in 13 years. A year later, the Yellow Jackets shocked the ACC by winning a share of the regular season title, then winning the conference tournament. They then advanced all the way to the Elite Eight, tallying an overall record of 27–8. In 1990, Cremins's team advanced all the way to theFinal Four in the NCAA Tournament, with an overall 28–7 record. The 28 wins are still a school record for wins in a season.
Cremins was three times the ACC "Coach of the Year": In 1983 with the first ever Yellow Jackets' ACC tournament victory, and an overall 13–15 won/loss record; again in 1985, and again in 1996 when his team posted a 24–12 record, won the ACC regular-season championship with a 13–3 record (only the second time in 15 years that a team fromNorth Carolina had not won at least a share of the title), and progressed to theNCAA basketball tournament's "Sweet 16" before losing toCincinnati. Cremins' coaching of the 1990 Yellow Jackets' team earned him theNaismith College Coach of the Year honor.
Cremins had a host of players that went on to have successfulNBA careers. First there wasMark Price (theCleveland Cavaliers) andJohn Salley (theDetroit Pistons) in the early 1980s, followed byDuane Ferrell,Tom Hammonds,Dennis Scott,Brian Oliver,Kenny Anderson,Jon Barry,Travis Best,Stephon Marbury,Jason Collier andMatt Harpring.
Cremins was an assistant coach on the first-ever gold medal-winning AmericanWorld University Games team in 1986, assisting the head coachLute Olson of theUniversity of Arizona. Cremins also assisted Olson at the1986 FIBA World Championship, also winning the gold medal there.[1] During the summer of 1989 he coached the American team that qualified for the1990 FIBA World Championship.
Cremins assisted formerNBA coachLenny Wilkens in theAmerican basketball team's appearance in theSummer Olympic Games of 1996 inAtlanta. This team was the second of the "Dream Teams" in the Olympic Games, and it featured such NBA stars asCharles Barkley,Karl Malone,Reggie Miller,Shaquille O'Neal,Scottie Pippen,David Robinson andJohn Stockton, several of whom were returning for their second Olympic Games basketball tournament. This "Dream Team" was undefeated in the Olympic basketball tournament, of course, and it defeated the second-place Yugoslavian team 95–69 in the championship game in winning the gold medal.
On March 24, 1993, Cremins agreed to coach basketball at his alma mater, theUniversity of South Carolina, before changing his mind and deciding three days later to continue at Georgia Tech. In 2003, Georgia Tech officially named the basketball court at theAlexander Memorial Coliseum on the Georgia Tech campus, the "Cremins Court".Paul Hewitt would take his place at Georgia Tech in 2000.
Cremins announced his retirement after the 1999–2000 season with a 25-year coaching record of 452–303 (a winning percentage of .599), and with a Georgia Tech coaching record of 354–237 in 19 seasons (also a .599 winning percentage). He is far and away the winningest coach in Georgia Tech history.
With his platinum blond hair, Cremins was an iconic figure at Georgia Tech. It was very common for fans to show up at Alexander Memorial Coliseum wearing blond wigs.
Cremins was a member of the 2006 induction class in the Georgia Tech Sports Hall of Fame.
Turning down numerous offers to coach during his retirement, and even an occasional athletic directors job, Cremins toured the country doingmotivational speaking, did televisioncommentary on ACC and NCAA basketball, and worked withcharities, mainly forCoaches vs. Cancer and theJimmy V Foundation. Cremins also raised money for a five-to-six week summer program, half of which include disadvantaged children, the Hilton Head Basketball Camp 101.
In 2006, Cremins returned to coaching at theCollege of Charleston, hoping to restore the basketball program there to the mid-major power status that it experienced under coachJohn Kresse from 1980 to 2002. To some degree, Cremins succeeded, leading the team to four twenty-win seasons in his six seasons there, in addition to signing the highest-rated high school recruit in school history, Adjehi Baru. Another highlight of Cremins' tenure was a home upset over aNorth Carolina team ranked number nine in the country on January 4, 2010.[2]
Having taken a medical leave of absence on January 27, 2012, which lasted for the duration of the 2011–2012 season, Cremins retired from coaching on March 19, 2012, citing physical exhaustion.
| Season | Team | Overall | Conference | Standing | Postseason | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appalachian State Mountaineers(Southern Conference)(1975–1981) | |||||||||
| 1975–76 | Appalachian State | 13–14 | 6–6 | 5th | |||||
| 1976–77 | Appalachian State | 17–12 | 8–4 | 3rd | |||||
| 1977–78 | Appalachian State | 15–13 | 9–3 | 1st | |||||
| 1978–79 | Appalachian State | 23–6 | 11–3 | 1st | NCAA Division I First Round | ||||
| 1979–80 | Appalachian State | 12–16 | 6–10 | T–6th | |||||
| 1980–81 | Appalachian State | 20–9 | 11–5 | T–1st | |||||
| Appalachian State: | 100–70 (.588) | 51–31 (.622) | |||||||
| Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets(Atlantic Coast Conference)(1981–2000) | |||||||||
| 1981–82 | Georgia Tech | 10–16 | 3–11 | 8th | |||||
| 1982–83 | Georgia Tech | 13–15 | 4–10 | 6th | |||||
| 1983–84 | Georgia Tech | 18–11 | 6–8 | T–5th | NIT First Round | ||||
| 1984–85 | Georgia Tech | 27–8 | 9–5 | T–1st | NCAA Division I Elite Eight | ||||
| 1985–86 | Georgia Tech | 27–7 | 11–3 | 2nd | NCAA Division I Sweet 16 | ||||
| 1986–87 | Georgia Tech | 16–13 | 7–7 | 5th | NCAA Division I First Round | ||||
| 1987–88 | Georgia Tech | 22–10 | 8–6 | 4th | NCAA Division I Second Round | ||||
| 1988–89 | Georgia Tech | 20–12 | 8–6 | 5th | NCAA Division I First Round | ||||
| 1989–90 | Georgia Tech | 28–7 | 8–6 | T–3rd | NCAA Division I Final Four | ||||
| 1990–91 | Georgia Tech | 17–13 | 6–8 | T–5th | NCAA Division I Second Round | ||||
| 1991–92 | Georgia Tech | 23–12 | 8–8 | T–4th | NCAA Division I Sweet 16 | ||||
| 1992–93 | Georgia Tech | 19–11 | 8–8 | 6th | NCAA Division I First Round | ||||
| 1993–94 | Georgia Tech | 16–13 | 7–9 | 6th | NIT First Round | ||||
| 1994–95 | Georgia Tech | 18–12 | 8–8 | 5th | |||||
| 1995–96 | Georgia Tech | 24–12 | 13–3 | 1st | NCAA Division I Sweet 16 | ||||
| 1996–97 | Georgia Tech | 9–18 | 3–13 | 9th | |||||
| 1997–98 | Georgia Tech | 19–14 | 6–10 | 6th | NIT Quarterfinal | ||||
| 1998–99 | Georgia Tech | 15–16 | 6–10 | T–5th | NIT First Round | ||||
| 1999–00 | Georgia Tech | 13–17 | 5–11 | 8th | |||||
| Georgia Tech: | 354–237 (.599) | 134–150 (.472) | |||||||
| College of Charleston Cougars(Southern Conference)(2006–2012) | |||||||||
| 2006–07 | College of Charleston | 22–11 | 13–5 | 2nd(South) | |||||
| 2007–08 | College of Charleston | 16–17 | 9–11 | 3rd(South) | |||||
| 2008–09 | College of Charleston | 27–9 | 15–5 | 3rd(South) | CBI Second Round | ||||
| 2009–10 | College of Charleston | 22–12 | 14–4 | 2nd(South) | CBI Second Round | ||||
| 2010–11 | College of Charleston | 26–11 | 14–4 | 1st(South) | NIT Quarterfinal | ||||
| 2011–12 | College of Charleston | 12–8* | 4–5* | 4th(South) | |||||
| College of Charleston: | 125–68 (.648) | 69–34 (.670) | |||||||
| Total: | 579–375 (.607) | ||||||||
National champion Postseason invitational champion | |||||||||
*= Team record at the time of Cremins' medical leave of absence on January 27, 2012. CofC finished season 19–12 overall with interim head coachMark Byington being credited with a 7–4 coaching record.
With his wife Carolyn, Cremins has one child, Bobby III, who is married to Jennifer, and two grandsons, Risen (Robert Joseph Cremins IV) and Xander (Alexander Charles Cremins). He also has two step-daughters, Liz and Suzie, from Carolyn's earlier marriage. He lives inHilton Head, South Carolina.
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