University of North Carolina Ashville Athletics
Bulldog Basketball Holiday Memory – December 1996
01.05.2023 | Men's Basketball
With the holidays around us, Mike Gore will look at some memorable men's basketball games that have been played near the holidays. Today's look is at a Bulldog win at South Carolina back in December of 1996.
Eddie Biedenbach was UNC Asheville's head basketball coach for 17 years and produced a lot of victories. He finished his Bulldog career with 256 wins.
But one victory early in his first season was an important one as it let Bulldog fans know that the former N.C. State standout was going to be a great coach with the Asheville program.
Eddie succeeded Randy Wiel who helped rebuild the Asheville program after it had crashed and burned during the 1992-93 season when the Dogs went 4-23. Two years later Asheville went 18-10 and just missed winning a Big South regular-season championship. Wiel moved on to Middle Tennessee State as its head coach .
Biedenbach's first season as Asheville's head coach started a little slowly with losses at ETSU and Kansas State. The Dogs easily beat Montreat for their first win of the season. Afterwards, Cavalier coach Steve McNamara told some people that Asheville was going to have a great team this year. They were even better than last year's 18-10 squad.
The Bulldogs then had a date with top-ranked Kansas at historic Allen Field House. Many believed this was Asheville native Roy Williams' best Jayhawk team with future NBA stars Paul Pierce and Jacques Vaughn on the squad. The Dogs fell behind 50-23 at halftime but then scored 51 points in the second half and even made the Jayhawks call a pair of timeouts in the second half.
Later in the week, the Bulldogs would play at South Carolina and this is the game we will focus on for this story. It would be an interesting contest with several subplots. The Gamecocks had a veteran team returning and many thought they could be a contender in the rugged SEC which housed defending national champion Kentucky. And the coaching match-up was intriguing as well. Former UNC player and assistant coach Eddie Fogler was USC's head coach. He and Biedenbach had battled on the court as players and had really gone after it on the recruiting trail. This would be their first ever game against each other as head coaches.
The Dogs felt like they had a little momentum after playing well in the second half against Kansas. USC had been blitzed by Clemson at home a few nights earlier and weren't playing very well. Fogler decided to shake things up by starting two walk-ons against Asheville.
The shake-up didn't work for the home team. Biedenbach's charges were ready. Junior forward Robert Stephenson had dunks on three straight early possessions for the Dogs to give the visitors an early lead. Meanwhile junior guard Vincent Krieger was going through the Gamecock defense with ease and Asheville's lead ballooned to 15 late in the first half.
It stayed that way in the second half. The lead even went to 18 points as Krieger hit back-to-back treys. Asheville looked like it might waltz to an easy win.
But the Gamecocks were not going to go away quietly. Led by talented guards BJ McKie and Larry Davis, USC fought back and quickly got back in the game. The lead was sliced to four with less than a minute to play but USC could get no closer. Josh Pittman and Krieger would hit clutch free throws inside the final minute and when the horn sounded, the Bulldogs had their first ever win over an SEC club, 80-74. Krieger led all scorers with a career-best 24 points.
For me, the most interesting part of the evening came in the post-game press conferences. When Biedenbach was through answering questions from the media, he was walking out and in walked Fogler. The two looked at each other and I remember thinking how these two had been battling each other for a long time and this could not have been a moment Eddie Fogler would remember fondly. However, the two stopped and talked for a few minutes. Coach Biedenbach assured Coach Fogler that he had a very good team and that the Bulldogs were in the right spot at the right time. Fogler told Biedenbach how well-coached Asheville was and they were going to have a great season.
In the end, both would be proven right. USC would lose to another Big South team a week later to Charleston Southern. But once SEC play started, the Gamecocks were ready to go. They won their first ever SEC regular-season crown with a 17-1 record which included two wins over top-ranked Kentucky. USC clinched the title with a win at Rupp Arena on Senior Day. Big South fans would enjoy the Gamecocks' success by pointing out that, while they were 17-1 in the SEC, they were 0-2 in the Big South.
Biedenbach's charges would make Eddie Fogler's words come true. Not too long after the Gamecock victory, the Bulldogs would embark on a school-record 11-game winning streak. There would be a win at Big West power New Mexico State, a rout of Marshall at the Civic Center and many other great moments. Asheville would win its first ever Big South regular-season title and finish with an 18-10 record.
During Biedenbach's career at Asheville, there would be more championships, trips to the NCAA Tournament and NIT. There would even be another win over South Carolina more than 12 years later. But the first big victory of the Biedenbach era came at South Carolina. He beat an old foe in Fogler that paved the way for the first of many great seasons under Eddie Biedenbach.
