Lee Rose, basketball coach who led Charlotte and Purdue to the Final Four, has died
Lee Rose, the head coach who led the Charlotte men’s basketball team to its lone Final Four appearance in 1977, has died, according to a spokesman for the 49ers’ athletic program. Rose was 85.
Rose spent three years as Charlotte’s head basketball coach from 1975-78, and in that time he directed the team to both the final of the 1976 NIT and then to the 1977 NCAA Final Four. With a future standout NBA player in Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, the 49ers upset No. 5 Syracuse and then No. 1 Michigan to reach the Final Four, only to fall to Marquette in the national semifinals on a controversial last-second basket. Marquette went on to defeat UNC for the 1977 national title.
In Rose’s three years as the 49ers’ head coach, Charlotte boasted a 72-18 record. Rose was named the 1977 Sporting News National Coach of the Year for his work with the 49ers. His three Charlotte teams won 80 percent of their games and were even better than that at home, where they posted an astonishing 40-2 record during Rose’s reign.
Rose, who died Tuesday, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2015. His memory and thinking skills eroded in his final years due to the brain disorder. In a fall sometime after his diagnosis, he broke his femur and suffered spinal cord damage, which left Rose in a wheelchair in his final years. His primary caretaker was his wife of 63 years, Eleanor. Still, in March 2021 he was able to conduct a brief interview with The Observer in which he reminisced about the 1977 Charlotte Final Four team.
“They were intelligent and they were very competitive,” Rose said of that team’s players. “And it was a pleasure to be with them, and not having any issues of anything that would have been negative. And they were really good. So I was a lucky man.”
Kevin King was a forward on the 1977 Final Four team for Charlotte. From New Jersey, King was also the first player Rose signed to a scholarship in 1974.
“We called Coach Rose ‘The Silver Fox,’ ” King said. “His demeanor was serious, but he could also relate to the players. One thing I loved about him was how great a situational coach he was. If things weren’t going right, he’d come up with something real quick and draw it up on the sideline. We’d run it for the first time ever right then, and it would work. He was so good at adjusting. The run we made to the NIT final and then to the Final Four the next year — so much of that was due to him.”
Rose stayed one more year in Charlotte after the Final Four run before leaving for the head job at Purdue. He also directed the Boilermakers to the Final Four in 1980 behind future No. 1 overall NBA draft pick Joe Barry Carroll, a 7-foot center.
Purdue lost to UCLA in the Final Four, but in getting there Rose became one of a handful of coaches to earn a spot in the Final Four with two different teams. In the Charlotte region, Rose’s name was long associated with college basketball’s premier event, and his death came the day after the 2022 Final Four concluded with Kansas edging North Carolina in the final.
Not long after leading Purdue to the Final Four, Rose left the Boilermakers for South Florida, where he coached for six seasons in the 1980s before finishing his coaching career out with several NBA teams as an assistant coach, including both the Charlotte Hornets and Bobcats.
A Kentucky native, Rose began his coaching career at his alma mater — Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., where he was a 1,000-point scorer. Charlotte hired him away from Transylvania in 1975. Rose retired in 2008 to his home in south Charlotte.
In 2020, both Rose and Maxwell were named to the inaugural Charlotte 49ers athletics hall of fame class as the school honored the Final Four run of 1977.
Among Rose’s survivors are his wife Eleanor, his two sons, Mike and Mark, and his four grandchildren. A celebration of Rose’s life will be held at an undetermined date, likely in the early fall before the next basketball season begins.
The family is establishing the Coach Lee Rose Foundation, which will have a mission of helping kids through sports, with coaching, training, equipment and academic scholarships. Contributions can be mailed to the Coach Lee Rose Foundation in care of Mike Rose, 3041 Stoneybrook Road, Charlotte NC, 28205.
This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 4:38 PM.
