‘They can win.’ 1986 Lions an inspiration for West Charlotte’s state title chase
West Charlotte’s basketball team will play for its seventh N.C. High School Athletic Association state title in Winston-Salem Wednesday afternoon.
Forty years ago, the 1985-86 Lions won the first one, going undefeated in 29 games.
“It seems like a long time ago,” said Maurice Caldwell, the point guard for the ‘86 Lions team, “until you start talking about it.”
Monday morning, Caldwell joined two of his former teammates — Duane Montgomery and Jules Springs — on West Charlotte’s campus, and they quickly started reminiscing.
The gym they played in is gone. The school building is gone, too. A few years ago, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools tore down the “old” West Charlotte and built a new school, with a new gym, on the same land.
The memories, though, remain the same.
“There’s nothing different,” said Montgomery, now 57. “It’s just a different building. It’s the same program. It’s the same mentality. They’ve still got talent. They can win.”
Back in ‘86, Montgomery’s team had plenty of talent, too. West Charlotte was coming off a bitter loss in the 1985 N.C. 4A regionals to eventual state champion Hunter Huss, from Gastonia.
What happened? Montgomery, Caldwell and Springs all tell some version of the same tale: West Charlotte had a player streaking down the floor, for what would’ve been an easy layup and a game-winning basket. But the Lions couldn’t get the pass to him.
“We ended up throwing the ball over his head,” Caldwell said. “We lost by one. So that whole summer, our mindset was, ‘We’re not going to lose again.’”
The pressure and the moment
By the start of the 1985-86 season, West Charlotte coach Charles McCullough — already a legend in the old black high school leagues and a six-time Charlotte-Mecklenburg coach of the year — had become a dominant coach in the post-integration era, but he didn’t have an NCHSAA state championship.
He’d won the 1963 and ‘66 state titles in the old N.C. High School Athletic Conference, made up historically Black schools, but West Charlotte lost in the 1968 NCHSAA state championship game and hadn’t been back. By 1986, McCullough, then 52, was heading into his 26th season and had 415 wins.
In statewide circles he was seen a little like former UNC head coach Dean Smith, who faced similar criticism until he broke through with a national title in 1982:
Best coach to never win the big one.
And McCullough’s players were painfully aware of that history, even if McCullough never talked about it.
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“That summer before (the ‘85-86 season), he lost his son Derrick (in a car accident),” Caldwell said. “So it was a big thing for us to win the state for him. Derrick was, like, friends with all of us. He was always around the basketball team. McCullough would never talk like that, but we knew what it meant to him. We knew what it would mean to Charlotte, especially being a Black school to win it.”
Springs said McCullough made a point to keep his team together all spring and summer after the playoff loss to Hunter Huss. West Charlotte had movie nights, cook-outs and just about anything McCullough could think of to bring them together.
During the break between the ‘84-85 school year and ‘85-86, West Charlotte won its third straight Charlotte high school summer league title, with McCullough as the coach.
“A lot of teams, you would just see them together during the season,” Springs, now 57, said. “We built a very close bond. And man, that 1986 season, we didn’t lose a game. I mean, we didn’t lose a practice, a summer league game, a scrimmage. We just took it upon ourselves to play harder.”
A season to remember
Poised, together and determined, the Lions started the 1985-86 season listening to teammate Lance Jones yell “Chapel Hill” every time they did sprinting drills during fall workouts.
“It didn’t click with me,” Montgomery said, “until about the third time he did it. That was just motivation. That’s where the championship was being played.”
The University of North Carolina was going to open a gym named after its coach, Dean Smith, in January 1986. And the N.C. High School Athletic Association had reached an agreement with UNC to host its state championship games there, and it would be the first time all the finals were held at the same place.
So Montgomery said every time Jones screamed “Chapel Hill,” it made the Lions run harder. It made them remember losing.
It made them determined to not do any of that again.
And when they finally got to play, the season became a symphony.
West Charlotte beat South Point, 84-53, to start and beat Clover 88-43 in Game 2.
In fact, no team got within 12 points of them until the Lions’ 12th game, a 68-64 win over North Mecklenburg.
There were a couple close games after that — four points over East Gaston; two over North Mecklenburg; two points in a playoff rematch with Hunter Huss — but West Charlotte was rolling toward its goal.
Chapel Hill.
“Everybody on our team could score,” Montgomery said. “That wasn’t the point. Our ability was we could stop the other team from scoring. A lot of times we just traded basket for basket, but we always had a quarter where you might get two points because we could play defense.”
Finally, the game they wanted
That defense helped West Charlotte its playoff revenge on Hunter Huss, when Montgomery stole the ball late and pitched it ahead to Caldwell for the game-winning bucket in a 47-45 win.
After that, West Charlotte blew past Winston-Salem’s Parkland High (70-46) and Morganton’s Freedom High (83-73) to reach the state championship game.
The opponent? Raleigh’s Broughton High School. Broughton’s star player, Garry Mattison, came off the bench, and Broughton — being close to Chapel Hill — had most of the nearly 12,000 fans in attendance.
“We were in Chapel Hill playing a Raleigh team,” Caldwell said, “so we felt like the visitors out there. We still had that mindset, though, that we were going to win. But that was our toughest game.”
West Charlotte led 46-34, but by the end of the third quarter, three starters — Jones, Springs and Caldwell — had four fouls.
Mattison, who finished with 33 points and was named game MVP, led his team back and forced overtime.
West Charlotte was down in overtime, 65-63, before back-to-back buckets by Caldwell gave the Lions the lead.
Up 67-65, West Charlotte fouled Broughton’s Darren Hill, who made one of two free throws. Mattison rebounded the miss but West Charlotte’s Chris Welch blocked his shot.
Broughton called timeout with two seconds left. Everyone thought the ball would go to Mattison.
Instead, it went to Kevin McNamara, who missed a 22-footer with Montgomery contesting.
McNamara fell to the floor after the shot. Broughton’s fans wanted a foul call.
There was none.
West Charlotte had done it.
“McCullough was cussing me out after the game because he thought I could’ve fouled the guy,” Montgomery said. “I blocked the shot. They didn’t call a foul. But you know McCullough is still coaching. In his mind, he’s still coaching.”
The memories live forever
McCullough passed away in 2017 at the age of 84. He went onto to win two more state championships at West Charlotte and retired with 583 wins, then the most by a local coach. He is widely considered the best coach, boys or girls, in Mecklenburg County history. The new West Charlotte gym is named after him.
And many would argue that the ‘86 Lions were his best team.
Center Kevin Reid, who averaged 13 points and 11 rebounds, was Charlotte Observer player of the year. Caldwell was a first-team pick. A.J. Morgan made honorable mention.
And since McCullough’s last state title, in 1992, West Charlotte has won three more, and the Lions were state runner-up in 2012.
But a lot of that Lions’ tradition, that Lions’ pride, goes back to the group in 1986 that felt it couldn’t lose.
“We won a championship together,” Montgomery said, “and that creates history where we’re always going to share that bond. But, of course, we all live our individual lives. A lot of us haven’t really seen each other, or had real experiences together, since that time. And some of us have kept in touch.
“But whatever happens, you know what, they can never take that year away from us.”
