2009-10 Upstate Men’s Basketball Spartans
Coaches & Support Staff
Building A 25-Year Career... In 1978, a 27-year-old basketball junkie stepped onto the court at Truett-McConnell as a head coach for the first time in his career. So began a journey for Eddie Payne which saw him coach at one of the Southeast’s coaching launching pads at Belmont Abbey, get his break in Division I in his home state of North Carolina, criss-cross the country to serve as a head coach in the Pac-10, re-start his career back in is home state of North Carolina, and lead a traditional small-school power into the ranks of Division I basketball. His journey has not been typical, but it has been an adventure. It is the journey of Eddie Payne, Upstate’s head coach now in his eighth season at the helm of the Spartans program.
down and made them both. They came back and scored and took a timeout with eight seconds left. The same thing. We were trying to get the ball into the hands of a more veteran player. But, we couldn’t get it in and Holton gets the ball again and they foul him again. He makes both free throws again and that was the game. It was such a wonderful thing for our team and for him. It was such a great example of a youngster who came to practice every day with a wonderful attitude and when he got his chance, he delivered. And not only that, he delivered for the whole team for a whole season to put us in the national tournament.”
Truett-McConnell
Belmont Abbey
East Carolina
Eddie Payne won 56 games on the sidelines at East Carolina and claimed the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) tournament championship in 1993. Following the 1995-96 season, Payne returned to the ranks of Division I as an assistant coach at South Carolina. He spent five seasons with the Gamecocks under head coach George Felton before hearing the overtures from East Carolina that they wanted him to return to Greenville, N.C., to head their program.
Eddie Payne instructs his team during the 1978-79 season at Truett-McConnell. Truett-McConnell served as Payne’s coming out party. Though his stay was short, he lasted just one season as head coach at the two-year junior college in Northeast Georgia, it was certainly eventful as the first-year head coach tallied a 25-5 record. He left the mountains of Georgia to take a position at East Carolina as an assistant coach. It would be the first of two appearances at the Greenville, N.C., school. “We had a really good team. We had several players who went on to play in some very good basketball programs. We had Mitchell Wiggins who played several years in the NBA and was a major force one year when Houston beat the Lakers in the Western Conference final. He was a terrific player. The memory I have the most of that team is we were in the championship game of our region and had to win the game to go to the national tournament. We were in the second overtime and pretty much all of our guards had fouled out. I had to put in a player by the name of Holton King. He was a little kid with a wonderful attitude and came to work in practice every day. He dressed but never played. We put him in the game with a one-point lead with 20 seconds left. Coming out of a timeout, I told the team not to throw it to Holton, but he got the ball and they fouled him immediately. He went
Payne established a basketball tradition at the football-crazy school and in four seasons with the Pirates, turned the program into a winner. His 1992-93 team won the CAA Tournament championship over James Madison and advanced to the NCAA Regional before losing to eventual national champion North Carolina. After posting 23 wins in his first two seasons with the Pirates, he claimed 33 wins his final two seasons before taking his next professional step, the head position at Oregon State.
Eddie Payne was 103-51 as head coach at Belmont Abbey from 1981-86. He left the coaching cradle to serve as an assistant at Clemson. Payne took the head job at Belmont Abbey in 1981. Like Miami (OH) in football, Belmont Abbey was known throughout the Southeast as a job that launched the careers of successful college basketball coaches. Payne’s performance at the school established him as one of the up and coming coaches in college basketball. When he stepped down after five years in 1986, he tallied a 103-51 record while averaging more than 20 wins a game and coaching the third, fifth and seventh ranked all-time scorers in program history.
“We won the CAA Championship and went to the NCAA Tournament in 1993. In the CAA Championship game we had a guy named Ike Copeland who was a physical player and a good rebounder, but he couldn’t score. It was almost like we were destined to win. In that game, he was something like 7-for-8 from the free throw line and made four field goals. He scored 15 or 16 points and we beat Lefty Driesell’s James Madison team to advance to the NCAA Tournament. It was the first time in some 45 years that East Carolina had advanced to the tournament. The following year we opened a new arena which helped establish a program from a basketball perspective. Our AD, Dave Hart, was a former basketball coach and a terrific promotional and marketing guy, and he wanted to see basketball succeed. He was the guy that gave me the support to do what we did from a basketball perspective, and marketed that in the community to raise the money necessary to totally renovate Menges Coliseum.”
“We won three championships in five years. One particular year we had a great player, probably the best we recruited while I was there. We were 5-3 at the Christmas break and he left the team to go home because he was homesick. We went on to win 22 straight games after that, won the conference championship and went to the NAIA Tournament. It was such a great reminder that basketball is, indeed, a team sport. We lost the best talent we had on the team, but we tweaked some things, made adjustments and had guys step up which allowed us to have a great year.”
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