Eddie Payne spent almost a half-century in the world of college basketball. After playing at Wake Forest in the early 1970s, he was an assistant coach at 3 different D-1 programs (Clemson/ECU/South Carolina) and a head coach at 3 different D-1 programs (ECU/Oregon State/USC Upstate). In 2012 he won the Hugh Durham Award as the best mid-major coach in the nation, and made the postseason in 4 of his final 6 years on the sideline before retiring in 2017. He passed away in 2021 but HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel interviewed Eddie several years ago and is proud to present this never-before-published interview. Today would have been Eddie’s 71st birthday so we take this time to honor his life/legacy.
You played basketball at Wake Forest in the early 1970s, and in 1973 you were named team MVP and won the Arnold Palmer Award as the school’s Outstanding Student-Athlete: how good a player were you back in the day, and how did you balance being a student with being an athlete? I walked on at Wake Forest and was able to play a full season on the freshman team before getting a scholarship. I was a good player but had to work hard to improve myself. The demands now are much more than back then in terms of working out year-round so it was not a difficult task.
In the 1973 ACC tourney you scored 18 PTS while playing all 45 minutes of a 2-PT OT win over UNC, then scored 16 PTS while playing all 40 minutes of an 8-PT loss to Maryland: how exhausted were you by the end of that week? It was really big back then because those 3 days in March determined who would go to the NCAA tourney. UNC was ranked very high, and if we had beaten Maryland then we would have made the tourney because NC State was on probation.
In the 1993 CAA tourney title game as head coach of ECU you had a 5-PT upset of #1-seed James Madison: how on earth did you make the NCAA tourney with a 13-16 record?! We had a 45-second shot clock back then so we were able to control the tempo and our kids made a tremendous adjustment in the conference tourney to shorten the game. We just got going at the right time.
What are your memories of the 1993 NCAA tourney (Lester Lyons scored 27 PTS in a loss to eventual champion UNC)? We played really well: we lost by 20 PTS but it was a single-digit game with about 3 minutes left.
You came to USC Upstate in 2002 and the program made the jump to D-1 in 2007: why did you decide to take the job, and what has been the biggest difference since the move to D-1? I am from this area so after getting fired at Oregon State I decided to come back out here. They had a big tradition of success at the D-2 level. I see us as an undercapitalized small business so our schedule is overloaded with money games. It has been a tough road to hoe so hopefully we can cut back on those.
You were the only person to have coached at all 5 levels (D-1/D-2/D-3/NAIA/JC): which level did you enjoy the most, and what effect has it had on your ability to coach (if any)? The most enjoyable experience I had was at the NAIA level because we had terrific administrative support, which is key to winning. The toughest level was D-3, as it is all financial aid that is mostly institutionally-managed so there is a big discrepancy from 1 school to another. If you can give a player more financial aid then I can then they will probably go to your school. The things that sustain you exist at all levels but at the highest levels you have more assistants to help you manage everything.
Your son Luke played for you at USC Upstate and was named 2008 Student-Athlete of the Year: what was it like to coach your son, and how proud were you of all his success? We were able to talk about business at the office and not at home. It was not hard at all because he was a good player who did whatever I asked him to do. When he was growing up I was working all the time so it was good to be with him on an everyday basis for 4 years.
Your wife Ann is a former women’s head coach at several different colleges: what is the best part of having a wife who is a coach, and what is the not-so-best part (if any)? The not-so-best part is that she knows too much so she can ask some tough questions when I do not want to talk about it! The best part is that she had insight on how to handle players’ personalities, which kept me from getting jaded.