Legendary ABAC basketball coach Benny Dees dies at 86
Published 8:16 pm Wednesday, March 24, 2021
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TIFTON–Benny Dees, coach of the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College men’s basketball team from 1962–1967, passed away on March 23 at the age of 86. Under Dees’ leadership, the Golden Stallions won the state junior college basketball |
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championship in 1964. The victory marked the first men’s basketball state title for ABAC since Coach Bruce Gressette’s team won the 1949 crown. |
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Dees was inducted into the ABAC Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011 and the entire 1964 |
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ABAC team was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2017. |
“Tifton just fell in love with us,” Tommy Dial, a member of the 1964 team, said in a 2015 interview. “Benny Dees was Bobby Knight before there was a Bobby Knight. We were just a bunch of old country boys with a crazy coach. Benny was a coach that made you better than you were.”
In the 1966-67 season, Dees’ ABAC team was ranked 13th in the nation, went undefeated in league play and rolled up a school record 29-5 record.
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Dees resigned his ABAC position at the end of the 1967 season to become the first head coach at the new men’s basketball program at Virginia Commonwealth University. His mother, Pearl Dees, was a longtime house mother in an ABAC dormitory, and his brother, Peter, played and coached at ABAC. Dees was also successful as a coach at the NCAA Division 1 level, coaching at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of New Orleans, the University of Wyoming, and Western Carolina University. In 1987, Dees’ New Orleans team recorded its first ever NCAA tournament win over |
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BYU. The Privateers piled up a 26-4 record that season. at New Orleans, six seasons at Wyoming, and two seasons at Western Carolina. He was also an assistant coach at the University of Alabama, Georgia Tech, and Western Kentucky. The funeral service for Dees will be held at 11 a.m. on March 27 at the Uvalda United Methodist Church. Burial will follow at 3:30 p.m. at Rose Hill Cemetery in Alma. |
