Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame
- Induction:
- 1970
Greason served as head basketball coach of the Deacons for 23 years in addition to being one of the University's all-time great athletes. When he stepped down as head coach in 1957, he had collected 288 victories while losing 244 games. He led the Deacons to the Southern Conference regular-season championship in 1939 and the tournament title in 1953, the last time the ACC schools competed in the SoCon. Greason's 205 wins were among the top 10 win totals in Southern Conference history.
In 1939, he took his team to the inaugural NCAA tournament, in which it lost to Ohio State. His 1953 team also took part in the NCAA playoffs. He was chosen Coach of the Year in the Southern Conference in 1953 and repeated the honor in the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1955.
Greason grew up in Wake Forest, N.C., two blocks from Gore Gym. His Sunday School basketball team was coached by Doc Crozier, the Wake Forest head coach at the time. After graduating from high school in 1918, Greason spent a year at Randolph-Macon prep school. Undecided on his future, he spent some time working with his father in the local mills and then spent eight months as a coal passer in the Merchant Marines. He returned to Wake Forest in 1921.
As an undergraduate at Wake Forest, Greason played four years of football, basketball and baseball and earned 12 varsity letters, one of the few men in Deacon history to do so. He captained both the football and basketball teams as a senior.
He scored Wake Forest's only touchdown in a 1924 win over North Carolina, tallying on a 72-yard run to give the Deacons a 7-6 win. During the state college baseball championship in 1925, Greason was at bat with the score tied in the bottom of the 12th inning and the bases loaded against North Carolina. After fouling off two pitches, Greason snuck a peek at the signals given by Carolina catcher Casey Morris. Greason saw the signal for an inside pitch, leaned into Bill Poyner's pitch and was hit in the back. That forced in the winning run for the Deacons and gave Wake Forest the state baseball title.
He received his bachelor of law degree in 1926 and that fall began his career as a coach and teacher at Lexington High School. He stayed there until 1933, when he joined Jim Weaver as an assistant coach on the Wake football team. He became the head basketball coach prior to the 1933-34 season.
In addition to coaching basketball, he also was backfield coach in football from 1934-48 and was head baseball coach from 1940-47. He also served as assistant athletic director for the Deacons.
Greason died on Jan. 1, 1960 when his car crashed into a bridge support on U.S. 70 in Greensboro. He was returning home after attending the Dixie Classic Tournament in Raleigh.
Greason was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 1967.
