in the previous 10 years, and had just suffered the worst season in school history—a 4–23 overall record and a winless record in Atlantic Coast Conference play. Considering the poor state of the program he'd inherited, Cremins engineered a very quick return to respectability. In only his third year in Atlanta, he led the Yellow Jackets to the 1984 NIT—their first postseason berth of any sort in 13 years. A year later, the Yellow Jackets shocked the ACC by winning a share of the regular season title, then winning the conference tournament. They then advanced all the way to the Elite Eight, tallying an overall record of 27–8. In 1990, Cremins's team advanced all the way to the Final Four in the NCAA Tournament, with an overall 28–7 record. The 28 wins are still a school record for wins in a season. Cremins was three times the ACC "Coach of the Year": In 1983 with the first ever Yellow Jackets' ACC tournament victory, and an overall 13–15 won/loss record; again in 1985, and again in 1996 when his team posted a 24–12 record, won the ACC regular-season championship with a 13–3 record (only the second time in 15 years that a team from North Carolina had not won at least a share of the title), and progressed to the NCAA basketball tournament's "Sweet 16" before losing to Cincinnati. Cremins' coaching of the 1990 Yellow Jackets' team earned him the Naismith College Coach of the Year honor. Cremins had a host of players that went on to have successful NBA careers. First there was Mark Price (the Cleveland Cavaliers) and John Salley (the Detroit Pistons) in the early 1980s, followed by Duane Ferrell, Tom Hammonds, Dennis Scott, Brian Oliver, Kenny Anderson, Jon Barry, Travis Best, Stephon Marbury, Jason Collier and Matt Harpring. Cremins was an assistant coach on the first-ever gold medal-winning American World University Games team in 1986, assisting the head coach Lute Olson of the University of Arizona. Cremins also assisted Olson at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, also winning the gold medal there. During the summer of 1989 he coached the American team that qualified for the 1990 FIBA World Championship. Cremins assisted former NBA coach Lenny Wilkens in the American basketball team's appearance in the Summer Olympic Games of 1996 in Atlanta. This team was the second of the "Dream Teams" in the Olympic Games, and it