 In July 1936, Lange left Muskingum to accept a position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the Tar Heels football team's backfield coach and as an assistant professor of physical education.As an assistant coach on the football team, he worked under head coaches Raymond Wolf (1936–1941), Jim Tatum (1942), and Tom Young (1943).He became the head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team in 1939.