Monte Towe

Who is Monte Towe?

Monte Corwin Towe is an American basketball coach and retired player.

Towe attended Oak Hill High School in Converse, Indiana. He was the starting point guard on North Carolina State's 1974 NCAA championship team, and also played varsity baseball for NC State, earning All-ACC recognition in basketball and playing on conference championship teams in both sports. In 1975, the 5'7" Towe received the Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award as the year's best college player under 6 feet tall. Monte Towe and David Thompson are credited with "inventing" the alley-oop. Because dunking was illegal at the time, Towe would throw the ball to Thompson while he was in the air and Thompson would gently drop the ball in the basket. Towe was drafted by the Denver Nuggets in the third round of the 1975 ABA Draft and by the Atlanta Hawks in the fourth round of the 1975 NBA Draft. Towe joined Thompson in signing with Denver, for whom he played in 1976 in the final year of the American Basketball Association and in the 1976-1977 season when Denver joined the NBA. He played in the 1976 ABA All-Star game when the game format was Denver vs. All-Stars.

After his retirement as a player, Towe became an assistant coach under Norm Sloan, first at NC State and then at the University of Florida. During the 1990s, he was coach and general manager of two teams in the Global Basketball Association; coach of a professional team in Venezuela; an assistant coach of the Sioux Falls Skyforce of the Continental Basketball Association under head coach Flip Saunders; coach of two junior college teams; and an assistant coach at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.