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GREENSBORO -- With his family and friends gathered together one last time to say goodbye, they sent Jack Jensen home on a clear Thursday afternoon, not a cloud between him and his maker.

The old basketball coach from Guilford could always bring a crowd together to listen to his stories. For one day, they were all there to tell stories about him. Jensen, 71, passed away Sunday night after returning to Greensboro from a golf tournament with his Guilford team. He was laid to rest after a ceremony inside Ragan-Brown Field House on the basketball court named for him.

They were all there, the players from the 1973 basketball team that won a national title for Guilford, all the players who played for him all those years, the golfers who played for the national title teams, the kids he taught from Elkin High School, the friends he met along the way and those who considered him to be one of the best people they ever met.

"He was probably the most loyal man I ever knew," said M.L. Carr, a player for that 1973 NAIA championship team who later starred and coached in the NBA.

Carr considered Jensen a mentor and guide, not just for basketball but for life. Every player who ever played for him felt the same way. When they all got word of his death Sunday night, each one of them thought back to the last time they saw him.

"It was right here," said World B. Free, who went from that 1973 team to NBA stardom. "The last time we spoke it was right here on this court the night they named it for him. I can see him now, standing there laughing and smiling and telling stories."

Thursday afternoon, while Guilford students walked to class and life went on at the tiny school where Jensen taught and coached for 45 years, people stood outside under the old oaks and told stories. You could hear the laughter rise from the groups of people gathered around, golf stories, travel stories, stories of the time he and Len Chappell combined for 43 points in a single game playing for Wake Forest in 1961.

"Len scored 42 and I scored one," Jensen would say.

They told stories all week here as they came into town for a reunion no one even considered. The coach was loved by everyone because he had time for everyone. Mike Waddell, a Guilford graduate who is now an athletics director at the University of Cincinnati, was coaching his youth basketball team in the winter and needed help teaching his kids how to play against a zone defense.

"I called Coach," Waddell said. "He talked to me for more than an hour."

They talked about Jensen for about that long Thursday, former players and pastors quoting Vince Lombardi and Grantland Rice, telling stories of a man and his faith, a man who missed Sunday service three times in 30 years, a man who would drive across the state twice in a day to be with his kids for important occasions and then be with his teams when they needed him, too.

They talked of a man of conviction and great confidence, not in himself so much as those people he surrounded himself with. Jensen was a man of faith who was inspired by something that happened in the hours leading up to that famous game in 1973. He was alone in his hotel room, having the usual doubts about the game and his ability to coach a team he knew to be talented enough to win an unlikely national title.

He looked on the nightstand beside his bed in the hotel room and noticed a Gideon Bible lying open. Jensen picked up the bible and read it as he found it, Psalm 27.

"Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart."

Jensen would read that passage before every game for the rest of his life. On a perfect Thursday afternoon on the campus he loved so much and surrounded by family and friends from a life's work, a scoreboard hung over Jack E. Jensen Court. The final score of that game, 99-96, was lit up. The time read 19:73.

We read the 27th Psalm for Jack again Thursday and sent home one of the best men we ever knew.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com