Fill out our Daily Orange reader survey to make our paper better


Men's Basketball

Former SU men’s basketball player Chuck Richards dies at 82

Jacob Halsema | Staff Photographer

Former Syracuse men's basketball player Chuck Richards passed away at 82 years old.

Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our sports newsletter here.

Former Syracuse men’s basketball player Chuck Richards died Sunday. He was 82 years old. Richards played for SU from 1963-65 and was a key part of turning around the Orange’s program.

In SU head coach Fred Lewis’ first year at the helm, he brought in a recruiting class headlined by Dave Bing and Jim Boeheim. But he also gained Richards, a transfer who averaged 15 points and 9.4 rebounds per game across his lone season playing for Army.

Richards is a Poland, New York native and attended Manlius Military Academy — located just outside Syracuse — before enrolling at Army West Point for two years and finishing his last two years of college at SU.

Richards, a 6-foot-8 big man, averaged 18.4 points and 9.1 rebounds per game across his two seasons at Syracuse. Both totals ranked second on the team behind Bing, a future inductee to the National Basketball Hall of Fame.

Coming off a 2-22 1961-62 campaign, the Orange went 9-13 in 1962-63 before notching a 17-8 record — their first winning season since 1959-60 — in 1963-64. Following his basketball career, Richards spent over three decades with the FBI as a special agent, per syracuse.com.

banned-books-01





Top Stories