Tim Peeler: The story of the Kohler twins, who were split between the NC State, UNC rivalry

Here’s where real rivalries begin: in utero.

That’s where the sibling differences began between twins Stanley and Norman Kohler, basketball brothers who played for NC State and North Carolina, respectively, during and just after World War II.

There will be a lot of talk going into Saturday’s annual renewal of the Wolfpack-Tar Heel rivalry about Kinston native Dontrez Styles, who spent two years at UNC and one season at Georgetown before joining head coach Kevin Keatts’ Pack this season.

However, he’s not the first or only player to represent both programs.

Some may even remember that three World War II players competed for both schools, in the NCAA’s first transfer portal era: Horace “Bones” McKinney, Bernie Mock and Fred Swartzberg, all of whom began their college careers at NC State, left for military duty during the war and then enrolled at North Carolina.

At that time, players who left one school to serve in the military could enroll where ever they pleased upon returning home and enrolling with the GI Bill.

Mock, a native of Boonesville, North Carolina, is the only person to ever serve as basketball captain at both schools in the rivalry. Durham-native McKinney was the star of head coach Ben Carnevale’s UNC team that played for the national championship. He later played and coached in the NBA and was the head coach at Wake Forest in the 1960s. Swartzberg, of High Point, wanted to become an engineer, but after serving and playing hoops on an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean during the war, he returned to his home state, graduated from UNC and opened a clothing store in his hometown.

The Kohler twins were different. They were born in Poland, moved to New York City with their parents at the age of 5 and grew up playing sports in the heart of the city.

Stan was the first of the brothers drafted into the U.S. Army during the war. He showed up in Raleigh in the fall of 1943 and tried out to play for Leroy Jay’s basketball team. He became a standout guard his first season and a reliable player for two years after that, even though the Terrors were anything but during that era. He once drew the tough assignment of guarding football hall of famer Otto Graham when the Wolfpack played Carolina Pre-Flight and held the burly basketballer without a field goal.

However, as a senior he did not survive the arrival of new coach Everett Case, who had more than 100 participants for his open tryouts in the fall of 1946. The coach kept exactly one player, forward Leo Katkaveck, from Jay’s final team and filled his first roster with new players he recruited from his home state of Indiana, where he had won four state high school championships.

Stan Kohler was an excellent infielder, playing primarily first and second base for three seasons under three different head coaches (Doc Newton, Beattie Feathers and Vic Sorrell).

Kohler graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1947 and eventually moved back to Roslyn, New York, in 1953 to work as a district manager for Siemens Energy & Automation. He remained there for the rest of his life. He died of a brain tumor in 1988 at the age of 66.

Norman Kohler enrolled at Long Island University in 1941 and played for the freshman team there before being drafted into the Army. When he was discharged, he followed Stan south, but landed in Chapel Hill instead of Raleigh. (They aren’t the only brothers to play on opposite sides of the rivalry: Carolina’s Vasco Evtimov played two seasons for Carolina under Dean Smith in the late 1990s and Ilian Evtimov played for five NCAA tournament teams under Herb Sendek. They never faced each other either during their times at the two schools.)

Norm Kohler joined the White Phantoms the year after they went to the 1946 NCAA championship game under Ben Carnevale, just in time to start a 15-game losing streak to the Wolfpack under new coach Tom Scott.

He also never faced his brother, however, since Stan was off NC State’s roster the year Norm played his first year at UNC. He played for new head coach Tom Scott for two seasons, becoming a reliable enough offensive point guard to be drafted in the eighth round of the short-lived professional league Basketball Association of America by the Indianapolis Jets.

“A marvelous floorman, Kohler was one of the finest defensive players in the Southern Conference,” wrote Jack Horner of the Durham Daily Herald. “He was a key man in setting up plays. When the White Phantoms brought the ball downcourt to get in position to take a crack at the basket, it was the expert ball-handling Kohler who directed the strategy.”

Stan played with Mock and Swartzberg at NC State and Norm played with Swartzberg at Carolina, a switcheroo that predates today’s rotating rosters by three-quarters of a century.

“The first time they came over to Chapel Hill, they threw a full-court press on us, something we’d never seen before,” the late Swartzberg once said. “They beat the hell out of us too.”

The basketball rivalry between the two schools has never been the same.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at [email protected].