Born in
Arp, Texas, Lewis was on the basketball and football teams of
Arp High School. Lewis served as an Army Air Corps flight instructor in World War II. After serving in
World War II, Lewis enrolled at the
University of Houston on the
GI Bill. He played center and forward on Houston's first varsity basketball team, graduating in 1947. In 1953, he returned to UH as an assistant coach, succeeding
Alden Pasche as head coach in 1956. As a coach, he was known for championing the once-outlawed
dunk, which he characterized as a "high percentage shot," and for clutching a brightly colored red-and-white polka dot towel on the bench during games. Lewis was a major force in the
racial integration of college athletics in the South during the 1960s, being one of the first major college coaches in the region to actively recruit
African American athletes. In 1964, his recruitment of the program's first African-American players,
Elvin Hayes and
Don Chaney, ushered in an era of tremendous success in Cougar basketball. The dominant play of Hayes led the Cougars to two Final Fours during the 1960s and sent shock waves through Southern colleges that realized that they would have to begin recruiting black players if they wanted to compete with integrated teams. Lewis led the
Houston Cougars program to 27 straight winning seasons, 14 seasons with 20 or more wins, and 14 trips to the
NCAA tournament. His Houston teams advanced to the Final Four on five occasions (1967, 1968, 1982, 1983, 1984) and twice advanced to the national championship game (1983, 1984). Standout players Lewis coached during his tenure at Houston included Hayes, Chaney,
Hakeem Olajuwon,
Clyde Drexler,
Otis Birdsong,
Dwight Jones,
Louis Dunbar,
Dwight Davis, and
Ken Spain. Lewis's Houston teams played a key role in two watershed events that helped to popularize college basketball as a spectator sport. In January 1968, his underdog Cougars, led by Hayes, upset
John Wooden's undefeated and top-ranked UCLA Bruins 71–69 in front of 52,693 fans at the
Houston Astrodome. This was the first nationally televised regular season college basketball game and subsequently became known as the "
Game of the Century." It marked a turning point in the emerging popularity of college basketball. In the early 1980s, Lewis's
Phi Slama Jama teams at UH gained notoriety for their fast-breaking, "above the rim" style of play as well as their overall success. At the height of Phi Slama Jama's notoriety, they advanced all the way to the national championship game in 1983 and 1984, along the way notching consecutive 30-win seasons. In the first of those appearances, in 1983, the Cougars suffered a dramatic, last-second loss to underdog
North Carolina State in the 1983 NCAA Final that became an iconic moment in the history of the sport, one that solidified the NCAA basketball tournament in the cultural firmament as
March Madness. Lewis's insistence that his teams play an acrobatic, up-tempo brand of basketball that emphasized dunking brought this style of play to the fore and helped popularize it amongst younger players. The Cougars also lost in the 1984 NCAA Final to the
Georgetown Hoyas led by
Patrick Ewing. On January 21, 1986, Lewis announced that he would retire from coaching after the end of the 1985-86 season. When asked who he would suggest to replace him, he suggested long-time assistant
Donnie Schverak; the team replaced Lewis with
Pat Foster. Lewis retired at number 20 in all-time NCAA Division I victories, his 592–279 record giving him a .680 career winning percentage. In 1995, the University of Houston named the playing surface at Hofheinz Pavilion (now the
Fertitta Center) "Guy V. Lewis Court" in Lewis' honor. ==Later life and honors==