Their legend has only grown over the decades, especially in March. Invariably, inevitably, the images will come back blurry, usually in a package emphasizing the biggest hits of the NCAA tournament.
Here is the late Lorenzo Charles, of Brooklyn, New York, grabbing a ball out of the air and placing it in a basket at the back of an arena in Albuquerque, New Mexico, known as The Pit. Here’s the late Jim Valvano, of Corona, New York, roaming The Pit, looking for someone to hug. There, forever, is the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack, a beacon of hope and inspiration for the Cinderellas emblazoned everywhere.
“I wish I could describe to you exactly what it feels like when the ball goes in, when the buzzer goes, when all of a sudden you realize: holy cow, we really are the national champions,” Terry Gannon told me few years ago. on an anniversary of NC State 54, Houston 52. “All I’m going to tell you is this: It was everything you could think. Times 100.”
Gannon enjoyed a long and prominent career as a network broadcaster, focusing primarily on college basketball, golf and figure skating. He was the sixth man on that 1983 team, and so not a week goes by without being reminded that he’s still part of the tapestry of one of the most famous teams in sports history American.
And those 1983 Wolfpack will surely be in the news again this week, because 41 years later, State is taking a surprisingly similar path to try to join them as forever bookends in this tournament. This team, like this one, wouldn’t have even made the tournament if they hadn’t won the ACC tournament. This team, like that one, is now the NCAA’s favorite child (even if oddsmakers stubbornly disagree), with giants still ahead of them to take down.
Here’s the problem though.
What the 2024 Wolfpack is doing, to this day, is even more remarkable than what happened in 1983. At first glance, this may seem like a shot at the 1983 champions. It’s not. Let Gannon explain:
“What’s been forgotten over the years is that we were a damn good team,” Gannon said. “We had five guys (Charles, Derek Whittenburg, Sidney Lowe, Thurl Bailey, Ernie Myers) who scored over 1,000 points in college when that was a significant mark, and I scored 900. A lot of us believed that we were just fulfilling what we wanted. we thought it was possible for us from the beginning.
This is a detail that history easily forgets. NC State was a preseason Top 20 team in 1983 and rose as high as 15th in the rankings. But on January 12, in their second ACC game, after Whittenburg scored 27 points against Virginia in the first half, he landed on Othell Wilson’s foot early in the second and broke ankle. He missed the next 14 games.
The Wolfpack held on – even crushing No. 1 North Carolina, Valvano’s first-ever win over Dean Smith – but were 8-6 overall. At a time when only 52 teams were in the NCAA field, this should have put them out of business.
“And if this team never had a chance,” Gannon said, “it would have been a crime.”
Part of the legend of the 1983 team is that many of their games during the nine-game winning streak that spanned the ACC and NCAA tournaments appeared to have turned out because of Valvano’s strategy of committing late fouls because, in his eternal words, “when the match starts the line, I want the rock.” And it worked.
“And coach knew the ball could get awfully heavy in your hands if you had to start thinking about going forward all the time,” Gannon said.
But State also got into a rhythm. They won their Sweet 16 matchup with Utah by 19. They took an early lead against Georgia early in the Final Four semifinals and headed home. And against mighty Houston in the final, when the world expected them to bleed the clock for 40 minutes, they instead opted for a frenetic pace and led 48-40 at the break.
They were also only eight-point underdogs in this match.
This year’s Pack already has nine points in its semifinal pairing with Purdue, and if they were to win and tie UConn in the final, the spread could rival the Colts-Jets from Super Bowl III. And for all that this team has accomplished, it’s important to note that none of this would be possible if Pack guard Michael O’Connell hadn’t made a prayer bank shot against Virginia in the semifinals of the ‘ACC.
The 1983 pack needed no such divine intervention. Let history judge them as bigger underdogs than Hickory High. They always knew better.
“Coach said, ‘As long as we’re here, let’s win the damn thing,’” Gannon said 35 years later. This timeless piece of advice still holds true, all these years later, for an NC State team that could really use ordering a truckload of glass slippers if they finished this.
New York Post
