Tim Peeler chronicles N.C. State's magical national championship run of 1983.
Dec 3, 2007
N.C. State didn’t look like a national contender when the 1982-83 basketball season opened. North Carolina, with Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins returning from its 1982 national champions, and Virginia, with Ralph Sampson, appeared to be the ACC’s best teams.
But State had Sidney Lowe, Dereck Whittenburg, Thurl Bailey and a young coach, Jim Valvano, with big dreams.
This season, WRAL takes you back to State's unbelievable 1983 season.
This week, we will run five excerpts this week from Tim Peeler’s book, “When March Went Mad.” In this first excerpt, Valvano gives the team some surprising news at midseason.
As the year progresses, we will take you back in time with recaps of those games and WRAL's original video.
By Tim Peeler
Chapter 8: “We are not going to win a national championship”
The day after Dereck Whittenburg had surgery to insert a screw in
his broken right foot, the Wolfpack played again in Reynolds Coliseum,
handily beating Georgia Tech in a game that was supposed to prove
the team would be all right without its senior shooting guard. The good
news began when freshman George McClain returned to practice, still
weak from his bout with spinal meningitis and still hobbling from the
ankle injury he suffered against East Carolina in the third game of the
season. He was at least an additional practice player to take
Whittenburg’s spot.
But the responsibility of replacing Whittenburg in the lineup rested
on the shoulders of freshman Ernie Myers, the high-scoring newcomer
from the playgrounds of New York. Myers had already
impressed his teammates by scoring 18 points in his first collegiate
game and 25 points against Clemson in his first ACC game. For Myers,
putting points on the board was easy. “Coach called me in his office
after Whitt got hurt and said, ‘Ernie, we need you to do what you have
been doing, just more of it,’” Myers recalled in 2007. “That was fine
with me. That’s what I came down here from New York for.”
So it really was not that surprising that Myers, a classic playground
scorer, stepped in and immediately tallied 27 points against
the Yellow Jackets. Not only did he hit 10 of his 16 shots, he also
canned a pair of three-pointers, showing a shooting touch that typically
wasn’t part of his game. Maybe things would turn out okay after all.
“If [Ernie] continues to play this way,” predicted Georgia Tech
coach Bobby Cremins, “N.C. State will not suffer from the loss of
Whittenburg.”
But that was hardly the case. The team still had its head, with
Sidney Lowe running the point. It still had its soul, with the pensive
Thurl Bailey offering everyone a shoulder to cry on. What it needed,
however, was a new heart, someone who could not only score points
but also kick his teammates in the seat of their shorts.
Valvano knew that heart would be hard to find in the two weeks
immediately after Whittenburg went down. After the win over the
Yellow Jackets, the Wolfpack had a three-game stretch in five days,
including a trip to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to play the reigning
national champion Tar Heels followed by back-to-back games against
Wake Forest in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Memphis State in
Reynolds. When he set the schedule the summer before, this stretch
of games was meant to mimic the challenge of the postseason, when
teams must play difficult opponents in a quick turnaround. With
Whittenburg out of the lineup, Valvano wished he had stuck with his
all-Catholic lineup of opponents.
Even though the competition was tough, Valvano did not like the
way his team played in the first two contests. He ripped into the
Wolfpack after it lost by 18 points in Chapel Hill. The coach detected a
hint of surrender from a team that was clearly feeling sorry for itself.
“If you can’t have the same dream I have, then get out of
here, because I don’t want you playing on my ball club,” Valvano told
his team after the game. “Whether it’s three people left, five people
left, or whatever, that’s all we’ll continue with. You better get your act
together or go play somewhere else. We lost a player, but that’s over
with. That’s done. I’m telling you when I say we can get it done, we can
get it done. I didn’t promise that it would be easy. I didn’t promise it
would be overnight. I told you it would be a long, hard struggle against
what seemed like insurmountable odds and obstacles. I believe we can
do it. Now, do you?”
Apparently not. Three days later, the Wolfpack looked, if possible,
even worse against the Demon Deacons, committing 15 turnovers in
another 18-point loss. Myers had his second straight rough night: the
freshman missed 17 of his 25 shots against North Carolina and Wake
Forest and failed to score in double figures in either game. Following
the bus ride home from Greensboro, Valvano gathered his players in
the locker room in the basement of Reynolds Coliseum for another
frank assessment.
“We are not going to win a national championship this season,” Valvano said. “I
don’t know that we will make the NCAAs. We have to set our sights on
making the NIT. It would be really nice if we could make it to the finals
so I could go home. I always dreamed about playing the late game at
Madison Square Garden. It would be kind of nice to raise a banner from
there.”
His players were shocked. Not 10 days earlier, Valvano had told his
team to keep working hard, that something good would happen, and
that it was too soon to quit. Now it seemed he was all but writing off
the season less than 12 hours before N.C. State would play a top-five
opponent on national television.
“Of all the locker-room speeches he gave that season, that is the
one few people remember: ‘We have no shot at the national championship—
let’s go to New York,’” Terry Gannon said.
But the speech made an impact, if only that it upset the right people.
“I was pissed about that,” Sidney Lowe said. “I didn’t like it. None
of us liked it. What I think he was trying to make us do was face the
reality that Dereck wasn’t there anymore and we needed to figure out
what we could do to have a successful season. But in my mind, I didn’t
like him telling us that we weren’t good enough.”
The next day, Whittenburg hobbled over to Reynolds Coliseum, the
place where his career had supposedly ended, for the Sunday afternoon
game against Memphis State. But he was stopped as he tried to enter
the side door of the arena without a ticket. It only took a few minutes
before Whittenburg found someone who recognized him to let him in the
door, but it was a depressing situation for the 22-year-old guard. “How
soon they forget,” Whittenburg thought. “How soon they forget.”
Valvano’s speech the night before seemed to have some effect
against the Tigers, who had All-American Keith Lee on the court and an
assistant coach named Lee Fowler on the sidelines. The Wolfpack led
throughout the game and had a chance to win it, but what Valvano
believed to be a handful of bad officiating calls doomed the team in the
contest’s final three minutes. Memphis State guard Phillip “Doom”
Haynes, who hit a driving lay-up with 51 seconds to play, can also take
some credit for the Tigers’ win. Thurl Baily actually blocked Haynesk’s
shot from his help-side position, but the ball bounced off teammate
Lorenzo Charles’ outstretched arm and into the basket. Clearly, the
Wolfpack could not catch a break. With nine seconds to play, Lee hit a
pair of free throws to finish off the Wolfpack’s third defeat in just five
days.
“We feel snakebit,” Valvano said after the game. “This is not my
year right now. I don’t know what more can happen to this team.”
For one, the Wolfpack could read its obituary in the paper the next
morning. Durham Sun columnist Frank Dascenzo wrote, “N.C. State’s
1982-83 basketball team died yesterday in Reynolds Coliseum of
severe discouragement and depression. Funeral services will be
delayed so coach Jim Valvano can finish the season, one that carried
a horizon of high hope but now shows burning ashes.”
Valvano was certainly in mourning: “I don’t think I ever saw Coach
V as despondent as he was when we lost to Memphis,” said Max Perry,
a graduate assistant that season. “He said there were things we
should have done differently. I don’t think he slept, literally, for three
days after that game. Of course, that wasn’t all that unusual for him.”
As the season progressed, however, Valvano began to view the
loss to the Tigers as something of a turning point. Since the game was
played without the ACC’s experimental rules, Valvano chose to play
the entire game in a 2-3 zone defense, trying to control the tempo and
protect Myers’ inexperience on defense. That was a mistake, the head
coach later admitted.
“We stayed in that same defense the entire 40 minutes, and the
game went right down to the wire,” Valvano said. “I decided from that
point on we would not play another game against a team and not make
them play against man-to-man pressure or against a half-court trap.
We needed to play more aggressively.”
Two things cheered Valvano up after that loss. First was a phone
call from his old coach, Bill Foster, who had watched the loss to
Memphis State from a hospital room, where he was recovering from
quadruple bypass heart surgery. “He was calling me to cheer me up,”
Valvano said.
Secondly, Valvano got a little pick-me-up from the university.
After making the NCAA Tournament in 1981-82, Valvano asked for a
big contract extension to show his commitment to the school and the
school’s commitment to him. The day before his team hosted Duke in
Reynolds Coliseum, Valvano signed a 10-year contract, upping his
annual income from the school and his numerous outside activities to
a reported $300,000 a year.
The Wolfpack celebrated their coach’s renewed commitment to
the school with an important win over Mike Krzyzewski’s rebuilding
Blue Devils, which had four freshmen in its starting lineup. Myers, who
had struggled with his shooting touch against North Carolina and
Wake Forest, gained some confidence when he scored 18 points versus
Memphis State. Against the Blue Devils, Myers exploded offensively
for 35 points, breaking the ACC freshman scoring record.
But Myers’ 15 points were not enough when the Wolfpack went to
Maryland on what should have been Whittenburg’s final trip home of
his college career. Lowe didn’t have a very good night in front of his
home crowd either, making only two of eight shots and scoring six
points. Only Thurl Bailey, the least well known of the Wolfpack’s
Washington trio during his high school days, played well, scoring 18
points and grabbing seven rebounds. Maryland’s Stevie Rivers controlled
this game, hitting 11 three-pointers and scoring 29 points for
the Terrapins.
With the defeat, the Wolfpack’s record dropped to nine wins, seven
losses. The prospects for a second consecutive trip to the NCAA
Tournament were looking bleak, an unimaginable scenario when the
season began just two months earlier.
Rank: Towel Boy 
Rank: Towel Boy 
Rank: Towel Boy 
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