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"When March Went Mad:" Second Excerpt
In the 1983 season, N.C. State's stunning win over North Carolina gave the Wolfpack the critical lift it needed.
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N.C. State was unranked, and North Carolina was No. 3, when the two teams met at Reynolds Coliseum on Feb. 19, 1983. Wolfpack guard Dereck Whittenburg was still out with a broken foot, but even so, N.C. State would record a memorable win that served as a catalyst for its title season.
“That’s the day that the national championship run started,” guard Terry Gannon recalled.
Here is the story of that game, as recalled in the new book, “When March Went Mad,” by Tim Peeler.
"When March Went Mad"
Chapter 10: "I Don't Think Anything Could Feel Better"
Greg Hatem and Mark Ciarrocca had a plan - they just needed a little
help from a friend in Chapel Hill. It was two days before N.C. State
played North Carolina in Reynolds Coliseum, generally the biggest
game of the year for N.C. State students, alumni, and fans. The
Technician, N.C.State’s student newspaper, was in the process of putting
together its annual spoof of the Daily Tar Heel, UNC’s student
newspaper. …
So on Thursday, February 17, less than 36 hours before the game’s
tip-off, Hatem and Ciarrocca headed to Chapel Hill with a back-page
photo idea. Hatem had a camera; Ciarrocca had a basketball. They met
a buddy on UNC’s campus and went to one of the famous bars on
Franklin Street for a couple of beers. Afterwards, they walked to
Carmichael Auditorium, home of the UNC men’s basketball team from
1965-86. How did they get into the locked arena? “It’s amazing how
many doors will open if you pull on them hard enough,” Hatem said.
They only spent a few minutes inside. While Hatem framed a perfect
picture, Ciarrocca stripped naked, plopped down smack in the
middle of the light blue UNC logo at center court, and positioned the
basketball over his privates. After only a few snaps of Hatem’s camera,
they gathered up their things, rushed back to N.C. State, and headed
for the third floor of the student center, where the newspaper
offices were located. In the days before the picture-altering computer
program Photoshop, Hatem still found a way to produce the image he
wanted by photographing a page from the UNC media guide, reducing
the picture to a size proportionate to what he already had, carefully
cutting out a head, and pasting it right on top of his picture of
Ciarrocca’s body.
The next morning, students at both campuses were greeted with a
newspaper called The Daily Tar Heal, featuring a back-page picture of
UNC coach Dean Smith lying naked at center court of Carmichael. …
Fifteen thousand copies of the fake edition were distributed on N.C.
State’s campus, while another 10,000 went to Chapel Hill, replacing
that day’s real edition of the paper. …
The spoof — with the usual amount of sophomoric humor, a strong
dose of homophobia, and an extremely racy fake advertisement for
the Peace Corps — was just one of the sparks that ignited an N.C. State
fan base desperate to beat UNC in any sport. The Wolfpack football
team hadn’t won against the Tar Heels since 1978. The basketball team
hadn’t beaten Smith’s squad since 1980, when Norm Sloan was head
coach and Dereck Whittenburg, Sidney Lowe, and Thurl Bailey were little-
used freshmen. …
Jim Valvano, in his third year as N.C. State’s head coach, had never
beaten the Wolfpack’s biggest rival … But the defending national champions were on a rare two-game losing streak, and the full Wolfpack nation was ready to hand Smith’s team its third loss in a row for the first time since 1970.
So there was something different about N.C. State’s campus when
the sun rose on the morning of February 19, 1983.
“That day was incredible,” said Sidney Lowe. “The atmosphere
was unbelievable. For two or three days leading up to that game, it was
just crazy on campus. …”
Reynolds Coliseum was buzzing by tip-off time [but] the Wolfpack’s execution did not come close to matching the emotional
intensity in the building, and with 3:17 remaining in the first half,
the Tar Heels led 31-24. When Sam Perkins went up for one of his
trademark jump hook shots, it appeared that the game was on the
verge of disaster.
But N.C. State sophomore Cozell McQueen, who always played his
best against better competition, came from the opposite side of the
lane and tipped the shot, preventing the Tar Heels from taking a nine-point
lead.
Everyone on the North Carolina bench, most notably Smith,
was sure the shot was going down when McQueen tipped it and that
he should have been called for goal tending. The Tar Heels coach was
enraged, and this time he bared his emotions at midcourt. Smith was
already upset with Jim Burch for calling two touch fouls on [Michael] Jordan
earlier in the game, and according to the newspaper accounts the next
day, Burch had already told Smith to “sit down and shut up.”
When Smith complained loudly about the lack of a goal-tending call, Burch
quickly hit him with a technical foul from the other side of the court.
Smith charged at Burch, but was intercepted by official Charlie
Vacca just as referee John Housman hit him with another technical
foul. …
Terry Gannon stepped up to the line and made four consecutive free throws, no
small feat on a day that the Wolfpack shot an exceedingly poor 23-for-
39 from the line. On the ensuing possession, sophomore Lorenzo
Charles was fouled and cut the lead down to just one point by hitting
both of his free throws. After UNC’s Matt Doherty threw a pass out of
bounds, Charles powered past Perkins for a short jumper to give
the Wolfpack its first lead of the game. …
When the teams returned for the second half, Valvano’s team
looked much more like a championship squad than the Tar Heels.
Smith’s team shot poorly from the field, couldn’t rebound against the
likes of McQueen, Charles, and Thurl Bailey, and whined incessantly
about the officiating, especially on calls that went again Jordan. “The
referees didn’t do an adequate job throughout the game today,” UNC
point guard Jim Braddock said in the locker room after the game.
Smith was again furious when Jordan picked up his fifth foul for charging into Lowe.
It’s a call the retired Smith — after another national
championship, four additional visits to the Final Four, and four more
ACC titles — still recalls vividly.
“The thing I remember most about that game is that Michael is up in the air and Sidney moves underneath
him,” said Smith in the winter of 2007. “Jordan is called for his
fifth foul, though it was obviously a foul on Sidney. Housman came up
to Michael after the game and apologized for the call Burch made.”
Even current UNC coach Roy Williams, who was an assistant to Smith
in 1983, couldn’t let that call go a quarter-century later. “Sidney
stepped right in front of Michael and Michael was already airborne. I
can show you on tape if you want. It wasn’t even close. They disallowed
the basket and it was Michael’s fifth foul.”
The call sent the Reynolds crowd into a riotous frenzy. Valvano’s
stringent defense and a slightly slower tempo worked masterfully
throughout the game. “It’s the best job defensively we have ever
done,” he said after the game. “That was the plan. If we were going to
lose the … game, we were going to lose it playing aggressively.”
The Tar Heels never did get into a good offensive rhythm. Twice, they
were called for shot-clock violations. Several more times, they rushed
bad shots as time expired on the 30-second clock. …
The Wolfpack victory was sealed by one of the unlikeliest
of all heroes — McQueen. Valvano, frustrated by his team’s inability to make any free throws, screamed on the sidelines, “Can anybody here make a free throw?” McQueen, out of the game in favor of slashing freshman Ernie Myers, raised his hand. “Put me in, Coach,” McQueen said. “I can hit it.”
As much as Valvano wanted to believe him, the statistics didn’t lie:
McQueen was just a 57.6 free throw shooter that year. Still, with the
game on the line, Valvano needed someone with confidence, something
McQueen never lacked. So the coach took Myers out of the game
and put McQueen in.
With less than a minute to play and the Wolfpack holding on to a
thin lead of 66-63 — only one three-pointer away from a tie ballgame —
Bailey missed another front end of a one-and-one. McQueen hauled in
the offensive rebound and was immediately fouled. Smith called a
timeout to force McQueen to think about the situation, but the joke
was on Smith. “My mind was a total blank,” McQueen said …
By the time the horn sounded for the teams to return to the court,
McQueen was thinking again—about how sweet it would be to beat
North Carolina. “That’s all I ever heard about when I got here, the
Carolina rivalry,” McQueen said. He was a little nervous on the first
shot, but when it bounced off the rim and fell through the basket, all
the pressure fell from his shoulders. He sank the second shot with
ease.
After McQueen made the free throws, the only thing to do was
wait for the celebration. It began with seven seconds still on the clock
when Lowe and Bailey brought down the house with a game-ending
play similar to the one they saw from Austin and Whitney as freshmen.
Lowe grabbed the ball on a long rebound and led the break down the
court, with Perkins in pursuit and Bailey trailing him. Lowe figured the
only way to keep Perkins from blocking his shot was to bounce the ball
between his legs to Bailey.
“That’s really not me,” Lowe said in January 2007. “… I was just trying to get it to [Thurl] and that was the only way I knew how. If I tried to shoot it, Sam would have probably blocked it. I didn’t want to be embarrassed. I saw Thurl trailing and I felt the only way I could get it to him was to pass it behind me between the legs.”
The play was the perfect punctuation mark on a landmark victory.
Students and fans were tossing souvenir cups up into the air in the end
zones, making Reynolds Coliseum look like a giant popcorn popper. …
The win meant more as the events of the next six weeks unfolded —
more than anything else, that win taught the newly developed
team that it didn’t have to depend solely on its three seniors to win
games. Charles, who was maturing with each passing game, could
make a difference. McQueen, who had 12 rebounds against Perkins
that day, could make a difference. Gannon, who had 15 points in the
game, including three critical second-half three-pointers, could make a
difference.
The players cut down the nets after the game, a celebration that
was introduced to college basketball by N.C. State’s Hall of Fame coach
Everett Case, the Father of ACC Basketball who brought the Indiana
high school tradition with him when he became NC State’s coach in
1946. Whittenburg, wearing a brown three-piece suit, was lifted up to
cut away the final strands. Valvano — after drying the tears of joy that
he couldn’t hold back as the final seconds clicked away, after talking
to the press for more than an hour after the game, after accepting a
congratulatory phone call from Virginia head coach Terry Holland’s
wife, Ann, for knocking the Tar Heels out of first place in the ACC—
begged everyone’s pardon.
“I have never seen a celebration after a State game,” Valvano
said. “I am going to go see what it looks like.”
More were to come, and they may have been even bigger. But
nothing meant more to the Wolfpack family than beating the Tar Heels
on February 19, 1983, the day Valvano’s Pisces horoscope read,
“Journey can be completed. Mission can be accomplished. Relatives,
visitors, calls make this a busy time. Don’t scatter forces. Remember
resolutions concerning health, diet, and nutrition. You will have more
recognition and a wider audience in a legitimate chance to grab the
brass ring.”
Copyright 2024 by Capitol Broadcasting Company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
