Smith began walking in Barnes’s direction, telling him he needed to coach his players to not play dirty. Barnes yelled and Smith yelled back.
“Do you want to hit me, Rick?” Smith said. “If you want to, go ahead and hit me.”
That’s when Hartzell got between the two men.
There was another argument after a game at Clemson a year later when Barnes was convinced Smith was yelling at another of his players, Billy Harder. Gene Corrigan, the ACC commissioner at the time, finally decided enough was enough and ordered the two coaches to his house for a meeting.
“They both walked in carrying film,” Corrigan said. “Dean said he had proof Clemson was playing dirty; Barnes said he had proof Carolina played dirty. I said, ‘We are not looking at any film!’ Then I handed them the press release we were putting out the next day in which they both were going to say it was all behind them and they had great respect for each other.
“Next time either one of you says a word about the other you’re suspended,” Corrigan said. “I probably should have done it already. No questions, no excuses. Period.”
Corrigan then suggested everyone have a drink and relax for a few minutes. Things became almost collegial, and Corrigan pulled out an old scrapbook from his playing days (lacrosse) at Duke and his days as Virginia athletic director to show Smith and Barnes. Some were of Smith and Corrigan together. Just when Corrigan thought all was well and he’d taken back control of his league, Smith pointed at one of Corrigan’s old Duke photos and said, “I guess you’re kind of enjoying this, aren’t you, Gene?”
Corrigan was genuinely baffled. “Enjoying what, Dean?” he asked.
“Well, you being a Duke guy and Carolina being in the middle of all this…”
Corrigan threw his hands up and said, “Stop, Dean. I’m begging you, stop.”
A year later, in Chapel Hill, Barnes asked John Dubis, who was assigned to escort visiting coaches from the floor to the locker room and back in the Dean Dome, if the Carolina fans truly hated him. Dubis tried to be polite about it, but when Barnes asked him again he nodded and said, “Yes, Coach, these people hate you.”
“Do they hate me as much as they hate Mike Krzyzewski?” Barnes asked.
“Oh no, Coach,” Dubis said. “It’s not even close.”
—
No one in Chapel Hill hated Krzyzewski in 1983. At that point, he was an afterthought.
They were, however, beginning to notice Valvano, especially after his team took away Carolina’s opportunity to win a third straight ACC Tournament title. Even so, the expectation was that the Tar Heels would breeze through the Eastern Regionals—St. John’s was considered the only serious threat—and go to Albuquerque to play in a third straight Final Four.
N.C. State was sent to Corvallis, Oregon, as the number-six seed in the West Region. The number-one seed out west was Virginia. State drew a first-round game against Pepperdine. If the Wolfpack were to win, it would face Nevada–Las Vegas, the number-three seed. The Rebels had a first-round bye since there were still only fifty-two teams in the tournament. It would be two more years before the tournament would expand to sixty-four teams, meaning everyone played a first-round game.
Valvano met with the media before his team flew to Corvallis and made a comment that was little noted then but is long remembered now: “We’ll probably be so flat [against Pepperdine] that we’ll probably lose,” he said. “But if we can get by somehow, some way, I think we’ll win it all.”
He also pronounced his team to be on “a divine mission.”
Most of it sounded like classic Jimmy V bluster—with the protective caveat that his team would probably lose to Pepperdine coming off the draining weekend in Atlanta, not to mention having to fly to Corvallis to play.
It turned out Valvano was about 99 percent right in his predictions. The Wolfpack should have lost to Pepperdine. The team came out flat—as predicted—and missed twelve shots in a row to start the game, three of them air balls. Pepperdine led from start to—almost—finish.
Twice in the final minute, Dane Suttle, an 85 percent free-throw shooter for the Waves—which put him in the top ten nationally—went to the line to shoot one-and-one with a chance to ice the game. Twice, he missed. In the first overtime, Pepperdine led by six with twenty-four seconds to go. State tied the game again and pushed it to a second overtime.
The rules back then did not include the double bonus, which was adopted in 1991 in an attempt to keep teams from fouling on every possession when trailing. Back then, no matter how often you fouled, a nonshooting foul was one-and-one, meaning you had to make the first to shoot the second. If the double bonus had been in effect back then, Valvano’s strategy—foul as soon as possible when trailing—might not have worked.
“If the double bonus existed back then, no way do we win,” Terry Gannon said. “Of course if it had, V probably would have figured something else out.”
State finally got past Pepperdine, 69–67, in double overtime. That set up a second-round game against a heavily favored UNLV team that was 28–2 and, in the minds of most, underseeded at number three—behind Virginia and UCLA—in the West. With eleven minutes left, the Rebels led 52–40. State began chipping away—and Valvano started fouling. Three times, UNLV players missed the front end of one-and-ones, including Danny Tarkanian, Coach Jerry Tarkanian’s son, who was a 90 percent shooter. In all, the Rebels made 2 of 5 in the last three minutes and left 3 more potential points on the court when they missed the front end of one-and-ones.
State ended up with the ball with under ten seconds to play. Lowe put up a jump shot from the left wing that missed but Bailey out-leaped everyone in the scramble for the rebound and tipped the ball in just before the buzzer. State had escaped again, this time 71–70—the identical score it had beaten Wake Forest by in the first game of what was now becoming a “survive and advance” run of miracles. The team that had appeared NIT bound was now bound for Ogden, Utah—and the Sweet 16.
“By then it was more than just a feeling that we were going to win,” Whittenburg said. “We had reached the point that no matter how far down we got, no matter what the circumstance was, we believed we were going to win. We figured if we were good enough to beat Carolina and Virginia back-to-back we could beat anyone. We also figured if we were lucky enough to beat Pepperdine, we were bound to get out of any corner we were in—somehow, some way.”
There were all sorts of slogans associated with that N.C. State team: “Cardiac Pack” and “Team of Destiny,” among others. But it was Valvano—naturally—who came up with the catchphrase that stuck: “Survive and advance.” It was simple, it was obvious, and it became the title of his post-championship book.
The Wolfpack flew straight from Corvallis to Ogden, Utah, the site of the West Regional.
Since it had played on Sunday and the round of sixteen began on Thursday, there didn’t seem to be any point in flying all the way back east and then west again on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning to be at the mandatory practice/media session on Wednesday afternoon. Virginia, which was on spring break that week, went directly from Boise, Idaho, to Ogden.
Not everyone was as lucky. Boston College, which had also advanced through Corvallis, had to fly home and then back to Ogden. Gary Williams, who was the BC coach back then, still hasn’t completely gotten over it. “We lost to Virginia by three,” he said years later. “We actually had a chance to tie the game in the last few seconds and one of our guys stepped on the baseline going in to dunk the ball. Would the game have been different if we hadn’t flown all the way home and back? I have no idea. But I do think about it.”
Valvano spent three days in Ogden entertaining the media. None of the North Carolina media went home either. Which was just fine with Mike Krzyzewski. Those who weren’t in Utah were in Syracuse with North Carolina. The Tar Heels had beaten James Madison in the second round (by 19, a much easier victory than the year before when they had won 52–50 on their way to the national title) and would
play Ohio State in the Sweet 16.
On Thursday night, after Virginia had escaped from Gary Williams’s slightly jet-lagged BC team, N.C. State faced Utah. The good news was that the Utes had upset second-seeded UCLA. The bad news was the game was in Utah.
“Didn’t really bother us,” Sidney Lowe said. “Dereck, Thurl, and I had been playing on the road in the ACC for four years. There was no way that crowd was going to bother us.”
The Wolfpack broke the game open early in the second half, building a double-digit lead before coasting home to a 75–56 win. It was the first game since the regular season finale against Wake Forest where they hadn’t had to sweat out the final seconds. They were now one game from the Final Four. Standing in their way—again—was Virginia.
This was Ralph Sampson’s last go-round. In 1979, as a high school senior in Harrisonburg, Virginia, he had arguably been the most highly recruited player of his generation. He had been the first high school player whose press conference to announce where he was going to college had been televised live—which it was, in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia. Those three state schools were the finalists. Sampson said “Virginia” and they danced in the streets of Charlottesville. When Roger Bergey, Sampson’s coach at Harrisonburg High School, called Holland just before the press conference to tell him it was Virginia, Holland’s first words were, “Can I kiss you?”
He might not have been thinking that during Sampson’s freshman season, when the Cavaliers went 7–7 in the ACC and lost their first-round ACC Tournament game to Clemson—meaning they were consigned to the NIT. Most ACC fans believed that NIT stood not for National Invitation Tournament but Not Invited Tournament. When fans really wanted to mock a struggling team during the ACC Tournament they often chanted “NIT, NIT” in their direction.
Holland was normally about as easygoing and cooperative with the media as any coach in college basketball, and the Virginia locker room was a reporter’s delight, filled with bright kids who were willing to talk honestly about the games and themselves.
It all changed when Sampson arrived in the fall of 1979. He was shy by nature, and often felt awkward about being seven foot four. It was understandable. One night during his freshman season, Sampson granted a rare one-on-one interview to a Washington Post reporter. As Sampson stood in line at a cafeteria close to the UVA campus to get dinner, a woman standing behind him began screaming, “Oh my god, it’s you. Of course it’s you. Who else could it be?” When Sampson turned to politely say hello she looked straight up at him and said, “No one can be that tall! You can’t possibly be that tall!”
Sampson was that tall and had to deal with moments like that all the time. He and his teammates also had to deal with the notion that Virginia was now a national power because of his presence. The Cavaliers already had three very good players before Sampson’s arrival in point guard Jeff Jones and forwards Jeff Lamp and Lee Raker, meaning it was supposed to be automatic that they would compete with North Carolina, with Bill Foster’s last Duke team, and with Maryland at the top of the ACC. Only it wasn’t that simple. Some nights, the Cavaliers were all-world. Other nights they weren’t all-Charlottesville.
When they lost, the Virginia media wanted to know why—and so did the public. As the season lurched along and no long winning streak occurred, everyone became more uptight. Relations with the media were so bad that Todd Turner, the sports information director, would stand in the middle of the locker room after games and literally count down the minutes left until Virginia (under ACC rules) was allowed to close the locker room.
“Five minutes left,” Turner would bellow. “Four minutes…”
It made for an almost openly hostile atmosphere. Finally, just prior to the regular season finale at Maryland, Holland decided to take care of that problem: he put his players off-limits to the media. If that made the players less uptight, it didn’t show on the court: they lost badly at Maryland and then almost as badly in the first round of the ACC Tournament.
A year later, Sampson had become a dominant player, winning the national player of the year award. The Cavaliers made it to the Final Four in Philadelphia, but Carolina’s Al Wood had a career game—thirty-nine points—in the semifinals and the Tar Heels, after losing to UVA twice in the regular season, won to advance to the championship game.
That weekend provided a window into Dean Smith’s constant search for an edge. On Friday, before facing Virginia, he explained at great length to the media why there was no doubt that Virginia had a psychological edge going into the game. “They beat us twice,” he said. “They should feel very confident.”
On Sunday, prior to facing Indiana in the championship game, Smith insisted the Hoosiers had a psychological edge because they had lost to Carolina during the regular season. “They’re going to want to get even for what happened in December,” he said. “That gives them a psychological edge.”
If North Carolina had been facing Boy Scout Troop 23 from Libby, Montana, Smith would have insisted the scouts had a psychological edge because they could get a pup tent up faster in an emergency.
Holland and the Cavaliers weren’t worried about any mind games prior to playing State. They were worried about Bailey, Whittenburg, and Lowe and the fact that there was no reason for State to fear them.
“They knew us and we knew them,” Holland said. “Every game we’d played them had been tough. We were hoping it would help us a little that there was no three-point line.”
The ACC had used that experimental three-point line during the regular season, but it wasn’t in play during the NCAA Tournament. UVA had good shooters in Othell Wilson, Jim Miller, and Tim Mullen. But it didn’t have anyone as consistently good from outside as Whittenburg, or Gannon.
The game wasn’t that different from the ACC Tournament final, but the absence of the three-point line, and what was at stake, slowed the pace considerably. With twenty-three seconds left and Virginia leading 62–61, Lorenzo Charles was fouled. Virginia called time-out. Valvano then gave Charles a pep talk that all his teammates remember to this day.
“Okay, Lo, make these and we go to Albuquerque,” Valvano said. “Miss and you’re going back to Brooklyn. What do you think, Lo, Albuquerque or Brooklyn?”
Charles smiled and said: “I got it, Coach. Albuquerque. I got these.”
And then he made both free throws, for a 63–62 lead. There was still the not-so-small-matter of stopping Virginia from scoring in the final seconds. Sampson already had 23 points and 12 rebounds, and everyone in the gym knew the ball was going to him. Valvano decided to gamble, switching to a 1-3 zone defense with Lowe playing man-to-man on Virginia point guard Othell Wilson. That meant Bailey and Cozell McQueen could shade in Sampson’s direction at the back of the zone. It also meant someone from Virginia would be open.
Wilson dribbled the ball to the right of the key looking for an opening to get Sampson the ball. But his passing lane into the low post was cut off. With Lowe in his face, Wilson swung the ball to the top of the key, where Tim Mullen was open. Mullen had no choice but to shoot. The ball hit the back of the rim as the buzzer sounded. Sampson was right under the basket and the missed shot landed in his hands. He promptly slammed the ball through the net but it was a futile gesture—nothing more. State had won.
A day earlier, Lowe had talked about how remarkable it was that his team’s season had come full circle—back to Virginia and North Carolina. “In Atlanta, we had to beat Carolina and then Virginia,” he said. “Now it’s the other way around: Virginia first and then Carolina. We just have to make sure it’s us going to play them [UNC] in Albuquerque. That’s our focus right now.”
State had made it to Albuquerque. A day later, shockingly, Carolina did not. After beating Ohio State, the Tar Heels had expected a rematch with St. John’s—the team they had lost to on opening night way back in November—in the regional final. But Georgia had upset the Redmen.
Carolina knew little about Georgia. Dean Smith was familiar with Coach Hugh Durham�
�having lost to a Durham-coached Florida State team in the 1972 Final Four—but his players knew almost nothing about the Bulldogs. And, in an almost shocking slip of Carolina basketball decorum, Sam Perkins admitted during the off-day press conferences that he knew nothing about Georgia, saying he didn’t even know what conference the Bulldogs played in.
Twenty-four hours later Perkins may or may not have known that Georgia played in the SEC. What he did know was that they, not Carolina, would be going to the Final Four. Georgia was a veteran team led by a veteran coach and had a very legitimate star in James Banks. The Bulldogs stunned the Tar Heels, 82–77, meaning they would be the team N.C. State would play in the national semifinals the following Saturday.
The other semifinal would match Houston, now known as Phi Slama Jama, against Louisville, known as the Doctors of Dunk. That game was expected to be one of the great exhibitions of above-the-rim basketball ever seen. It was also expected to decide the national championship. Georgia and N.C. State were both nice stories, but that game was the undercard merely deciding who would get to lose to Houston or Louisville on Monday night.
That scenario was just fine with Jim Valvano. In fact, it was perfect.
14
It was Lorenzo Charles who dunked the basketball on the final play of the championship game. It was Dereck Whittenburg who got the ball into the air on that play so Charles could dunk it. It was Sidney Lowe who ran the offense on every possession. And it was Thurl Bailey who kept Hakeem Olajuwon under wraps for most of forty minutes that night.
But the 1983 Final Four in Albuquerque belonged to James Thomas Valvano.
The days when college basketball’s premier event would still be played in real basketball arenas were beginning to dwindle. A year earlier the Final Four had been held in the New Orleans Superdome. In 1984 it would be played in Seattle’s Kingdome. By 1997, abandoning any pretense that the last weekend of the college basketball season was about anything but money, the NCAA Basketball Committee would pass a rule that no building with fewer than thirty-five thousand seats need apply to host. In 2009, it would go a step further, moving the court from one corner of the football playing field in the selected venues to the middle of the field—creating more seats to sell and terrible viewing angles for almost everyone in the building.
The Legends Club Page 17