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| Frank Weedon (center) on press row. |
There are so many great stories about the late Frank Weedon, who died peacefully on Monday night (Sept. 4, 2013) at his home in Raleigh. This is just one of them. But it's a classic. I originally wrote it for "The Wolfpacker" a few years ago. If you enjoy reading "One Brick Back" and would like to help offset research expenses for stories such as this, please make a small donation to the cause and help keep these posts free of ads.
© Coman Publishing Company
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. – There have only been a couple games in ACC men’s basketball history that have ended before the official game clock expired. One was in 2006, when Duke’s game at Florida State ended with two seconds remaining on the clock.
It nearly happened again in 2012, when North Carolina coach Roy Williams took his starters and scholarship players off the floor at Florida State, leaving five walkons on the court to play the final 14.2 seconds.
But the richest story is of a shortened game between NC State and Maryland, in what turned out to be an odd confluence of bench mayhem and referee's ire during one of the most tumultuous seasons in league history.
It happened on Jan. 7, 1967, on a cold night in College
Park, Md., as unrest swirled with a few snow flurries during the ACC’s winter
of discontent.
Duke and South Carolina were feuding over the eligibility of
one of the league’s best young players, Gamecock Mike Grosso. The dispute was
so bitter the league allowed the two schools to cancel their two conference
games against each other.South Carolina and Clemson, the league’s two entries from the state that brought us the Civil War, nearly had a game canceled in the first half because of unrest in the stands, as poor Frank McGuire absorbed abuse from all directions.
There were three other games later that winter that involved fisticuffs between opposing players and fans and a condemnation of Duke fans for throwing heated pennies, among other things, at visiting teams.
The State-Maryland game was all about a feud with official George Conley, a former Kentucky state senator who was also a well-respected ACC official. At the previous year’s ACC Tournament, which was played at NC State’s Reynolds Coliseum, Conley had brought a date to the game he was calling and gave her a seat at one of the tables in the end zone reserved for off-duty officials.
Tournament manager and NC State sports information director
Frank Weedon, after being notified by press runner Jim Donnan that there was a
lady on press row, kicked her out of the seat that was reserved strictly for
game officials. When Conley was told she had to leave, a war of words erupted
that ended with Conley saying “I’ll get even with you (SOBs) for this.”
Weedon filed a report of the incident with the school and
with the league, just in case the topic ever came up again.
The fiery SID was horrified to see that Conley was one of
two officials assigned to call the Wolfpack’s season opener the next season, in
head coach Norman Sloan’s debut at his alma mater. Nothing happened in the game
that seemed untoward, but then, as Sloan explained, “we were so bad you
couldn’t tell anything about the officiating.”
Three weeks later, Conley and Roy Owen were assigned to call
the game between the Pack and the Terps at Cole Field House. Heading into the
final minutes, the teams were playing a close game, which was unusual for the
Wolfpack in Sloan’s inaugural season for a team that finished with a horrific
7-19 record.
Conley repeatedly warned Sloan to keep his bench quiet
throughout the game. In his autobiography, “Confessions of a Coach,” Sloan
insisted that neither he nor his assistants, Charlie Bryant and Sam Esposito,
were saying much out of the ordinary, but Conley persistently told the staff to
keep it down. News accounts of the day suggested there was much chirping from
the Wolfpack bench throughout the game.
“Who’s talking to the officials?” Sloan demanded during a
timeout.
Turns out, the high-pitched, squeaky voice Conley had heard
all night belonged to Weedon, who complained from his seat at the scorer’s
table next to the Wolfpack bench that Conley was making calls unfavorable to
the Wolfpack. When a Maryland player rammed into State guard Nick Trifunovich’s
back and knocked the ball out of bounds, Conley refused to call a foul and gave
the ball to the Terps. Both Sloan and Weedon, as they were wont to do, went a
little ballistic.
Conley called a technical on the bench – meaning Weedon –
and charged another to the head coach. They were the second and third technicals
of the night against the Wolfpack staff.
Maryland’s Jay McMillen hit one of the two free throws to
give the Terps a 60-55 lead. When Sloan reportedly said after McMillen’s miss “Isn’t
that too bad?” Conley abruptly cancelled the game with 1:15 remaining and awarded Maryland the
first and only forfeit in ACC history.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ve taken enough. The game is now
over. The score as it stands is official.”
As Sloan stood stunned on the sidelines, Weedon shouted: “I
told you not to let him do any of our games!”Sloan confronted Conley in the officials’ lockerroom, a violation of ACC rules and etiquette. He was later sent a letter of reprimand from the league. Conley explained that he had seen someone on NC State’s bench making a gesture with his fist.
Sloan, following the Everett Case institution of filming all
games, watched the game the next day with NC State chancellor John Caldwell and
solved the mystery of exactly what happened. After Conley made the call, Weedon
made a sarcastic gesture – though emphatically NOT an obscene one – that
implied “Well, you got us back.”
Though upset, the coach nicknamed “Stormin’ Norman” could
only shake his head at Weedon’s emotional antics.
Dr. Caldwell even issued a statement: “I have reviewed
thoroughly with coach Norman Sloan last night’s episode at the Maryland-North
Carolina State basketball game. It is neither possible nor necessary that I
attempt in this statement to review all that transpired in the game situation
Saturday night. Coach Sloan is an honorable and dedicated coach and a man of
high standards. On the basis of my knowledge of the situation at present, I do
not find that his conduct was in any way unusual or reprehensible.”
Caldwell did say that the coach shouldn’t get so many
technical fouls. He didn’t mention Weedon’s conduct. And Conley never called
another game involving the Wolfpack.