Too Many Cinderellas

Sophomore guard Terry Gannon at the free throw line.

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© Tim Peeler, 2018

Terry Gannon’s life was made for this shot.

There were just five seconds left on Feb. 12, 1983, and NC State trailed Notre Dame, the only school Gannon ever wanted to attend, by one point with just seconds to play. He'd practiced this shot every night in his dreams.

And made it, every single time.

Here he was, with the ball in his hands, ready to stick it to Digger Phelps and the program that chose Dan freaking Duff over Gannon to be its shooting guard.

Gannon grew up Joliet, Illinois, side-by-side with his father, high school basketball coach Jim Gannon, going to Chicago White Sox baseball games, Notre Dame football games and playing basketball whenever and wherever he could. (He doesn’t talk as much about it, but he also took four years of tap-dance from his mother, who was a professional dance instructor.)

He used to play pickup basketball games at Notre Dame’s Athletic and Convocation Center with an older family friend, a 22-year-old equipment manager for the Fighting Irish football team named Daniel Eugene Ruettiger, a habitual hustler who talked his way onto the football team, played one play on senior day against Georgia Tech in 1975 and had a movie—Rudy—made about himself.

Gannon and his dad were among the first people to greet the unlikely star following his brief appearance with first-year coach Dan Devine’s Fighting Irish. Gannon, then 12 years old, sneaked Rudy’s helmet out of the locker room after the game.

Gannon later became a star at Joliet Catholic High School, the best thing to come out of that industrial town since Jake and Elwood Blues. He wanted desperately to play for Digger Phelps’ basketball team, even getting Rudy put in a good word for him.

“He’s too small,” Phelps said, crushing Gannon's spirit with just three words.

A couple of other schools showed interest, but one of Gannon’s high school friends, Mike Pesavento, had come south to Raleigh and NC State to pitch for Sam Esposito’s Wolfpack baseball team. Pesavento mentioned Gannon to Esposito, who talked to Wolfpack men’s basketball coach Jim Valvano about recruiting the smallish shooting guard.

Valvano went to visit Gannon, spent the whole time talking basketball with Gannon’s dad in the family kitchen and told Terry to follow him to Raleigh as part of his second-year recruiting class that included Cozell McQueen, Mike Warren, Walter “Dinky” Proctor and sleeper recruit Lorenzo Charles.

Valvano casually mentioned that the Wolfpack was in the midst of a six-game series with Phelps’ Fighting Irish, which sealed Gannon’s decision.

“I’ll go down there and show those sons of bitches,” he said to himself.

He played both basketball and baseball his first season with the Wolfpack, but didn’t contribute much to either team. He barely even entered the game when the Valvano’s basketball team went to South Bend, Indiana, and beat the Irish, 62-42.

Gannon opted to concentrate on basketball during the 1982-83 season for several reasons, not the least of which was the home game against Notre Dame on Feb. 12, 1983, at Reynolds Coliseum and the ACC’s decision to implement an experimental 17-feet, 9-inch 3-point line that was the shortest in the nation. (There was no standardized distance before the NCAA officially adopted the 3-point goal in 1986-87.)

Gannon became the team’s designated cannon that season, burning the nets with 53 3-pointers on 90 shots, a .593 shooting percentage that is still the best ever recorded by an ACC player.

When the Irish came to town, the Wolfpack was just starting to find its rhythm after losing senior guard Dereck Whittenburg, who had suffered a broken foot in January and was thought to be lost for the season. After two losses, the Pack reeled off four straight wins, thanks mostly to freshman sensation Ernie Myers.

Wolfpack senior guard Sidney Lowe, who had also wanted to play at Notre Dame as a prep player at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, wanted his third win in four games against the Irish too. He had been passed over by Phelps for All-America point guard John Paxson.

The Pack’s chances looked dim, however, with Whittenburg out and senior power forward Thurl Bailey recovering from both the flu and a bad reaction to the medicine he was taking.

The game settled into one of those dreary early 1980s slowdown contests, played without either the three-pointer or a shot clock. (In non-conference games that season, coaches agreed to one, both or neither before tipoff.)

With 90 seconds left to play Duff, the shooting guard Phelps chose over Gannon two years earlier, missed a pair of free throws. The Wolfpack held the ball for a final shot and ran the play that it ran throughout the season with the game on the line: No. 32. Lowe had the ball in his hands, with Gannon and Myers on the wings and Bailey and Charles underneath. Lowe drove to the free-throw line and found Gannon wide open for the game-winning shot.

It was Gannon’s time to be a hero, to hit the game-winning shot he dreamed of ever since Phelps broke his heart and took Duff instead of him. He couldn’t wait to out-Rudy Rudy with an easy 18-foot jumper from the wing.

But he missed.

The ball bounced off the front of the rim and into the waiting hands of Notre Dame’s Tim Kempton. The game ended in a 43-42 victory for the Fighting Irish.

“It still kills me to this day,” Gannon said from his home in Los Angeles recently. “It felt so good leaving my hands. It was right on target. It was perfect.”

Terry Gannon shooting over Michael Jordan.

You know what happened next, however. In the next game out, the Wolfpack crushed UNC-Wilmington, then beat defending national champion North Carolina for the first time in Valvano’s tenure. Whittenburg returned to the team, just as he had as a senior in high school at DeMatha when his prep career was thought to be finished. The re-energized team began to roll. Gannon was the leading scorer in a 130-89 victory over Wake Forest in the regular-season finale.

The Wolfpack won the ACC tournament championship in Atlanta, thanks in great part to a steal the diminutive Gannon had against Virginia giant Ralph Sampson. Though there was no 3-point shot in the NCAA tournament, Gannon continued to contribute his outside shooting and quick-handed defense.

In the national championship game against Houston, Gannon against made perhaps the biggest defensive play of the game when he took a charge against Cougar All-America guard Clyde Drexler, his fourth personal foul in the first half. He had another in the second half when he slapped the ball off Benny Anders' knee as the Houston guard drove to the basket.

When the Wolfpack went down by seven after halftime, it used the outside shooting

ship—makes Gannon philosophical about his Notre Dame miss.

“I’ve worked this out in my head many, many times through the years, and have convinced myself that we don't win the national championship if I make that shot against Notre Dame,” Gannon says. “There are only so many miracles you can have in a season, only so many Cinderella stories.

“It would've been too much.”

It helps him sleep at night.