 |
| Front row: Greg Hawkins, Rick Holdt, Joe Cafferky, Craig Kuszmaul, Monte
Towe. Second row: Mark Moeller, Steve Smoral, head coach Norman Sloan, assistant coach Sam Esposito. Top row: Tim Stoddard, Tommy Burleson,
David Thompson, Steve Nuce, assistant coach Eddie Biedenbach. |
NOTE: This story was first published in Barry Jacobs' ACC Basketball: A Fan's Guide, a wonderful preseason magazine that was published annually from 1984-2013 by North Carolina-based writer Barry Jacobs. It is reprinted here with Jacobs' permission.
Jacobs started the yearbook with fellow writer Ron Morris in 1984 as a statistical analysis in the model of Bill James' Baseball Historical Abstract. They managed to call out ACC coaches like North Carolina coach Dean Smith, who often made wild assertions about their teams and players without the ability to back it up. (Smith once said that while James Worthy wasn't a great free throw shooter overall, he was the best in the league with less than two minutes to play. Jacobs and Morris poured through every boxscore of Worthy's junior season and proved that the statement wasn't true. "Ron," Dean said in his nasal pitch, "you sure have a lot of TYE-mmm.")
The annual magazine was filled with analytics, graphics, factoids, recruiting analyses, tidbits and feature stories on every player in the league.
It was a great thrill to be asked to write this story about the 40th anniversary of NC State's 1972-73 undefeated season for what turned out to be the last of the Fan's Guide, just to get some of the principle characters' remembrances of the season.
As always, 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.
©ACC Basketball: A Fans Guide,
2013
This
is a story about the seamy underbelly of pre-Watergate college athletics, when a
sports jacket and a paved driveway could get two basketball programs on NCAA
probation. It was also a time when powerful rivals could win even while losing.
The subplots are numerous and complicated: the late pop
singer Michael Jackson and his four brothers even played a small role in preventing
NC State from winning consecutive NCAA Tournament championships.
It may have happened 40 years ago – ancient history in the
current world of college basketball when the most talented players might put in
one or two years at the school of their choice – but the pain is still intense
for those who were part of NC State’s perfect 1973 season.
Perfection with an asterisk, that is.
The reason? A handful minor infractions over a recruit who
had already been signed, sealed and delivered to the front door of Norm Sloan’s
program in the summer of 1971, just before 17-year-old David Thompson enrolled
as a freshman at NC State.
“We took a bad lick,” the late Sloan said in a 2004 interview. “It was uncalled for. It was
inexcusable. It was laughable compared to what goes on these days.”
Economists might argue whether the opportunity costs of
landing the most talented and influential player ever to suit up for an ACC
program was worth a one-year ban from the NCAA Tournament. After all, Thompson
and his teammates were part of the Golden Age of NC State athletics, as the
Wolfpack became the first team in history to win ACC championships in football,
basketball and baseball in the same season, with the school’s national title in
a team sport thrown in to boot.
In other words, as he proved time and time again during his three-time
ACC Player-of-the-Year and two-time NCAA Player-of-the-Year career, Thompson
really was that good.
With the clarity of four decades of hindsight, however, it’s
easier to see why those involved in the situation believe that the Wolfpack’s
postseason ban cost their team a legendary status in college basketball annals
besides the title given to it by Esquire as No. 2 among its seven dirtiest
college basketball programs in history, a silly assertion the magazine made in
2010.
The Wolfpack, after beating Maryland in the ACC Tournament
championship game in Greensboro, returned to Raleigh to sit out the national tournament. Some of them still wonder
might have happened had they played the Bruins in St. Louis instead of Memphis
State.
“It was all a bunch of nitpicky stuff,” Thompson said
decades later. “I think it kept us from winning two national championships, to
be honest with you. I think we had the team to win the championship in 1973,
too.
"And, you never know, if we had won two in a row, we might have won in 1975, too.”
The State of Basketball
College and amateur basketball were in a stale state of flux
during that era. The U.S. Olympic team was still adding to its 77-game winning
streak and was poised to win its eighth consecutive gold medal at the 1972
Munich Games.
UCLA still dominated college basketball. Beginning in 1967,
John Wooden led the Bruins to a total of seven consecutive national titles.
There was an air of inevitability in both sports.
“I remember when I went to the Final Four in Los Angeles in
1972, it was no big deal,” said former North Carolina All-American Bobby Jones.
“I don’t even think it was sold out. There wasn’t a lot of interest from the
media. There were very few games on television at that time. And nobody knew
there were any good teams besides UCLA.
“Everybody thought, ‘Oh, well, they’re going to win it
again.’”
Building a Dynasty Breaker
In the summer of 1971, Thompson had already made his
decision to attend NC State, following in the footsteps of his good friend Tom Burleson, the
mountain-born center from Newland, N.C., who was one year older than the Boiling Springs-reared Thompson.
Burleson had been recruited heavily by North Carolina’s Dean
Smith to play for the Tar Heels, who at the time were more successful
nationally and in the ACC. Smith – still a young protégé of legendary coach
Frank McGuire – had taken the Tar Heels to three straight Final Four
appearances from 1967-69 and again with Jones in 1972.
Still, Smith had not won an elusive national title. He thought
Burleson could be the centerpiece of his next great team, and he worked hard to
keep him interested in going to school at Chapel Hill. Burleson was employed
during the summers on the grounds crew at Grandfather Country Club, which was owned by Smith’s close friend and large Tar Heel patron Hugh Morton.
Burleson, however, grew up on a farm in Avery County and had
always longed to study agriculture at NC State, where his uncle Ben Ware had
attended college. A long-time participant in 4-H programs, Burleson took the
time to introduce himself to Wolfpack head coach Norm Sloan when he was still a
sophomore in high school, while visiting the school’s agricultural week. He walked straight from the Brickyard, where he was interested in seeing Glassy the Cow, to Sloan's office to introduce himself.
Though he was just a high school sophomore, Burleson was already 6-feet,8-inches tall. Sloan and his
staff of Eddie Biedenbach and Sam Esposito stayed in touch.
“Getting Burleson was the beginning of the resurgence of NC
State basketball,” Biedenbach says. “He might be the most important recruit we
ever got, including David.”
It was Biedenbach who first saw Thompson’s amazing talents
during December of Thompson’s senior year at Shelby's Crest High School. The young assistant was actually
recruiting Fessor Leonard and Otis Cole of Kings Mountain at the time, but had
seen some films of Thompson during the summer and wanted to know if he was as
good as he looked on 16mm.
So, sitting with Burleson’s parents, Biedenbach watched
Thompson play in a high school Christmas tournament in Shelby.
“He comes out to warm up before the game and I saw that he
was unusually strong and a strong-jumping kid,” Biedenbach said. “The game
started and his made the first three shots and he had three guys guarding him.
I never knew if he could shoot a jumper or not because no matter who was
guarding him, he laid it in.
“I had played with Jerry West and against Oscar Robertson.
This kid was even better. At halftime, I went to the locker room and called
Coach Sloan and said ‘Coach, I don't know who you know in Shelby, but whoever
you know, we have to call him. This guy is the best I have ever seen.’
“We started recruiting him right then.”
And he forgot all about Leonard, who played at Furman, and Cole, who went to Florida State.
 |
| The incomparable David Thompson. |
Recruiting a Masterpiece
Every coach in North Carolina knew about Thompson, but not many outside the state had heard of him. Being from a large, financially struggling family,
Thompson hadn’t gone to any of the big national camps, though he had attended Smith’s summer
camp in Chapel Hill.
And he let anyone who asked know that he wasn’t planning
to stray to far from home.
He was such a homebody, in fact, that he spent most of his
free time at Gardner-Webb Junior College, which was not far from his family home. He became so close with the coach, Eddie Holbrook, that
Holbrook became convinced that Thompson would choose to play for the Runnin’
Bulldogs, as junior college stars Artis Gilmore and John Drew had done.
Thompson spent a great deal of his youth playing pickup
games at Holbrook’s school, going against talented African-American
players in the era just after the Atlantic Coast Conference was integrated.
Thompson was a big fan of North Carolina star Charlie Scott, who wasn’t the
first black player in league history but was its first black superstar.
He thought he might like to follow Scott’s footsteps to
Chapel Hill. After Burleson made his decision, however, Thompson began to lean
more towards the Sloan’s Wolfpack.
Biedenbach, a newlywed in 1970, spent more time in Shelby
with Thompson than he did with his new bride.
“Well, David was a
better player,” he said.
He picked Thompson up nearly every morning and took him to
breakfast at a diner in Boiling Springs. He felt completely comfortable about
Thompson’s intent to play for the Wolfpack – until he went to the Crest High
School athletic banquet, featuring Smith as the honored guest speaker.
"Uh, oh," Biedenbach said as he took his seat.
One morning, out of the blue, Thompson asked if Biedenbach
had a letter-of-intent in his car.
“I’m ready to sign,” Thompson said.
Panic-stricken, Biedenbach couldn’t find one in the glove
compartment or on the floorboards of his car. They raced back to the Thompson family home,
where father Vellie Thompson had dozens filed away from other schools that had
arrived in the mail. They picked one up, crossed out the name of the school
that had sent it to David, and signed it on the hood of Biedenbach’s car.
“I’ve never been more relieved,” Biedenbach said.
Trouble Arises
The ink was barely dry on the letter of intent before hints
of improprieties began to arise. Around Shelby, local basketball fans wondered
why the dirt road to the Thompson family home was suddenly graded and paved.
They wondered if a local construction company with Wolfpack leanings had done
the work to give Thompson a smooth ride to Raleigh.
From there, the lures – like any good fishing tale – became
larger: money, clothes, cars and an excessive number of all-expense-paid trips
to Raleigh.
Shelby businessman Hoyt Bailey said, in The Wolfpack: Intercollegiate Athletics at North Carolina State
University: “Every barbershop in our town had as its number one topic
‘Where is David Thompson going to school?’ [The rumor was] one school offered
him a Cadillac and another offered his father a new job. I actually heard one man
say that he had seen David driving Dean Smith’s Cadillac and that Coach Smith
told David he could keep the car if he went to UNC.”
Before long, the NCAA dispatched special investigator Ralph McFillen to Cleveland
County to look into the origins of the Thompsons' new driveway and all the
other rumors that floating around like a foothill fog.
“What I remember about that case,” said McFillen, who went
on to become the commissioner of both the Metro Conference and the Mid-Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletics Association, “is spending a lot of time in Boiling
Springs. There was a coach at the junior college there. There were a lot of
allegations. I do remember a nice road to their house, but I don’t know if that
was due to the town, the county or the state. I could not, however, substantiate that
someone else built that road to the family’s house.”
The ACC, then led by commissioner Robert James, began its
own independent investigation, spending six months interviewing as many people
as the NCAA about Thompson’s recruitment. In the end, James concluded that he
could find no one who could “state positively that David had received an offer
of excessive financial aid or that his father was provided additional
employment opportunities.” He found that the Daniels Construction Company, for
whom Vellie Thompson worked, arranged for the work to be done on the driveway
for the sum total of $120, which was paid off over the course of 12 months.
James laid much of the blame for the barbershop whispering
at Holbrook’s feet.
“This was important to him, not only because of David’s
outstanding ability, but also the attendant interest in his program by the
participation of a local athlete,” James said when his investigation was done.
The NCAA, however, is a dogged investigator: as Everett Case
found out years earlier, it doesn’t always follow the obvious trail. Though
McFillen says he never went to Raleigh in his mere 18 months as an NCAA
investigator, there were some tough questions asked by the organization about
trips Thompson made to the NC State campus for freshman orientation and a
couple of Sloan’s summer basketball camps.
His trips in March and May, after he signed the letter of
intent, were deemed appropriate, but his trip in June of 1971 for freshman
orientation came into question. After assistant coach Art Musselman suggested
Thompson attend the three-day event, it was discovered it was for engineering
majors only. But Thomson had already hitched a ride with his good friends,
Jerry and Larry Hunt, who were going to Raleigh with former NC State assistant coach
Charlie Bryant.
Bryant, who later became executive secretary of the Wolfpack
Club, had no idea Thompson, still a prospective, though committed student-athlete, needed a ride
to orientation, but he wasn’t about to turn the biggest prize in the school’s
basketball history away at the curb. When they got to Raleigh, Thompson
discovered he could not attend orientation, but instead of finding a way back
to Shelby, he stayed in the same dorm room as his friends, sleeping on the
floor for five nights until the trio went back home. The NCAA determined that Thompson should have reimbursed the school $8 for sleeping on the floor.
A few weeks later, Thompson returned to Raleigh with the
Hunt brothers, who were working another camp for Sloan’s staff.
On Aug. 1, 1971, Thompson and the Hunt brothers received
tickets from Biedenbach to attend a concert at Dorton Arena, featuring the
Jackson Five and a hot new group called the Commodores, with lead singer Lionel
Ritchie, as the opening act. It was the second world tour for the Jackson family
quintet, which featured lively vocals from 12-year-old sensation Michael.
Thompson spent the week playing pickup games, working for a
local construction company and hanging out with his hometown friends. At the
camp were a good mix of high school players and a handful of signed prospects
and a few of the Wolfpack’s current players. To the loiterers and hangers-on at
Carmichael Gymnasium, it looked like an all-star game.
One day, Biedenbach went to the on-campus cafeteria looking
to round everyone up for an afternoon session and discovered only about half of
the campers, surrounded by copious amounts of food.
“Where is everyone?” he wanted to know.
“They are still in the gym watching Burleson, Thompson and [Bob]
McAdoo,” he was told.
Biendenbach went to Carmichael and saw those three, along
with Western Kentucky player Danny Moses (who later transferred to Wake Forest)
and Tony Byers playing a pickup game with some others. He sent Moses and several
more to the cafeteria for lunch, but that left the pick-up game one player
short.
“Coach, how about filling in so we can finish this game?” Biedenbach
recalled being asked.
One of the players still on the court was Bill Brafford, a
Raleigh native who became a first-team All-ACC defensive end for North
Carolina's football team. Brafford, who serves as an assistant U.S. Attorney for Western North Carolina in Charlotte, mentioned to Tar Heel
assistant basketball coach John Lotz that he had played a pickup game with
McAdoo and Thompson, and that Thompson was going to be a force to be reckoned
with when he became eligible to play.
Lo and behold, a few weeks later, a new set of NCAA
investigators began inquiring about special tryouts for prospective
student-athletes, conducted by the NC State basketball staff. Neither Biedenbach
nor Thompson have ever denied the pick-up games, but they have always disputed
that those shirts-versus-skins games were tryouts.
“David had already signed,” he said. “Besides, we already
knew all too well how good he was. We didn’t need to try him out.”
Sloan, however, had to explain why he let such an egregious
violation occur under his watch.
 |
| Head coach Norman Sloan and his glorious sports jacket. |
A Fitting Punishment?
Sloan – called “Stormin’ Norman” for a reason by the media -- was not
what you would call a diplomat.
He came as close as any person in history ever has to being
arrested by his own bodyguard. It happened after Sloan left NC State, in his
second stint as the men’s basketball coach at Florida. The Gators and the
Bulldogs had quite a rivalry going and there was some tension in the air when
Sloan took his team to Stegeman Coliseum in 1980. Being judicious, Georgia
officials assigned protection for Sloan and his staff. Sloan became angry in
the first half that his bodyguard sat idly by as Bulldog fans threw debris at
the Gator players. “You are a gutless little f*cker,aren’t you?” Sloan told the
off-duty highway patrolman.
For the next hour and a half, the bodyguard tried to put
Sloan in handcuffs, even though the game was still in progress at Stegeman Coliseum. When it was
finally over, the two got in a shouting match outside the Gators’ lockerroom.
Only after pint-sized assistant Monte Towe held back the bodyguard – with enforcement
help from two of Florida’s biggest players – did the protector let up on his
protectee.
So it was in the meeting with the NCAA. One of the other
allegations that came out was that Burleson, Steve Nuce and Steve Graham had
been hired as camp counselors after they graduated high school but before they
had been enrolled at NC State. According to Sloan, the ACC’s interpretation at
the time was that it was legal for them to be hired.
The school had also paid for both Burleson and Graham to
attend the second session of summer school, a rule that was not expressly in
place in 1970, but was clarified with legislation passed in 1971.
“Norm got into trouble with the infractions committee,”
Biedenbach said, “because he slammed his fist on the table and told them, ‘You
guys are looking at the 1971 book and in 1970 what we did was legal. You guys
don't even know the damned rules yourself.’ That didn't endear him to the
committee. They left that as a violation. They threw everything in there they
could to make it look like we had done something wrong, when we really hadn’t.”
There were a slew of other minor infractions discovered in the investigations done by the athletics department, the university, the ACC and the NCAA. Among the allegations were that some players received free tickets to the Jackson Five concert and that an NC State booster, Clint Williams, paid Thompson $2 an hour for working as a day laborer for his construction company, as he had previously done with other Wolfpack student-athletes.
Chancellor John Caldwell vigorously defended his coach and athletics director Willis Casey.
"We discovered ... a head coach with a clear conscience," Caldwell wrote to the NCAA. "What I mean is simply this: Coach Norman Sloan was (and is) so certain of his intent not to violate the rule and that he was not violating them, that he did not vigorously and in hard-nosed fashion go the extra mile to avoid all appearance of evil.
"[Keep in mind] that among all the alleged facts, even if sustained, there was no advantage to be gained to the institution's recruiting effort," because all players in question had already signed letters-of-intent to attend NC State.
Caldwell assured the NCAA that Casey had tightened all the athletics department's internal procedures to prevent any future minor violations.
On Oct. 24, 1972, the Committee on Infractions handed down
its report in Knoxville, Tennessee, placing NC State on a one-year probation and stating that the
1972-73 season must end “with the playing of the last, regularly scheduled,
in-season game” and would not be eligible to participate “in any postseason
basketball competition.”
As directed by the NCAA, Caldwell sent
letters of reprimand to both Sloan and Biedenbach, but also stated: “I wish it
to be known that this reprimand does not endorse the substantie findings of the NCAA on the basis of which the NCAA
Council justified probationary status… nor do I wish this reprimand to obscure
the clear evidence that your recruiting efforts have been characterized by an
honorable intent to respect the intercollegiate rules.”
Few people may remember that Duke was also sanctioned by the
NCAA for its recruitment of Thompson. A Duke booster who lived in Shelby had
not only bought the young star a jacket to wear to the ACC basketball
tournament in Greensboro, but had also given him a ride in to the event, both
of which were deemed to be impermissible benefits.
Not that it mattered in a season when former Wolfpack player
Bucky Waters guided the Blue Devils to 12-14 overall and 4-8 ACC records, but
Duke was also barred from postseason play in 1973.
 |
| Tommy Burleson celebrating. |
A Redirected Goal
The one-year probation was a harsh blow for the players, but
hardly a new circumstance for the Wolfpack, which had been deal several harsh
probations under Hall of Fame coach Everett Case. He was investigated over the
recruitment of Ronnie Shavlik, but punished for holding illegal tryouts on
campus for more than a dozen players, including a guy he rejected – center
Lennie Rosenbluth, who instead went to North Carolina and helped the undefeated
Tar Heels win the 1957 NCAA title.
Just a year later, Case was punished again for allegedly offering
improper benefits to Louisiana prospect Jackie Moreland. The second of those
came just a year after the first, so the Wolfpack was hit with one of the
harshest penalties in NCAA history: four years of no postseason play for all
sports, a sanction that prevented the 1957 ACC champion Wolfpack football team
from making the school’s only trip to the Orange Bowl.
Finally, in a final blow to Case’s mental and physical
health, the program was caught up with North Carolina and other schools in the
1960-61 point-shaving and gambling scandals that killed Case’s holiday
tournament, the Dixie Classic, and nearly ended college basketball at North
Carolina’s two biggest schools.
If speed dial had been around back then, Case’s
number would have been a single-digit entry in the NCAA’s phonebook. The “Old
Gray Fox,” as the North Carolina media knew him, was previously known as
“Slick” back in Indiana, mainly because of his abilities to circumvent the
Indiana High School Athletics Association rules that he helped write.
Case had so many run-ins with the organization en route to a
record five state championships that he could barely order from one of his
drive-in restaurants without a counter clerk asking if he wanted sanctions with
his cheeseburger.
He was pretty adept at staying ahead of the posse throughout
his Hall of Fame career, whether he was coaching in Frankfort, Indiana, or for
the U.S. Navy or for NC State College.
“Old Ev,” one of his colleagues used to say, “he never
thought any of those rules he voted for pertained to him.”
Sloan, who had played for Case from 1946-48, accepted the
punishment as part of doing business, though there was a tinge of bitterness
that lasted for the rest of his life.
“There
was a lot of pain [for Norm] … until the day he died,” said his widow, Joan
Sloan. “With the things that go on in college basketball now, what happened
with Norm was nothing.”
The
probation, if nothing else, was a motivating force.
“David and I felt that it was a real chintzy way of putting
us on probation and keep us out of the [NCAA] tournament,” Burleson said. “We
both had offers from other schools of cars, clothes and apartments. We came to
NC State and didn’t receive anything other than our scholarships.”
Burleson, who had led the ACC in rebounding (14.0 rpg) and
was second in scoring (21.3 ppg) in 1972, was fresh off his disappointing
Olympic experience in Munich and hungry to win a championship. He even accepted
Sloan’s decree that, with Thompson up from the freshman team, he was no longer
the center of the Wolfpack’s offense.
Thompson, who was named preseason first-team All-American
even before he played his first college team, was ready to step into the
limelight, bringing tiny point guard Towe and burly two-sport star Tim Stoddard
with him.
The team found guidance in seniors Rick Holdt and Joe
Cafferky.
The season started with visit from Appalachian State, and a
sour twist. The opposing coach on the sidelines was none other than Press
Maravich, who had once been Case’s hand-picked successor to take over the
Wolfpack basketball program. But he scooted out of town in 1966 once his son,
legendary gym rat “Pistol” Pete Maravich, exhausted every possible means of
finding ACC eligibility.
Pete used the more-lenient admissions standards of the
Southeastern Conference to snag a scholarship at Louisiana State, which just so
happened to find a head coaching job for Press. They took off as a package
deal, opening the door for Sloan to return to his alma mater.
It also opened the door for Sloan’s first real success as a
recruiter and coach. Desperate for players, Sloan offered the scholarship had
been long held for Maravich to a lanky kid from Fayetteville, N.C., named Vann
Williford, who ended up during his senior year in 1970 as the star of Sloan’s
first ACC championship team. Williford won the Everett Case Award as the
tournament’s Most Valuable Player after led the Wolfpack to an upset of Frank
McGuire’s loaded South Carolina team, which had elbowed its way through the
regular season and the first game of the ACC tournament without losing to a
conference team.
Sloan slowed down the pace, and the Wolfpack won one of the
many unlikely championships in its collection of 10 trophies.
Maravich led the Wolfpack to a similarly unlikely title in
1965, the season in which Case stepped down for health reasons after just two
games.
Maravich’s Mountaineers, however, were hardly a challenge
for the Wolfpack, which won the opener 130-54, matching the most points ever
scored by a Wolfpack team. The next three games were against similarly weak
opponents and were all blowouts, but the Wolfpack proved its mettle by winning
the 1972 Big Four championship in Greensboro, knocking off Wake Forest and
North Carolina.
On Jan. 14, 1973, as a lead-in to Super Bowl VII between the
Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins, the third-ranked Wolfpack traveled
to Cole Field House to face second-ranked Maryland. The Terps, featuring future
NBA players Tom McMillen and Len Elmore, were the preseason favorites to win
the ACC.
It was a nationally televised broadcast, thanks to a
patchwork network of 145 television stations put together by NC State athletics
director Willis Casey and broadcasting pioneer Castleman D. Chesley that made
that game available to more than 95 percent of the nation. It was the first
national broadcast of a college basketball regular-season game in more than
five years.
Thompson became a national superstar that Super Sunday,
scoring 37 points and laying in a missed shot by Burleson with three seconds
remaining to give the Wolfpack an 87-85 victory.
There were a few close calls that followed – notably an
82-78 win in Chapel Hill over the seventh-ranked Tar Heels – but the Wolfpack
managed to outscore its opponents the rest of the season by a margin of 21.8
points.
“We knew going into the season that things were what they
were,” said Towe, who later became an assistant to Sloan at both NC State and
Florida before becoming a head coach. “We didn’t feel like at the time that we
deserved those sanctions, but we accepted them. We knew we could play as many
as 27 games on the schedule and we made up our minds that we were going to win
every one of them.”
At the end of the regular season, the chancellor agreed with Sloan's interpretation that since the ACC Tournament was a regularly scheduled event – and had been since 1954 –
that the Wolfpack could play in the seven-team conference tournament in
Greensboro.
The Wolfpack outlasted Maryland in the title game, 76-74,
and Burleson was named the tournament Most Valuable Player.
The Wolfpack joined the Tar Heels as the only the second undefeated team
in ACC history, a feat that still remains unmatched.
The Final Analysis
There has always been a subplot about the Wolfpack’s 1972-73
season, as those close to the program wondered exactly why the NCAA decided to
hand down a postseason ban as part of the sanctions for what turned out to be
relatively minor offenses.
The long-floated theory that an influential, opposing school
did them in is not out of the realm of possibility.
It has often been speculated that North Carolina coach Dean
Smith – upset at losing Thompson – had something to do with it, especially
since his long-time assistant Bill Guthridge had a relationship with McFillen,
the NCAA investigator who spent a summer in Shelby looking into the
improprieties regarding Thompson’s recruitment.
McFillen and Guthridge are from the same hometown of
Parsons, Kansas. According to the Kansas State yearbook, Guthridge served as
the ticket manager in the athletics department the same year McFillen was an
All-Big Ten tight end on the Wildcat football team. McFillen confirms they were
acquaintances, but strongly denied the long-asserted claim from some Wolfpack principles that they were roommates and best friends.
“He was well ahead of me in school,” McFillen said. “I know
Bill to be an honorable man.”
McFillen doesn’t discount jealously as a motivating factor
for getting the NCAA to look into a successful program.
“[Recruiting] really wasn’t an issue among the coaches until
a team started winning and beating the other teams around,” said McFillen, who still lives in Mission, Kansas, after his retirement in 2007 as commissioner of the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association. “As long as that wasn’t the case, if they
weren’t winning consistently, there wasn’t much talked about. But once a team
started to win …”
Without facing the Wolfpack, the Bruins won their seventh
consecutive championship by beating Memphis State in the 1973 NCAA championship
game at St. Louis Arena, capping off a perfect 30-0 season.
NC State and UCLA did eventually meet in 1973 in that very
arena in St. Louis, just not in the NCAA Tournament and not during the dual
undefeated seasons.
Sloan and Wooden, while working at a summer basketball camp
at Campbell College in Buies Creek, North Carolina, hammered out an agreement
to play a made-for-television game at the same arena where the national
championship had been decided the previous winter.
Behind the play of Bill Walton and Jamaal (née Keith) Wilkes,
the top-ranked Bruins crushed the second-ranked Wolfpack with a second-half
surge, 84-66. The Bruins 78th consecutive victory ended State’s
29-game winning streak, the longest the ACC had seen since North Carolina won
the 1957 NCAA title with a perfect record.
It also gave the Wolfpack motivation for later that
season. Thompson, Burleson and Towe were determined for a rematch and did
everything within their power to make it happen – including an exhausting,
pressure-packed win over fifth-ranked Maryland in the ACC Tournament
championship game at the Greensboro Coliseum, which is still remembered as the
greatest game in league history.
Thompson survived a near-fatal fall in a second-round
victory over Pittsburgh, and the Wolfpack beat the Bruins in double-overtime in
the NCAA semifinals just down Interstate-40 from Raleigh at the Greensboro Coliseum.
Sloan prevented any possible letdown, not allowing his team
to celebrate ending UCLA’s long-time dynasty until after it beat Al McGuire-coached Marquette in the championship game.
“You know, we finally ended UCLA’s dynasty in college
basketball,” Sloan recalled during an interview shortly before his death. “I
don’t remember too many people mentioning that when they talk about those
teams.”
The fact remains that the Wolfpack did complete one of only
two undefeated seasons in ACC history in 1973, and over two seasons had a 57-1 record, a feat that still has never been duplicated nor exceeded.
Despite the disappointment that Sloan took with him to the
grave, that’s an indelible mark that lives on more than four decades later.
