A Fan-Free, Secret Game That Changed Everything

© Tim Peeler, 2020

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It’s long-forgotten now, but there was a time NC State hosted a men’s basketball game against High Point College that was played without spectators.

It wasn’t because of illness though, like the current worldwide coronavirus pandemic that forced NCAA president Mark Emmert today to ban all unnecessary personnel and family from this year’s men’s and women’s NCAA Championships.

It was because NC State’s home court, Thompson Gymnasium, was actually condemned by Raleigh officials.

The “secret game,” as the newspapers called it back then, that followed was one of the seminal moments of March Madness in North Carolina, even though it was played in January.

The saga began in 1947, Case’s first season, when a Red Terror home game against North Carolina was cancelled because of too many spectators. Thousands of students, most of whom were World War II veterans enrolled on the GI Bill, flooded through the second-floor windows and up through the basement lockerrooms to see the first of two scheduled games against the two neighboring rivals.

When fans sat on each other’s laps and crowded into the aisles, fire marshal W.C. Butts called the game, setting off riots on NC State’s campus. The Terrors went on to beat the White Phantoms, as Carolina teams were often called then, in Chapel Hill, 48-46, the first of 15 consecutive victories over UNC-CH and the beginning of a 24 out of 27 streak against State College’s biggest rival over the next decade.

That inaugural season, Case’s team finished with a 26-5 record, its first Southern Conference championship in nearly two decades and a berth in the National Invitation Tournament at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Case became a hero, even though his team played in a decrepit old gym that barely held 4,000 spectators.

By the 1947-48 season, interest in NC State basketball was so high students could only get tickets to half the games and were not allowed to bring dates, which was problematic because almost all of the military veterans enrolled in school were already married. No staff, faculty or general admission tickets were sold for home games after December.

On Jan. 23, 1948, Duke was scheduled to play at Thompson Gym, but Raleigh building inspector Pallie Mangum and city manager Roy Braden conducted a surprise inspection the afternoon of the game and decided that it had to be canceled because the building had inadequate fire exits for more than 1,200 spectators.

The Wolfpack was forced to move its final seven home games that year to Raleigh’s downtown Memorial Auditorium.

There wasn’t enough time, however, to get the auditorium ready for the Pack’s next home game, a Friday night contest against High Point College. The auditorium was built in 1934 to be basketball ready, since the Southern Conference moved its tournament to Raleigh when seven schools broke away to form the Southeastern Conference. But the floor had not yet been refinished, the sidelines and free-throw lines needed to be painted and baskets needed to be installed in order to play seven unexpected games in February and March.

After telling everyone on campus and in Raleigh that the High Point game was cancelled, officials from both schools agreed to secretly play in condemned Thompson Gym, with no fans in attendance. Only a few reporters and college officials were allowed to see the game featuring Case’s Wolfpack, the nation’s highest-scoring team.

Red-headed All-America forward Dick Dickey poured in a school-record 29 points and teammate Jack McComas added 23. Case’s Wolfpack ran roughshod over the High Pointers with a 110-40 victory.

Case’s free-wheeling team made 44 of 97 shots – in front of no one.

The vagabond Pack weren’t affected by its home-court flux throughout the season. It was the highest-scoring team in the nation for most of the season and it earned the school’s first No. 1 ranking in the national polls. Thanks to a 19-game winning streak from December-March, the Pack finished 29-3 overall, was a perfect 12-0 in the Southern Conference regular season and won the second of six consecutive league tournament titles, despite Dickey being out of the lineup with a case of the mumps.

At least it wasn’t the Covid-19.

It was the highest-scoring game in NC State history until David Thompson came along three dozen years later. It was also the last game Case ever coached in Thompson Gym, where he compiled a perfect 18-0 record in his one-and-a-half seasons at his first home court.

Passed over by the NCAA in favor of eventual national-champion Kentucky for the eight-team NCAA Tournament, the 1947-48 Wolfpack accepted its second consecutive bid to the National Invitation Tournament. Without Dickey, the Pack lost to DePaul in the first round at Madison Square Garden.

Still, it was the most successful season in NC State basketball history until the 1972-73 team posted a perfect 27-0 record.

The move to downtown Raleigh lit a fire under school officials – as Case slyly expected – to complete the shell of the on-campus coliseum that had been standing dormant since 1941. It didn’t hurt that during an 81-42 victory over North Carolina at the Pack’s substitute home, students finished off the game by chanting “We want a coliseum. We want a coliseum.”

Few of the surviving folks at that game would know if Mangum and Braden, the two elected city officials, were truly looking out for the well-being of those wanting to see the game, or if they were in cahoots with Case, a legendary sneak who usually got what he wanted.

What is known for certain, however, is that the palatial on-campus basketball coliseum the coach was promised when he interviewed for the job the year before was re-envisioned, expanded on the fly and completed within 18 months of the fan-free game.

Called Reynolds Coliseum, it hosted more spectators for college basketball games than any other on-campus facility during its 50 years as the home of NC State’s men’s basketball team, the host of the Southern and Atlantic Coast Conference tournaments, the Dixie and Triangle Classics and the NCAA Championships. The home of the Wolfpack Women’s program since 1973-74, renovated and updated Reynolds will soon surpass the men’s half-century of service.

So, who knows? Wednesday’s decision by the NCAA to host fan-free tournaments may reinvigorate college basketball, not destroy it.