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© Tim Peeler, 2022
Only recently has NC State had special ceremonies to recognize departing players. Everett Case didn’t do it. Press Maravich wasn’t around long enough to say good-bye to any four-year players he recruited. Norm Sloan didn’t do it. Jim Valvano didn’t do it.
Nor did most schools. It’s one of those things that seems ubiquitous and traditional in college athletics but really only gained favor in the last 30 years.
“I remember my Senior Day,” says former Wolfpack player Ernie Myers. “My mom came from New York to see me play my last home game. I received a trophy for the Jon Speaks Award before the game, but we didn’t have any official Senior Day recognition.”
No pregame announcement. No framed jerseys. No flowers for escorting moms.
Myers remembers that the day after he and fellow senior Nate McMillan played their final home game, they walked around the court at an empty Reynolds waving good-bye to imaginary spectators.
“What the hell are you guys doing?” Valvano asked them.
After a stern lecture, they went on with practice.
“It’s always been a bit of a sore spot for me,” says Myers, who lives in Raleigh and is a radio broadcaster for Wolfpack women’s basketball.
Especially now that every player, every manager and every cheerleader, dance team member and pep band member is at least mentioned for their contributions to football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and other sports.
Such celebrations are progress, though, and an excellent opportunity for fans to say “thank you,” which is generally what most athletes want as their careers come to an end.
Myers, McMillan and center Panagiotis Fasoulas did get quite a going-away present, however: On Feb. 23, 1986—their officially unrecognized Senior Day—unranked NC State knocked off No. 1 North Carolina at Reynolds Coliseum, one of five wins over a top-ranked team in school history.
“There wasn’t any way we were going to lose to them in our last game on our home court,” Myers said. “That wasn’t going to happen.”
Saturday’s game between NC State and North Carolina will be the eighth time since the end of World War II that the Wolfpack’s final regular-season home game is again the rival Tar Heels.
In the previous seven games, the Pack is 6-1 against Carolina. In four of those wins, UNC-CH was ranked in the Top 10.
Here’s a recap of each of those games:
A Senior Day
Dominated by Sophomores
NC State 51, North Carolina 49
Playing game without leading scorer Larry Lakins and his replacement Hal Blondeau, the Wolfpack pulled out a 51-49 squeaker for head coach Everett Case’s 28th and final victory over the Tar Heels.
“We are about as thin in personnel as the ham you get in a New York deli,” said Case, “but the boys stuck in there and fought all the way. I don’t know when I have been any prouder of a group of kids of mine.”
“We did a good job on defense, jamming the inside with Tommy Maddocks in front and Pete Auksel and Phil Taylor in back,” Case said of his tightly packed zone defense.
North Carolina coach Dean Smith agreed, though not in a positive way. He did not like the way All-American Billy Cunningham was guarded all night long: “Cunningham was getting jammed all night long. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Neither had Cunningham, who received two technical fouls for arguing with officials George Conley and Jack Vest. He scored 17 points on the night, but was 6-for-21 from the field and had the ball stolen from him by Wolfpack sophomore guard Billy Moffitt in the final seconds of the game.
“It was one of the roughest games we’ve had this year,” Case said, as if he hadn’t planned it that way.
Carolina shot 29.5 percent from the field in front of 10,500 fans.
The next-to-last win of Case’s career. He retired two games into the 1964-65 season, following a season-opening win over Furman and a loss at Wake Forest.
The Paul Coder Game
NC State 85, No. 3 UNC-CH 84
(2/29/1972)
After losing an 11-point halftime
lead, Norm Sloan’s Pack found themselves down by four with less than a minute
to play in this Leap Day contest against the No. 3 Tar Heels. With 36 seconds
to play Paul Coder scored an inside basket to draw
his team within two, 84-82.
Had it not been rigged and faked, the legendary noise meter hanging from the rafters may well have exploded when Karl tried to make his first free throw. The shot fell short, the Pack rebounded and falling guard Steve Smoral found his roommate, 6-9, 250-pound Paul Coder under the basket with a pin-point pass.
Coder not only made the shot to tie the game, he was fouled on the play.
North Carolina’s Dean Smith called timeout to ice him, but that only allowed the rowdy crowd two and a half minutes to clean out their lungs. They went silent when Coder stepped to the line and made his go-ahead shot, then exploded into celebration when Coder knocked down a pass from Tar Heel All-American Robert McAdoo.
The orgiastic crowd stormed the court, Coder and McAdoo had terse words at midcourt and Smith complained that Sloan’s pregame words about the most important key was who would officiate the game were echoing in the ears of officials Steve Honzo and Tommy Hernjak when they called the foul that sent Coder to the line.
Sophomore Tommy Burleson scored 24 points before fouling out. Guard Joe Cafferky scored 20 and Coder added 19, with the five most important being in the final minute.
“I just don’t know what to say,” Burleson said. “This has to be our greatest win.”
Burleson was young and wrong. It was the first in a string of nine consecutive wins over the Tar Heels, as the Pack won 57 of its next 58 games, a record 36 consecutive ACC contests, two ACC titles and the school’s first national championship.
The Four Corners game
No. 4 North Carolina 91, No. 15 NC
State 79
Feb. 24, 1976
If you ever wanted to know why opposing fans hated North Carolina’s Four Corners offense, this game is the perfect example. In front of a sell-out crowd, Norm Sloan’s Wolfpack came back from a 41-32 first half deficit and was within six points when head coach Dean Smith held up four fingers.
And sophomore Phil Ford followed along.
Ford hit 16 consecutive free throws, including 10 in the final 10 minutes, as part of a team-high 26 points. In the same timeframe, State missed five rushed shots and lost any chance at a comeback. Walter Davis added 20 points, in a game in which official Tommy Hernjak and Lou Moser called 56 fouls, 33 on State and 23 on Carolina. The Tar Heels left Reynolds with a 37 of 46 to 11 of 17 advantage on the free throw line.
“We had to go four-corners to protect ourselves and we played it as well as possible,” Smith said, referring to the four fouls that were saddled on both Mitch Kupchak and Tommy LaGarde.
Burly Pack sophomore Kenny Carr led all scorers with 33 points on 15 of 23 shooting, and received an unsolicited endorsement from his head coach.
“Kenny Carr IS the player of the year in this conference, but you guys won’t vote for him,” Norm Sloan told the media. “He’s led this team of underclassmen into the Top 20 all year. But you guys won’t vote for him. Why? Because of tradition. You always vote for someone with the preseason build-up.”
Sometimes, Norm was his own worst enemy.
Midway through the first half, he was slapped with two technical fouls (an automatic ejection in today’s game) for arguing about a foul called on one of his players against Ford.
The victory clinched the regular-season title for the No. 4 Tar Heels, earning them the No. 1 seed and first-round bye in the ACC Tournament, which was played the following week for the first time outside of North Carolina in Landover, Maryland.
The Time Phil Ford Didn’t Play
NC State 72, No. 8 North Carolina 67
Feb. 12, 1978
For the first and only time in his college career, North Carolina point guard Phil Ford watched from the sidelines.
The senior guard, the team’s leading scorer, had injured his left wrist in a previous game against Virginia. Also out of the lineup were second-leading scorer Mike O’Koren, starting center Rich Yonakor and reserve Geoff Crompton.
The many absences from UNC-CH’s “Band-Aid Brigade” probably had something to do with the fact that the Tar Heels were playing Duke two days later to decide who earned the first-round bye in the ACC Tournament.
Sloan, wearing a bright red blazer instead of his trademarked plaid, said Ford’s absence put pressure on his team, with substitute Dave Colescott taking over the point guard position.
“I was very disappointed Ford didn’t play,” Sloan said. “It put the pressure on us. Had we lost it would have been devastating. We felt unbelievable pressure throughout the game. I’m so relieved. It was a shock to me that Ford didn’t play.”
It was one of the many outlandish things Sloan said that day. Before tipoff, he grabbed the public address microphone from C.A. Dillon and implored the sell-out crowd to behave. He even asked them to stop waving their arms during second-half free throws. And he had one of his own supporters ejected from the game for throwing a cup on the floor.
“Please don’t get personal towards anyone, especially the visitors,” Sloan said. “Refrain from using profanity and vulgarity. And, when the opponent is shooting free throws, please be dead quiet and motionless.”
It didn’t take.
State went on a 16-4 run to end the first half and take a 32-30 lead. Carolina took a 67-66 lead with 46 seconds left in the game, but Clyde Austin raced down the floor for a go-ahead layup. He then fouled Tar Heel senior guard Tom Zaliagiris, Sloan called time out, and Zaliagiris faced a waving end zone of Reynolds fans.
He missed the shot and Glenn Sudhop grabbed the rebound.
Carolina had to foul State twice to put the Pack in the one-and-on, with Dudley Bradley hacking freshman Kenny Matthews with eight seconds to play to put the young player on the line. Matthews hit both and Tiny Pinder added two more with two seconds to play.
The loss prevented the Tar Heels from winning the regular-season outright, dropping them into a tie with Duke. The two teams played each other two days later in Chapel Hill on Ford’s Senior Night for the right to have the first-round bye in the tournament. Carolina won that season finale, but Duke won the ACC Tournament in Greensboro and advanced through the NCAA Tournament, before losing to Kentucky in the title game.
State finished third in the ACC standings, but lost to Maryland 109-108, in triple overtime in the first round of the ACC Tournament. It played in the National Invitation Tournament and advanced to the championship game, where it lost to No. 17 Texas, 101-93, at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Between the Legs Salute
NC State 63, No. 8 North Carolina 50
Feb. 23, 1980
Seniors Clyde Austin and Charles “Hawkeye” Whitney cooked up their own Senior Day celebration. Throughout practice before the game, they practiced a between-the-legs razzle-dazzle pass they hoped to use to roil up the home crowd.
Sure enough, seven minutes into the game, Austin got a halfcourt lead pass, took a stride towards the baseline and whipped the ball in between to a streaking Whitney for a dunk.
It set the tone for the entire game, and inspired Whitney to play through a painful ankle injury he suffered a few minutes later.
“Yeah, I wanted to go out on a high note,” said Whitney, who made 11 of 12 shots that day for a game-high 26 points. “The ankle was a little sore in the second half, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could have kept me out of this game. It was mine and Clyde’s last game. It had to be a good one.”
It was a move Sidney Lowe mimicked three years later against the Tar Heels, when he helped Jim Valvano seal his first ever win in the rivalry. On a fast break in the final moments, Lowe bounced the ball backwards to a trailing Thurl Bailey, who jammed home a dunk and sent NC State’s campus into a frenzy of celebration.
Austin was sick with a respiratory infection throughout the 1980 game, but, like Whitney, couldn’t be held back.
“We wanted to beat Carolina, but we wanted to show our fans some appreciation too,” Austin said. “I guess we did both.”
State’s defense held Carolina to a season-low 50 points, while its offense hit an amazing 25 of 34 field goals (73.5 percent).
Just like with Case, beating the Tar Heels was the next-to-last win of Sloan’s career at his alma mater. After a season-finale win at Wake Forest, the Pack lost to Duke in the opening round of the ACC Tournament and to Iowa in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.
And, in a surprise to everyone, Sloan resigned his position just before the ACC Tournament to return to Florida as head coach.
Two Great Heists in One Day
It was Senior Day for Ernie Myers, the last holdover from the 1983 NCAA Championship team, Raleigh-born Nate McMillan and one-year wonder Panagiotis Fasoulas and, like the previous ones, there was no organized celebration for the trio of seniors.
It was even better, though. The Wolfpack entered the game on a three-game ACC losing streak, but scored the first basket and never once trailed against the top-ranked Tar Heels. The campus had been energized all week long by one of the great pranks in rivalry history, and Valvano’s team matched the student’s excitement.
While the Tar Heels did play without guard Steve Hale and Warren Martin, they were mostly flat the whole game after missing 11 of their first 12 shots.
The victory was Valvano’s third over UNC-CH in four seasons at Reynolds Coliseum.
Celebrations
Galore
NC State 98, North Carolina 76
Feb. 24, 2002
In this game, there were almost too many celebrations.
Seniors Anthony Grundy and Archie Miller were recognized with their families before the game, in front of a delirious sell-out crowd at the Entertainment and Sports Arena.
NFL wide receiver Torry Holt showed up to give $100,000 to the Wolfpack Club.
And Norm Sloan made one of his last official appearances with his 1973-74 national championship team to be recognized at halftime.
The Tar Heels entered the game with a 7-18 record, but jumped out to a 10-point lead at the half, dousing the crowd’s earlier spark.
State scored the first seven points of the second half and Grundy took flight, finishing the game with 28 points, two off his career-high.
Miller, playing the last home game of his five-year career, drilled four 3-pointers and finished with 18 points. Sophomore Marcus Melvin had a double-double.
In all, State scored 60 points in the second half, outscoring the Tar Heels by 32. They made 58.6 percent from the field and hit 30 of 37 free throws, for its biggest margin of victory over the school’s biggest rival since 1962.
The win was the Pack’s 20th of the season and ninth in conference play, and all but assured Herb Sendek’s team would end the program’s 10-year NCAA Tournament drought.
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