From Reserve to MVP: Larry Worsley Had the Run of a Lifetime in the 1965 ACC Tournament

NOTE: This story was originally printed in Stu Coman's "The Wolfpacker" for the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Atlantic Coast Conference Championship won by Everett Case-successor Press Maravich and his team. If you enjoy reading "One Brick Back" and would like to help offset research expenses for stories such as this one, please make a small donation to the cause and help keep posts like this free of ads.

© Coman Publishing, 2015

BY TIM PEELER

RALEIGH, N.C.—Throughout the 1964-65 regular season, junior guard Larry Worsley made lives miserable for the starters on NC State’s basketball team. As a reserve player, he faced his teammates in practice, often causing them to be on the receiving end of a good chewing out from head coach Press Maravich.

Then, during a magnificent weekend in March at NC State’s Reynolds Coliseum, Worsley did the same thing to Virginia, Maryland and No. 8 Duke, as the second-string forward came off the bench three times to help the Wolfpack win the 1965 ACC tournament championship.

The slow-talking, slow-moving wingman with the behind-the-head shooting motion became the first reserve to ever win the league’s Most Valuable Player Award, a distinction he held for nearly four decades until Duke sophomore Daniel Ewing came along and duplicated that feat against NC State in 2003.

What made that award even more special was that it had just been renamed the Everett Case Award, in honor of the Wolfpack’s Hall of Fame coach who brought big-time basketball to the South and ignited passion for the game in the state of North Carolina that has yet to be extinguish.

Case, who had planned to retire at the end of the season, had recruited and coached every player on the roster. But two games into the season, following a loss to Wake Forest, Case stepped down earlier than anticipated because of health problems, turning the team over to Maravich, his handpicked successor who had once been the head coach at Clemson.

Worsley's 1965 ACC MVP trophy.

Maravich’s style was a little different than Case’s. He liked a pressing defense and a fastbreaking offense. The team without a star—built around frontcourt players Pete Coker and Larry Lakins and guards Billy Moffitt, Tommy Mattocks and Eddie Biedenbach—reeled off 11 straight wins after Maravich took over and won four of its final five regular-season contests.

The Wolfpack finished second to Duke, coached by NC State graduate and Case protégé Vic Bubas, in the final ACC standings. The Blue Devils handed Maravich two of his three losses as head coach, winning by double figures both times. The other setback following Case’s resignation was a one-point loss to North Carolina in Raleigh.

Worsley, a deadly shooter, was comfortable in his role as the team’s sixth man. He knew he was not as effective in a fullcourt game, and he sometimes was hindered by a lack of confidence.

But, boy, could he shoot.

“Coach said many times that he would rather see me shoot from 20 or 25 feet away than from four or five feet away,” Worsley said.

Biedenbach added: “Larry was a great outside shooter and our big men were able to feed him the ball. He could be a deadly shooter. Our guards were good at getting the big men the ball, and they were good at recognizing when Larry was open for the outside shot.”

In the opening game of the tournament, the second-seeded Wolfpack rolled to a 106-69 blowout of the Cavaliers, much to the delight of the home crowd, which always gave the Wolfpack a postseason edge. (The first 14 ACC tournaments were played at Reynolds.) Worsley’s 16 points off the bench was just one of four double-digit totals by Wolfpack players.

The next day, Worsley helped the team overcome a second-half lead by the Terrapins and his 15 points were an important part of the 76-67 victory.

What Worsley did in the finals against the highly ranked Blue Devils, however, was the dream of every reserve who ever dribbled a basketball.

Duke, which won 17 of 18 games at one point in the season, was the overwhelming favorite to win the tournament. The Blue Devils the ACC scoring champion in All-American Jack Marin and were the nation’s highest scoring team. On a neutral court, the title game would have been no contest.

Early in the game, the Wolfpack was in deep trouble: Moffitt picked up three fouls in the first five minutes.

Larry Worsley at Amedo's in 2015

Maravich sent in Worsley, who was emboldened on his homecourt. He became completely unstoppable, even by Duke’s gadget defenses. With Lakins and Coker getting him open shots, Worsley made 14 of his 19 field goal attempts, scored a career-high 30 points and pulled down eight rebounds. Duke’s Hack Tyson, a 6-10 forward, was unable to slow his 6-5 assignment down, even in a box-in-one defense.

“To be honest, the home crowd is what helped me,” Worsley said. “If that game had been in Charlotte or Greensboro, I never would have been able to do what I did. I think that game had a lot to do with the ACC’s decision to start moving it around to other places.”

 But it was more than just an individual effort in a friendly venue.

 “To me, that showed what an unselfish and smart basketball team we were,” Biedenbach said. “Our guys had seen what Larry was capable of in practice, but I don’t think Duke knew much about him.

 “He got the open shots and made them.”

 Worsley had never scored more than 18 points in a game.

“Going into the tail end of the season, I just had all the confidence in the world,” said Worsley, who averaged 7.4 points and 4.0 rebounds as a junior.

 The Wolfpack team celebrated its unlikely championship with Case, the man who turned college basketball in North Carolina into a showcase event. He sat on the sidelines in his wheelchair for the title game, his first public appearance since retiring in December.

NC State's players carry Everett Case to cut down the nets.

Shortly after buzzer sounded on the 91-85 victory, sports information director Frank Weedon prompted the players to go lift Case out of the wheelchair and let him help cut down the nets, an Indiana high school tradition that Case introduced to college basketball when he arrived at NC State in 1947.

Then, the frail and ailing coach presented Worsley with the newly renamed most valuable player award.

“I was the only one he ever presented it to,” Worsley said proudly. “He wasn’t able to attend the tournament the next year, when Steve Vascendak won it and he died shortly after that.

“That’s something that will always be very special to me.”

The Wolfpack traveled to College Park, Maryland, for the NCAA tournament, but lost its opening game to Princeton. It won a consolation game against St. Joseph’s to finish 21-5 overall.

Worsley returned for his senior year the following season, but was never able to replicate his ACC tournament heroics.

“I started the first 13-14 games, but then I lost my confidence,” Worsley said. “We went out and played Tennessee and we had a terrible game (a 65-54 loss). I got benched after that.

“I had lost my confidence and never did gain it back.”

The Pack finished second to Duke again in the ACC standings and lost to the Blue Devils in the tournament finals, in Maravich’s last game as NC State’s coach.

Shortly after that season ended, Case passed away at his home in Raleigh’s Cameron Village from the effects of terminal cancer.

Worsley, 72, graduated with a degree in agricultural economics and returned to his hometown in the northeast corner of the state. He worked as a chemical sales representative serving the eastern half of North Carolina for nearly 50 years, retired and recently went back to work in a similar job.

“I didn’t like just sitting around,” he said.

He still lives in Oak City today. [Worsley died at his home on Oct. 5, 2022.]

Worlsey and his teammates gathered back in February to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of their unlikely championship, a reunion organized by Biedenbach. Some of them hadn’t been back to campus since the day they graduated.

They toured the modern campus, took one last look inside the old configuration of Reynolds Coliseum before renovations began and were recognized at halftime of the NC State-Syracuse basketball game at PNC Arena.

Worsley brought his MVP award, which normally hangs on the wall in his house, with him to share with his teammates one more time.

The 1965 ACC Champions. Worsley in the last player on the right of the second row.

Clemson Football in a Hurricane—Against Guess Who?

 

Clemson's cheerleaders frolicking on the sidelines of the 1959 NC State-Clemson game. (1960 Clemson Taps yearbook.)

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© Tim Peeler, 2022

Pity the poor bands.

There were three dozen high school marching squads from the Carolinas and Georgia on that rain-soaked day more than 60 years ago, all arriving at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium with woodwinds re-reeded, brass polished, shoes shined and batons ready to be set afire for both a pregame parade and the annual “Band Day” halftime show.

They were sidelined, however, by the first major hurricane-affected game in Clemson football history, according to National Weather Service records. The opponent on Oct. 10, 1959? The Wolfpack from North Carolina State University, the same team the Tigers will host Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in the soggy aftermath of Hurricane Ian.

A combination of two tropical storms dampened the planned activities that previous afternoon, as massive rain fell in the week, the days immediately before and the morning of the 2 p.m. contest. Hurricane Gracie made landfall on Sept. 30 near Edisto Island, South Carolina, followed by Tropical Storm Irene, an extratropical event that lingered in the Upstate before dumping more than six inches of rain on central North Carolina on game day, causing flash floods and water damage in both states.

The hour before kickoff, Clemson’s field crew grabbed several water pumps from the school’s maintenance shed and pumped away more than a foot of water that had collected on the sidelines of the crowned field, clearing the way for both teams to have wooden benches on the sidelines.

It would have been a nightmare for all the modern electronics—a laptop, perhaps?—plugged into today’s sidelines.

Sadly, all Band Day activities were called off. Some schools chose to load up their buses and go home. Others sat in the puddle-pocked grandstands, slickers flapping in the wind.

“What had been billed as Band Day had to be canceled because of the downpour, which had a foot of water standing between the stadium and field sidelines before game time,” wrote The Greenville (S.C.) News. “Instead, it the wet October afternoon was turned into a fall fashion show of wet-weather wear, which included bare-footed spectators.”

(The newspaper account did not say if the lack of shoes was intentional or a normal occurrence at the Pickens County venue.)

The only music that day was provided by Clemson’s band, who remained in the grandstands at halftime to play “Hold That Tiger” and, in tribute to the Wolfpack, “Grand Old Flag,” among other marching standards. The 150-member State College Marching Band, billed as the largest college band in North Carolina, did not attend.

Halftime entertainment was relegated to The Country Gentleman and the Tiger mascot flirting with NC State’s rain-soaked cheerleaders.

The Country Gentleman is Clemson’s now-politically incorrect mascot from the 1930s through the 1970s, portrayed by a student and instructed to represent the school’s motto “A Clemson Man Needs No Introduction.” Usually, the character was decked out in plantation-style formal wear, with a wool top hat, a purple or black velvet jacket with tails (the tuxedo kind, not the tiger kind), a string tie and a cane. For this game, in deference to the lingering storm, the Gentleman wore Bermuda shorts. Eventually, the Gentleman was shuffled away in 1972, the same year the school decided to stop playing “Dixie” at home football games.

 

 

As for the game, it was as miserable for the Wolfpack as the weather. Flashy sophomore quarterback Roman Gabriel, starting his third career game, was anchored in the turf. The Wolfpack running game was tied to a pier, gaining only 29 yards the entire game. The offense never penetrated deeper than the Clemson 40-yard line.

Late in the first quarter, State’s defense stopped Clemson's offense on downs at the goal-line, giving head coach Earle Edwards and his 33-player traveling squad a little momentum.

Early in the second quarter, though, Clemson quarterback Lowndes Shingler threw a 26-yard touchdown pass to Gary Barnes. Lon Armstrong kicked a 28-yard second-half field goal. Clemson fullback and defender Ron Scrudato intercepted second-team quarterback Gerry Mancini’s pass and ran it back 60 yards for a touchdown. And, following a pass interference penalty on NC State, Tiger halfback Bill Mathis scored from 4 yards out for the final score, as the defending ACC-champion Tigers took the 23-0 victory.

Clemson running back splashing through NC State's defense.

Wrote Herman Helms of the Charlotte Observer: “Lowndes Shingler, who has often been accused of being the best second-string quarterback in college football, stood on a turf as slick as a tin roof, gripped a ball as slippery as a piece of soap and fired a 26-yard pass to sophomore end Gary Barnes for Clemson’s first touchdown midway through the second quarter. Sophomore quarterback Roman Gabriel…was given the beating of his life by a raging Clemson line, which frequently crushed him for huge losses when he faded to throw.”

 

Clemson coach Frank Howard, "The Bashful Baron from Barlow Bend," was mightily impressed—more so with the people in the stands than either of the two teams on the field.

“That’s what I call loyal fans,” Howard said of the 19,000 individuals who waded into the stadium, about 6,000 fewer than expected. “I had no idea we’d have one-tenth that number out in this weather.

“The field wasn’t so bad. But I don’t like the way we are playing right now. We’re too spasmodic. We’re not consistent enough. We should’ve scored a couple of times when we didn’t.”

State lost three fumbles in the game, Clemson two.

“Rotten game—just rotten,” Edwards said afterwards. “Worst game we’ve played in I don’t know how long. It was just a rotten performance, but we’ve got no excuses. We had time to get ready for them and we thought we were ready.

“With Roman, we thought we could throw on them, but our receivers just didn’t hang on to the ball. It was a wet field, but they kept wiping the ball off. And, anyhow, Clemson was able to catch passes.”

Water-logged, the Wolfpack went back to Raleigh and finished the season with a 1-9 record.

Another Clemson Rain Game

Technically, according to NWS meteorologists, the game played between No. 6 Notre Dame and No. 12 Clemson on Oct. 3, 2015, was not affected by Hurricane Joaquin, despite the drenching rain that fell on both teams and more than 70,000 fans at Memorial Stadium.

Those fans had been told to stay home by South Carolina Governor and Clemson graduate Nikki Haley.

Joaquin made a quick shift eastward the day before the game and never made landfall in the U.S., though it did wreak havoc in South Carolina’s Lowcountry and with that weekend’s college football schedule. NC State lost to Louisville, 20-15, that day at Carter-Finley Stadium in one of its many hurricane-affected games. South Carolina moved its game against LSU from Columbia, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in preparation for the storm.

However, an extratropical cyclone formed in the aftermath of Joaquin, hovered over the center of South Carolina, caused 500-year flooding in the Upstate and was responsible for 19 deaths in South Carolina, including four Notre Dame fans from Indiana who were on their way to the game when their single-engine plane crashed on the banks Lake Hartwell, about five miles from Clemson’s stadium.

Partially because ESPN’s GameDay was already set up to broadcast from Clemson that day, the game between the highly ranked teams was not relocated.

In a dousing rain, the Tigers upset the Fighting Irish, 24-22, as quarterback Deshaun Watson threw two touchdown passes and ran for another. The Tiger defense stopped a two-point conversion attempt by Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer with seven seconds remaining to take a 24-22 victory at Memorial Stadium.

Waterlogged fans, in orange ponchos and raincoats, stormed the field afterwards, celebrating the first victory over a Top 10 opponent since 2013.

A year later, Notre Dame played NC State at Carter-Finley Stadium in a game that was most definitely played in the middle of a hurricane.

 

No Introduction

 Who wore it better?