This was originally published in The Wolfpacker magazine for the 25th anniversary of the 1997 ACC Tournament run, which ended with a North Carolina victory over NC State. It was a remarkable four days in Greensboro, especially for hometown hero and Wolfpack point guard Justin Gainey. 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.
BY TIM PEELER
(C) Coman Publishing, 2021
If needed, Justin Gainey is more than willing to play another 40 minutes.
Sure, at the age of 44, the first-year assistant coach at Tennessee might get a little more winded than he did 25 years ago, but he’s certainly happy to give it a try.
Maybe you don’t remember the remarkable record Gainey set at the end of his freshman season under first-year head coach Herb Sendek, when the Wolfpack advanced to the 1997 ACC Championship game at the Greensboro Coliseum, not too far from Gainey’s hometown of High Point or his high school alma mater, the Greensboro Day School.
Yet it’s something that no one else has matched, much less exceeded, since that March weekend a quarter century ago: over the course of four days, Gainey played in all 160 minutes of NC State’s four tournament games, barely taking time to catch his breath during college basketball’s most exciting conference tournament.
Two of Gainey’s teammates, C.C. Harrison (157) and Jeremy Hyatt (150) were close that same season, as were Duke’s Luke Kennard (154 in 2017) and NC State’s Brandon Costner (151 in 2007), but Gainey is the only one to ever play every minute of every game through four rounds.
Late North Carolina coach Dean Smith, whose team ultimately beat the Wolfpack in the title game, said he admired Gainey’s courage for doing it.
Sendek, with the multiple stops in his coaching journey in his rear view mirror, said Gainey’s play that weekend was “astonishing.”
“His performance in the ACC tournament was quite remarkable,” says Sendek, now the head coach at Santa Clara. “He played in every minute of every game. Hell, I don’t know if he even had a turnover.”
To set the record straight, the routinely steady Gainey did have seven miscues in four games there in his backyard coliseum, but none in the championship game, even while being guarded at times by mammoth 7-2 Tar Heel center Serge Zwikker.
But what a way to kick off a postseason college career.
“Just playing in the ACC tournament, which I had grown up watching when it was in Greensboro, was something that I had always dreamt of,” Gainey says now. “In the moment, to be able to play and not come out for a single moment, in my hometown, I was in Heaven.
“Coach tried to ask me if I was tired, and I always said, ‘No, I don’t want to come out.’”
It had taken Gainey a while to establish his footing the in the Wolfpack’s lineup. Gainey was a solid high school player, helping Greensboro Day win back-to-back independent league state titles in his final two years. He was not, however, expected to be an immediately contributor among the five newcomers on Sendek’s first team.
After winning its first six games, the Pack lost 12 of its next 16 games and were struggling near the bottom of the ACC standings. At one point, State lost nine out of 10 games, with the only win being against No. 7 Clemson, then coached by Barnes, who is now Gainey’s new boss at Tennessee and Sendek’s one-time boss at Providence.
Heading into the second half of the ACC season, both C.C. Harrison and Damon Thornton suffered injuries that forced Sendek to often employ a five-guard starting lineup, with Gainey at the point. He made 13 starts on the year and became so entrenched in the lineup, he averaged 39.8 minutes in the Pack’s final nine games.
State beat No. 2 ranked Wake Forest in Winston-Salem and won its final three regular-season games. By the time the ACC tournament rolled around, the team was clicking and Gainey was contributing.
“For me, I had struggled with some injuries early in the season and I was just happy to be getting a chance to be on the court,” says Gainey, who was named first-team All-ACC Tournament. “There were some moments during the tournament that I was fatigued and tired, but I did my best not to show it. That’s the way the whole season was for me: up and down and up and down and once I started playing I wasn’t about to come out.
“It was so much fun.”
He’d just like to hold on to the iron-man record for as long as possible.
“I used to keep an eye on the tournament to see if someone might break that record,” he says. “I don’t know if they will. The game has changed. It’s faster paced and there are more possessions.
“I might be able to hold on to it for a long time.”
The ’97 tournament was a revelation for Sendek, young and eager to establish himself as a coach and to re-establish the Wolfpack’s relevance in the ACC. With Gainey in the lineup over the next three years, along with the return of Thornton and the arrival of Sendek’s first wave of recruits, like Kenny Inge and others, they accomplished that, advancing to the National Invitation Tournament all four years. In Gainey’s final season, the Wolfpack advanced to the NIT semifinals at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Gainey served as team captain his senior season and finished his career ranked second in games started (103), fourth in steals (190), tied for fifth in games played (128) and ninth in assists (344).
He spent some time overseas, but returned to Raleigh to look for a new direction in life. He had never really considered becoming a coach, but a two-year administrative internship in the NC State athletics department led to a low-level position on head coach Sidney Lowe’s staff and a pathway to other jobs.
“I can remember one night coming back from Georgia Tech and [assistant basketball coach John] Groce telling me I should think about being a coach,” Gainey says. “I told him, ‘Coach, I don’t know if I could handle people like me.’
“It was never anything I thought I would do.”
Since leaving NC State, however, Gainey has spent the last two decades at Elon, Appalachian State, Arizona, Marquette (twice) and Santa Clara, developing his on-court coaching skills and his off-court relationship-building.
“When I was a player, I didn’t really know what coaching was,” Gainey says. “It’s so much more than what I ever saw. You are, in a sense, an educator. You have to develop relationships. You have to learn to tell someone you care about the truth, and sometimes that’s hard to do so that it gets through to them without being demeaning.
“That’s what’s great about this job.”
Both Barnes and Sendek believe Gainey is ready to branch out on his own and lead his own program sometime soon.
“He is the complete and total package as a coach,” Sendek says. “Everything he has done in his life has been enriched with his character and the person he is. He is the consummate gentleman and family man. Whatever Justin touches is going to be better for it.
“He’ll be an integral part of Tennessee’s success in the near future and, when given the opportunity, he will be a tremendous head coach.”
And maybe one day, if given the opportunity, Gainey will let someone he trusts play in 159 minutes of the ACC Tournament.
North Carolina 64, NC State 54
March 9, 1997
Greensboro Coliseum
BY TIM PEELER
Durham Herald-Sun, © 1997
GREENSBORO—This time Goliath was a little too tall.
So tall, in fact, that even Dean Smith helped raise the roof.
Sure, giant-sized North Carolina was shaken a couple of times Sunday afternoon against NC State in the ACC title game, but the Tar Heels did not allow the Wolfpack to finish off the most remarkable run in the 44-year history of the tournament.
Instead, the Tar Heels (24-6) cut down the nets on the school’s 14th title, the 13th of Dean Smith era. The coach has now won at least three titles in each of the four decades he’s guided the UNC program.
To make the tale a little sweeter, the Tar Heels won the title behind the shooting of Shammond Williams, a junior guard who wasn’t even offered a college scholarship.
That was destiny’s story Sunday afternoon, as the No. 5 Tar Heels won the title 64-54 over the most improbable finalist in ACC history.
“A lot of things have turned around for us,” said Williams, winner of the Everett Case Award as the tournament’s MVP.
The Tar Heels, who have won 12 in a row, will indeed have their sights on larger goal, like taking their winning streak into the NCAA tournament and getting Smith his record-breaking 877th career victory, which could come next weekend in Winston-Salem.
UNC could tie the record Thursday against Fairfield at Joel Coliseum, then break it Saturday against the winner of the Indiana-Colorado game. How about a faceoff between Smith and old friend Bobby Knight—the one active coach who seems to have the best chance at catching Smith—to break Adolph Rupp’s record?
Sunday, Smith wasn’t sure he would get win No. 875.
NC State had beaten Georgia Tech, Duke and Maryland in the last three days, ad every time the Wolfpack seemed to be out of the game Sunday, it kept coming back.
Smith opened the game with one of the most unique defensive strategies of the season, putting 7-foot-2 Serger Zwikker on NC State freshman point guard Justin Gainey, who stands all of 6-foot-0, 174 pounds.
Smith knew Gainey would be reluctant to shoot, and he wanted his other, more athletic player, to guard State’s penetrating perimeter players. By doing so, UNC prevented the Wolfpack from driving to the basket, which is how they were able to pull off their other upsets over the last three weeks of the season when they won six in a row.
State’s only recourse was to take a lot of 3-point shots, with mixed results. Outside shooting kept the Wolfpack in the game for a while, but every time it had a chance to tie the score or take the lead, State either turned the ball over or missed a shot outside the arc.
“They simply made the decision that if we were going to win the game, we would have to make outside shots,” NC State coach Herb Sendek said.
With the fatigue of playing four games in four days perhaps showing a little, NC State was 10-for-32 from 3-point range. Or maybe the Pack made the same mistake everybody else has made in recent games against the Tar Heels, whose last four opponents have average 32 3-point attempts, by shooting too many long-range shots.
“They must have been really tired at the end when they missed all those 3-pointers,” Smith said. “It could have been a different story.”
Destiny, of course, doesn’t write blowouts. The Wolfpack had plenty of opportunities in the second half, even if the Tar Heels did make two-thirds of their shots after halftime. That’s because the Heels gave the ball away 12 times on turnovers, including one stretch where they turned the ball over on five straight possessions.
“We had 39 percent of loss of ball in the second half,” Smith said. “We better hit 10-0 percent if we are throwing it away that much.”
That got NC State back in the game. The Wolfpack, however, couldn’t hit the one big shot to go over the top.
Once in the second half, State cut the Tar Heel lead to two points and had the ball after Gainey stole it from UNC’s freshman point guard Ed Cota. Jeremy Hyatt charged into Ademola Okulaja for an offensive foul and turnover.
Williams, in a lightning display of a shooter’s touch, hit three consecutive 3-pointers top push the Tar Heel lead back up to 11 points with 12:14 remaining.
“That was big, real big” Gainey said. “I think it might have been what broke our backs. A little bit.”
However, Williams flashed the tired signal to the bench, and he came out after making his third shot.
Smith almost asked Williams the same question he asked Scott May in the 1976 Olympics: “Are you sure?’
The coach particularly thought when the Tar Heels committed the five turnovers in the next five minutes, allowing the Wolfpack to draw within one possession of the lead. Smith’s mind flashed back to Friday night’s quarterfinal game against Virginia, when hot-shooting Courtney Alexander came out of the game and the Tar Heels went on a decisive 11-0 run.
Three times Sendek’s team saw potential game-tying shots bounce off the rim, two by Hyatt and one by Danny Strong.
“We knew every guy that was shooting the ball can shoot,” Wolfpack guard C.C. Harrison said. “Coming into the tournament, that’s why we were winning. Guys were shooting the ball real well. Today just wasn’t our day.”
The Wolfpack, the first team to play four games in four days in the ACC tournament, said fatigue was not a factor in their shooting, though the statistics hinted otherwise. The Pack shot 32.8 percent from the field and went 10-for-32 from the 3-point line.
North Carolina finally finished off the game by getting the ball back to its big men, as Zwikker and Antawn Jamison showed size still dominates college basketball. Jamison, who scored 17, had a three-point play and a layup off a Cota pass to give the Tar Heels a seven-point lead with five minutes to play.
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