A Perfect Title Run

 

 

Celebrating NC State's 10th ACC title on the floor of the Capital Centre.

 

NOTE: This was originally posted on March 7, 2007, near the 20th anniversary of NC State's most recent ACC men's basketball championship on www.gopack.com. Reprinting here to get rid of garbled text, with a few updates and corrections. 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) NC State University, 2007

RALEIGH -- It was the perfect path, with a near-perfect performance.

Jim Valvano took his 1987 team into the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament after one of the rockier regular-seasons he ever had. It was nothing compared to the near-fiasco of 1985, when he had to suspend Chris Washburn for most of the year and endured a lot of heat in the process, or his final year of 1989-90, after which he was forced to resign, but it was pretty close.

The season was pock-marked with potholes, including preseason injuries to Charles Shackleford, Walker Lambiotte and Vinny Del Negro, a loss to Division II Tampa in a game in which Valvano had to stay home because of a viral infection, the departure of the team's starting point guard, Kenny Drummond, and a loss to Virginia because Valvano and his staff didn't get the team out of its huddle in time after a late-game timeout. There was also the longest losing streak of Valvano's career, six in a row.

The outcome of the Virginia game was something else.

What else could have gone wrong?

Even the coach--you know, the guy who said "Never give up; don't ever give up"--was a little down on this particular edition of the Wolfpack.

"Our kids are trying very hard, but we're not winning because, to be honest, we're just not good enough," the coach said of his team at one point late in the season. "It's just a down year, a bad year."

Except for the beginning and, most importantly, the end. The Wolfpack opened the season with a remarkable win over Navy and center David Robinson in the Tip-Off Classic in Springfield, Mass., a game in which little-used junior guard Vinny Del Negro came of the bench to win the game's Most Valuable Player Award in the town where he grew up, a Valvano-esque ending if there ever was one.

Del Negro played an integral role in how that season ended as well. He was inserted into the starting lineup after Drummond left, his first consistent action after spending nearly two and a half years on the bench, mostly as a frustrated practice player.

Valvano made some further adjustments to the lineup, also inserting junior Quentin Jackson into the starting lineup at point guard, along with Del Negro in the backcourt, and a frontcourt trio of Lambiotte, Shackleford and Bennie Bolton. He brought senior Mike Giomi, in his only season at State after transferring from Indiana, and freshman Chucky Brown off the bench. That lineup led the Wolfpack to three consecutive wins to end the regular season.

"He tried Vinn Del Negro first at the point after Kenny left, then Kelsey Weems and then he gave me my opportunity," said Jackson, a one-time director of basketball operations for men's basketball under head coach Sidney Lowe. "For me, it was an easy transition. I had all this talent around me. We just needed somebody who could get everybody in the right position.

"I had nothing to lose. What was coach going to do, start someone else? He had already tried everyone else."

The Wolfpack entered the ACC Tournament at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, with a 17-14 overall record and a 6-8 mark in the ACC. It was seeded sixth in the eight-team event.

But, as happened in 1983 under Valvano, there was a little tournament magic going on. The Wolfpack upset No. 17 Duke in overtime in the first post-season meeting between Valvano and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, thanks primarily to Del Negro's eight overtime points.

It the survived a double-overtime thriller against Wake Forest and diminutive guard Muggsy Bogues, in part because Valvano made a late change in his starting lineup, replacing Lambiotte with Brown, who scored 13 points and grabbed nine rebounds. Del Negro continued his inspired play, scoring 15 points and grabbing a career-high 12 rebounds.

The Wolfpack's reward for surviving the overtime contests was a championship game meeting with North Carolina, which had won 16 straight games against ACC opponents, sweeping 14 straight in the regular season and beating Maryland and Virginia in the tournament. Like the Wolfpack, however, the Tar Heels were pushed to double-overtime in the semifinals, before finally vanquishing the Cavaliers, 84-82.

Sunday, both teams were a little winded, but the title game didn't disappoint anyone who was eager to see the old rivals play. Valvano had his team control the tempo on a Tar Heel squad that had averaged 91.3 points per game that year, and with a minute left to play, the Heels were holding on to a slim 67-66 advantage. The Wolfpack had made all of its free throws in the game and shot better than 56 percent from the field in order to stay with the heavily favored Heels.

With 14 seconds to play, Del Negro was fouled and sent to the free-throw line. The 89 percent free throw shooter calmly hit both shots, giving the Pack a 68-67 lead. But the Tar Heels had one final chance to win the game.

Jackson remembers going to the bench after those free throws and telling Valvano to take him out of the game.

"Look, the only way they can beat us is if Kenny Smith touches the ball," Jackson told the coach. "I can't guard him. Take me out and put Kelsey Weems in and go to our box-in-one."

Valvano, the ACC king of junk defenses, did just that. Weems prevented Smith, the All-America point guard, from touching the ball in the final possession. The Tar Heels did get off two shots to win the game, but both Joe Wolf and Ranzino Smith missed jumpshots, and the Wolfpack won its 10th ACC tournament title.

Tournament MVP Vinny Del Negro

Del Negro, an unlikely winner of the Everett Case Award as the tournament's most valuable player, gave Valvano all the credit for keeping the team calm in the final minute against a team that was loaded with talent.

"In the timeout before the free throws, his mentality wasn't 'Let's see if Vinny makes these free throws,'" Del Negro said. "It wasn't 'If he makes them' or 'What are we going to do when he misses.' It was always 'After Vinny makes these free throws, Kelsey, I want you to deny the ball, keep your man in front of you.'

"He was just so good at instilling confidence in a young player in a tense situation. It was a huge moment because we needed to win the tournament just to get into the NCAA Tournament. And beating North Carolina is always a huge thing, especially in a game of that magnitude. For me, it was the great culmination of a frustrating first couple of years at NC State. It was a great feeling."

Jackson wasn't surprised to see Del Negro play well in the tournament. The two had been performing with each other ever since arriving in the fall of 1984 with junior college transfer Nate McMillan, high school All-America Chris Washburn and John Thompson, in one of the nation's top recruiting classes that season.

"When we came here, we all came in knowing we could play at this level, but we also respected the guys who were before us: Ernie Myers, Terry Gannon and Spud Webb," Jackson said. "So I wasn't surprised Vinny did well, because I watched him every day in practice for three years.

"He just finally got his opportunity."

Brown was also a hero of the championship game, scoring a career-high 18 points and grabbing 11 rebounds against the Tar Heels.

"That was one of the most gratifying things in my career," he said more than two decades later.

The Wolfpack received the ACC's automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament, but didn't last long, losing in the first round to Florida in Syracuse, N.Y. It was a game that paired Valvano and his team against former Wolfpack coach Norm Sloan and his top assistant Monte Towe, who both helped NC State win the 1973 and '74 ACC titles and the 1974 NCAA Championship.

Nothing, however, detracted from winning the unlikely ACC title, and beating the heavily favored Tar Heels.

"We basically played a perfect game," said Jackson, who made all three of his shots in the contest and had four assists. "We made all our shots from the free-throw line (14-for-14 for the game). We shot well from the field (56.6 percent). We hit the shots when they were about to make runs.

"For us, it was a Big Four Tournament within the ACC Tournament," Jackson said. "And that made winning the title that much more gratifying."