NC State basketball capped an undefeated 1973 season at ACC Tournament

Unlike many other postseason tournaments throughout the history of college basketball, the Atlantic Coast Conference, with NC State as a charter member, has never had a consolation game.

Except once.

That’s what Maryland coach Lefty Driesell called the 1973 league championship game at the Greensboro Coliseum after his team beat Wake Forest in the Friday night semifinals of the event, sealing the Terps’ fate as the league’s automatic qualifier to the NCAA Championship.

Why? Because NC State basketball was serving a one-year probation that prevented Norm Sloan’s undefeated Wolfpack from participating in the annual chase for the national championship 50 years ago and a possible showdown with undefeated and six-time NCAA-champion UCLA.

“I don’t care if we go to the NCAA regional as the winner or the runner-up in this [ACC] tournament,” Driesell said just before his team played the 26-0 Wolfpack.

“We’re going [to the NCAAs], and that’s what counts. Why bust our tails to beat [NC] State in the finals? Saturday night’s game is something of a consolation game.

“My main concern is next Thursday.”

Few people believed the Lefthander, then or now:

“Driesell would give another lock of his vanishing hair if he could mar [NC] State’s bid for a perfect season,” one veteran observer of the league wrote prior to the title game.

Still, Driesell threatened to skip the NC State basketball game so he could scout the Furman-Syracuse playoff contest in Philadelphia that would determine the Terps’ opponent in the East Regional semifinal game that would be played in Charlotte five days later. (Yes, in the days of the 25-team tournament, the ACC was still determining its champion at the same time the NCAA playoffs were underway.)

“This game with State Saturday, just isn’t that important to me,” Driesell said. “I might change my mind, but right now I’m just not that worried about State.”

Even though he held injured junior center Len Elmore (broken foot) out of the game, and both Jim O’Brien and Bob Bodell played sparingly, Driesell threw everything else he had at specifically stopping NC State sophomore David Thompson, the 1973 ACC Player of the Year.

And unlike the previous two games that season, when the league’s leading scorer tallied a combined 61 points, it worked.

Only twice in Thompson’s Wolfpack career did he fail to score a point in a half. One of those halves was the next season when he suffered a life-threatening fall against Pittsburgh in the NCAA East Regional Final at NC State’s Reynolds Coliseum, missing much of the first half and the entire second half. He finished that game with just 8 points, the only single-digit scoring game of his career.

The other scoreless half was 50 years ago this weekend in Driesell’s so-called “consolation game,” when a combination of foul trouble and a pesky box-and-one defense held the league’s most prolific three-year scorer without a point for a total of 24 minutes.

Thompson, nearing the end of a fabulous first season with the Pack, went to Greensboro as the league’s leading scorer, averaging 25.7 points a game, for the ACC’s top-scoring team, which had topped the 100-point mark nine times in its first 25 games. Thompson led his team with 14 points in a 63-51 semifinal victory over Virginia.

Against the Terps, however, he was stymied for the game’s first 24 minutes. His first shot from the corner was an air ball. He picked up three fouls before halftime. And he was alternately smothered by man-to-man defense from Maryland senior Darrell Brown and sophomore Owen Brown, while the rest of his teammates played against a zone.

“They did a really good job of keeping the ball away from me,” Thompson says today. “We were so well-rounded, though, that we got balanced scoring from our team. Burl got us off to a good start.”

NC State teammates Tom Burleson, Monte Towe and Joe Cafferky picked up Thompson’s slack. Burleson scored 14 points and grabbed 14 rebounds without Elmore in the lineup, but picked up his fourth foul with 9:44 remaining in the game. He went to the bench for only two minutes and finished to contest without fouling out, leading to the first of his back-to-back Everett Case Awards as the tournament’s most valuable player.

Towe, a sophomore like Thompson, continued his role as a team leader and made key outside jumpers against the Maryland zone. Cafferky, a shooting guard and defensive specialist who was one of just two seniors on the Wolfpack roster, made six of his eight attempts and finished the game with a dozen points.

Maryland, no matter what Driesell had said prior to the game, was playing to end the Wolfpack’s winning streak. Junior Tom McMillen scored 24 points and freshman sensation John Lucas of Durham had 21.

The Terps were down as much as 10 points in the second half, but rallied midway through to cut NC State’s lead to 70-68 with three minutes remaining in the game.

Forward Rick Holdt, NC State’s other senior, made a 20-foot jumper to boost the Pack’s cushion and when State got the ball back, Towe dribbled 90 seconds off the clock before Holdt was sent to the free-throw line for a one-and-one. He missed the first shot, McMillen grabbed the rebound and Lucas drilled a 23-foot jumper to close the gap back to two points.

State had missed the only free throw it attempted in the game’s first 39 minutes, so Driesell made the strategic decision to foul sophomore forward Tim Stoddard, a 55.1 percent free throw shooter at that time, with 45 seconds on the clock.

The bulky young player who doubled as a dominant baseball pitcher drained both of his shots to push State’s lead to 74-70. Maryland scored again quickly, but the Terps couldn’t keep the ball out of Thompson’s hands.

When he was fouled with nine seconds to play, Thompson made both free throws, giving him his ninth and 10th points in the game and completing NC State’s scoring. The Pack finished the game with four free throws in five attempts and its third win of the season over the Terps.

It was a rare game where the Pack had completely balanced scoring, without Thompson dominating the box score: Burleson 14, Cafferky and reserve Steve Nuce 12, Holdt and Thompson 10. Towe had 6 points and 4 assists.

Despite the win, the Wolfpack returned to Raleigh with an empty feeling, knowing its undefeated season was over despite being ACC champions. The ’73 Pack is among just five ACC teams in the 70-year history of the league that won all of its games against ACC opponents in a single season, joining 1957 North Carolina, 1963 and ’99 Duke and the 1974 NCAA champion Wolfpack.

Cafferky and Holdt were the most tragic figures, of course, their careers ending with the victory.

“I do feel bad for Joe and Rick,” Thompson said. “They were a big part of our undefeated season. Without 1973, I don’t think the ’74 championship would have happened.”

Cafferky, who now lives in Borås, Sweden, says he doesn’t give that season much thought and believes it is largely forgotten by most basketball fans.

“This is the first time in 50 years anybody even asked me about that undefeated season,” Cafferky said via email.

“It’s something that’s always been painful for us,” said Holdt, who lives in the North Carolina mountains near Burleson. “It’s something you just don’t forget.”

The 1973 team is the front end of Sloan’s 57-1 record, the best two-year run in ACC history. Though NC State basketball was unable to play in the NCAA tournament, a half century later, that year’s edition of the Pack is still remembered as one of the greatest teams in league history.

That, of course, is of little consolation.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at [email protected].