NC State basketball has limited experiences in high altitude

This is the time of the year when college basketball fans are flying sky-high with emotion. For both NC State basketball teams, playing at a high level has a different connotation as they both begin play in their respective NCAA championship tournaments this week.

Both Wolfpack squads are playing in cities at more than 4,000 feet in elevation — Denver (5,280 feet) for the men, Salt Lake City (4,327 feet) for the women — which is the threshold for when altitude sickness can kick in for those not acclimatized for the elevation.

Does it really make a difference?

Ask Houston’s high-flying Cougars of 1983, which went into the 54-team NCAA tournament as the No. 1 ranked, top-seeded team with a winning streak of more than 20 games. Head coach Guy Lewis’ team was the overwhelming choice to win the school’s first national title — right up until Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler and their teammates started gasping for air midway through the second half of the title game against NC State at The Pit in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

To this day, few people understand how much acclimatization played a role in the Pack’s unlikely NCAA championship 40 years ago. Watch a replay of the game and you will see Olajuwon and several teammates go to the bench with Houston leading by seven points and going straight for the oxygen tanks.

That’s a seed New Mexico basketball has long planted in the minds of its opponents. In the hallway that leads from the lockerrooms at The Pit is an informational sign that tells of the horrors of acute altitude sickness: “Warning! Acute Altitude Sickness: AAS symptoms include, but are not limited to, shortness of breath, confusion, dizziness, headache, trouble sleeping and nausea. AAS looks and feels like the flu, but is more serious. Immediate medical attention may be required.”

It’s a great psychological trick for opponents, because AAS doesn’t generally kick in until 8,000 feet, though some symptoms can be felt at mile-high elevations. It was a prediction that came true for the Cougars, who lost their seven-point lead when Lewis chose to slow the tempo in the second half while his star players were on the bench sucking air and breathing hard.

That didn’t happen for Jim Valvano’s NC State squad. The previous weekend in Ogden, Utah, (4,300 feet) head trainer Jim Rehbock had been warned about the over-reliance on supplemental oxygen. He wouldn’t allow it on the Pack’s bench during the West regional games or at the Final Four.

Hey, it wasn’t like the Wolfpack was scaling Mount Everest.

Things turned out OK for NC State that evening, even if senior guard Dereck Whittenburg left the game’s final jumper a little short, perhaps because of tired legs. Sophomore forward Lorenzo Charles was fresh enough to grab Whittenburg’s airball and jam it home to win the Wolfpack’s second NCAA title.

The lesson, of course, is to be aware of the effects of high altitude, something neither NC State basketball team has a lot of experience with playing home games in Raleigh (altitude: 315 feet) or around the Atlantic Coast Conference (average altitude: 586 feet).

The Wolfpack men have played a few games at altitude through the years, including in the 1983 for the two regional games in Ogden and two Final Four games in Albuquerque. In 1985, Valvano and his team returned to Albuquerque and won a pair of games to earn the right to go to the mile-high city of Denver, where it beat Alabama and lost a heavy-legged game to St. Johns in the West Regional finals.

There are no other high-altitude postseason games for the men’s program. Head coach Norm Sloan lost a game to Utah State in Ogden, Utah, in the 1966-67 regular season, but beat the Nevada Wolf Pack in Reno, Nevada, (elevation 4,615 feet) in 1979.

Herb Sendek beat Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 2004, but for most of the rest of its history NC State basketball has stayed mostly in the flatlands.

The Wolfpack women have never played a postseason game at an elevation of over 4,000 feet, and has precious few regular-season games other than the yearly trip to the ACC’s highest altitude, Blacksburg, Virginia (2,074) and eight unbeaten trips to the East Coast’s highest elevated Division I school: Appalachian State (3,333 feet).

The NC State women won its only previous game in Salt Lake City, 67-65 win over Brigham Young, under head coach Kay Yow in 2005.

The greatest high-elevation moment in NC State athletics history came on Sept. 23, 1961, when football coach Earle Edwards took his team to Wyoming to play former colleague Bob Devaney’s team at Division I football’s highest altitude stadium in Laramie (elevation: 7,220 feet).

On his first college attempt, NC State sophomore punter Dave Houtz busted a wind- and altitude-aided punt that sailed 83 yards from State’s 15 to Wyoming’s 2, a school-record kick that still stands after more than six decades, in a heartbreaking 15-14 loss.

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