NC State legend Jim Valvano's first UNC win came 40 years ago Sunday

The year was 1983. For six long years prior in football and four years in men’s basketball, NC State had waited to have some success against North Carolina.

Bo Rein had been the last football coach to beat the Tar Heels, way back in 1978. His successors, Monte Kiffin and Tom Reed, never found success against NC State’s biggest rival. Both made pretty quick exits from their jobs.

NC State basketball coach Norm Sloan, who lost his first 10 games against North Carolina, earned a little redemption by beating coaching nemesis Dean Smith in his final game against the Tar Heels at Reynolds Coliseum in the 1980 regular-season finale, but his wisecracking replacement had lost seven in a row to the Heels.

Would Jim Valvano suffer the same fate as his football counterparts?

That was a real question on Feb. 19, 1983, when Valvano’s struggling Wolfpack hosted defending national champion North Carolina at Reynolds Coliseum. In his first three seasons, Valvano had exactly one win over a higher ranked team, 60-48 over third-ranked Wichita State in the 1981 Rainbow Classic in Hawaii.

The pressure was quite different against the Heels, who featured sophomore Michael Jordan. North Carolina had ended Valvano’s first season at NC State with a win in the 1981 ACC Tournament and also beat the Pack in the 1982 tournament. And the first meeting in 1983, State’s second without the services of presumed gone-for-the-season senior guard Dereck Whittenburg? A 99-81 victory in Chapel Hill by Jordan and his teammates.

Publicly, Valvano laughed off his lack of success against Smith. “I might not be able to beat Coach Smith, but I know I will out-live him,” Valvano said.

At the time, it was funny.

Making matters worse was that Carolina had lost two games in a row earlier in the week, to Villanova and to Maryland, and the likelihood of a three-game losing streak seemed low for Smith’s charges.

Finally, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame chose the morning of the 2:30 p.m. contest, the middle game in an ACC tripleheader, to announce that Smith had been elected to its Springfield, Massachusetts, hall.

What chance did the Wolfpack have?

There was something different, however, about the Pack that afternoon, in a rivalry that will be renewed between the neighbors again on Sunday at 1 p.m. at PNC Arena, even though Valvano’s antsy Pack fell behind quickly, turning the ball over on three of its first four possessions.

With a still-injured Whittenburg sitting helplessly on the bench in a three-piece suit, the Pack was frustrated.

And then, just before halftime, the most unlikely thing happened: Valvano and his team began its march to the 1983 national championship.

Trailing by seven points a little over three minutes before intermission, NC State touched a Tar Heel nerve. Carolina junior Sam Perkins went up for a hook shot, ready to put a lefthanded fork in Valvano’s team.

Remarkably, inexperienced sophomore Cozell McQueen came from the other side of the court to tip the shot, sending the noise meter to the roof, followed immediately by the Tar Heel bench, who all believed the shot was on its way down when McQueen touched it.

Smith, upset that Jordan had been called for two touch fouls earlier in the half, went after official Jim Burch, who had already told the legendary coach, according to newspaper accounts the next day, to “sit down and shut up.”

Burch hit Smith with a technical foul for complaining about the lack of goal-tending, and the UNC coach charged in his direction. He was intercepted by official Charlie Vacca and was hit with his second technical by referee Paul Housman. (There was no disqualification after two technicals at the time.)

It was not Smith’s best hall-of-fame moment, though it did lead to one of the best rhetorical questions of all time: “How do you spell ‘Smith’? With two Ts.”

NC State sophomore Terry Gannon stepped up and hit four consecutive free throws and quiet forward Lorenzo Charles added two more after being fouled on the ensuing possession. Following a Matt Doherty turnover, the maturing Charles powered past Perkins to give the Wolfpack its first lead of the game.

In a span of just 22 seconds, the Wolfpack went from being in danger of falling behind by nine to grabbing a lead, which it maintained 37-36 at intermission.

Everything went the Wolfpack’s way in the second half, and the UNC bench whined incessantly about the officiating. After scoring a basket, Jordan was called for his fifth foul for charging into Sidney Lowe, a call Smith went to his grave eight years ago still disputing. The basket was disallowed.

“The thing I remember most about that game is that Michael is up in the air and Sidney moves underneath him,” Smith said in a 2007 interview. “Jordan is called for his fifth foul, though it was obviously a foul on Sidney. Housman came up to Michael after the game and apologized for the call Burch made.”

The call all but sealed Valvano’s first win over the Tar Heels. He slowed down the tempo and ramped up the defensive pressure.

He needed one more contribution from an unlikely hero, however. NC State was not performing at the free throw line in the final four minutes, missing the front end of five consecutive one-and-ones in an era that did not award an automatic two shots after the opposing team made 10 fouls. Valvano used that to his advantage later in the season.

The Wolfpack coach was angry at his team and shouted, “Can anybody here make a free throw?”

That’s when offensively limited McQueen raised his hand and said, “I can hit it.” Just a 57.6 percent shooter from the line, the center from Bennettsville, South Carolina, took freshman Ernie Myers spot in the lineup.

With less than a minute to play the Wolfpack owned just a one-possession lead under the ACC-only rules, 66-63, when senior Thurl Bailey missed another one-and-one. McQueen hauled in the offensive rebound and was immediately fouled. Smith called a timeout to make McQueen think about the situation, but it did no good.

“My mind was a total blank,” McQueen said.

The first shot bounced around the rim before falling through and the second hit the bottom of the net.

With just seven seconds on the clock, Lowe led a fast break from the other end of the floor, with Perkins and Bailey trailing. Lowe knew Perkins would block his attempt at a layup, so he did the same thing that Clyde Austin did for Hawkeye Whitney during Lowe’s freshman year — he bounced the ball between his legs to Bailey, who sent the sold-out crowd into a frenzy.

Smith congratulated Valvano for his first win in the rivalry as he and his team quickly left the floor.

“Certainly those two technicals hurt,” Smith said postgame. “So did the first three fouls Mr. Burch called on Michael and the non-goaltending call on the shot by Perkins. I’ll be interested in seeing those plays on my Betamax.”

NC State basketball fans and players swarmed the court in celebration, cut down the nets following the regular-season contest and then left to celebrate on Hillsborough Street for hours to come. Whittenburg snipped the final strands even though he was still hobbling around on crutches.

“Whatever happens the rest of the year, no one can take this away from us,” Valvano told the media before he went to join students and his players in a campus-wide celebration.
“This is February 19, and this is our day.”

Sunday’s contest at PNC is the first time since that game exactly 40 years ago that the Wolfpack has faced North Carolina on February 19.

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