This story, by managing editor Tom Barnidge, first appeared in The Sporting News issue dated April 11, 1983, under the headline, “Wolfpack Complete Fairy Tale,” chronicling NC State’s stunning Final Four championship win over Houston on April 4.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — There were the two inexplicable victories over Virginia within a span of two weeks. There were the last-second triumphs over Pepperdine and Nevada-Las Vegas in the NCAA tournament. And, naturally, there was the unseemly record of 25-10 that North Carolina State carried on its back into the NCAA championship game on April 4.
But nothing was quite so unlikely as the Wolfpack's 54-52 victory over Houston at the University of New Mexico's Pit. Remember Houston, owner of a victory string spanning 26 games? Remember Houston, the No.1-ranked team in the nation?
And remember the lowly Wolfpack, only the third best team in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Wolfpack are worth remembering, because they ignored all those Houston press clippings.
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They did it with a prayer of a desperation shot and with the heaven-sent intervention of a sophomore forward. They did it when Dereck Whittenburg tossed a bomb from no less than 40 feet and Lorenzo Charles grabbed it and stuffed it through the rim.
That's the way it ended. But that's not the whole story of how it was done. Step back one day before the final, when Coach Jim Valvano was explaining how his Wolfpack would try to win the game.
"We will have to — how do you say it — control the tempo," Valvano had said. "We want to keep the score in the 50s or 60s. "We just want to be in a position to win it at the end.”
Prophetic, don't you think?
Houston had wasted Louisville, 94-81, in the semifinals, with a hell-bent-for-leather pace and with a devastating inside attack that Louisville had tried to beat head-to-head
Louisville had played a pressing defense. It had gone man-to-man with Houston. And by game's end, Louisville was one exhausted, haggard team.
So, from the opening tip of the 45th championship game until all but the final few minutes, Valvano tried an opposite play. He used a collapsing, sagging zone that cluttered up the focus of the Houston attack.
The tempo was the Wolfpack's. The shot selection was theirs. The game plan worked like a charm. And even so, N.C. State owned only an eight-point halftime lead.
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More important, perhaps, was the frustration that Houston had begun to feel. The fabled Phi Slama Jamas had only one dunk in 20 minutes. Their slickest player, Clyde Drexler, had four fouls.
But a team of the immense and deep talent that Houston's Cougars possess could not be contained all that quickly. In typical fashion, Guy Lewis' team strung together a lightning-like point-scoring string.
In sum, it amounted to a 17-2 run. It turned N.C. State's eight-point lead into an eight-point deficit. And once again it tested the grit of a gritty Wolfpack team.
"I believe in goals," Valvano had said long before. "I believe the kids should have something to shoot for. We came here to win the national championship, not just to be respectable."
The business of "dreams" had been a recurrent theme in Valvano's long hike from oblivion to Albuquerque. Making the Final Four was a "dream." Playing in the championship game was a "dream." In the last eight minutes of their season, the Wolfpack manufactured their dream.
It was Whittenburg scoring eight of his team's last 17 points. It was Sidney Lowe and Terry Gannon scoring seven more. Real dreamers, those folks, none of them standing taller than 6-foot-1.
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And, of course, it was Lorenzo Charles, scoring only his second field goal of the evening and the biggest of the game. But one final gambit also was needed to make the Wolfpack the national champions.
It was the "foul," that unceremonious four-letter activity. The "purpose" foul, if you will. Trailing by six points with barely four minutes to play and watching Houston handle the ball, Valvano instructed, first, Gannon, and, then, others to force Houston to make its free throws.
In that time, the Cougars went two-for-five, twice missing the front end of one-and-one chances. During that time, the Wolfpack traded fouls for the ball and then used it to slice the deficit.
"What happened," said Cougars Coach Lewis, "was what people said would happen to us all year. We missed a couple of important free throws and they cost us the game."
Their achilles' heel, that trademark. The Cougars were barely a 50 percent free-throw team, despite their 31-2 record. And when it counted most they were 10 for 19.
Valvano's voice had grown hoarse and weary by the time the crown was placed on his head. But he spoke loudly enough to place the credit with his players, not his strategy.
"I'll never forget these guys," he said. "They carried me all the way here."
The story will be told and retold for a while. No team with 10 losses had ever won the title. Particularly, no team that had endured what the Wolfpack went through.
Go back to January 12, when the Pack's heart and soul, long-range gunner Whittenburg landed on the foot of Virginia's Othell Wilson and broke his own. N.C. State lost five of the next six games with Whittenburg in a cast, it disappeared from the national polls and it saw its season going up in smoke.
"In retrospect," said Valvano, "that probably helped us. It made us a better team. With Dereck out like that, more people got to play."
They played and they dreamed and they made it all come true. They lived an unlikely tale.
And Houston's Guy Lewis went away from his fourth Final Four try with a forgettable vision that won't soon disappear.