The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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but the loss of Charles was life-altering for the surviving members of the team. ���The experience of the ���83 team is different 30 years out than it was 20 years out, with the main difference being the loss of Lorenzo,��� Hock said. ���The man from the image that is so cemented in the national memory is gone. His passing has a different impact on the moment. ���To have 50-year-old men looking back at what they accomplished as 20-year kids and understanding in a way that life can���t be lived any better than that stretch they had back then; it has a whole different flavor than it did even 10 years ago.��� The story, especially for Wolfpack fans living in the ACC footprint, can���t be more familiar: Valvano took a team that was led by seniors Whittenburg, forward Thurl Bailey and point guard Sidney Lowe on an incredible journey. The season began with high hopes, which were nearly squelched in early January when Whittenburg suffered what was thought to be a season-ending broken foot. Valvano told his team it was too soon to quit, and reformed his lineup, changing it from the half-court style it used with Whittenburg on the court to a more aggressive and running team with freshman Ernie Myers on the court. When Whittenburg ��� in a surprise to some ��� returned with three games left in the regular season, it was a team that was even more prepared to beat some of the best teams in the nation. And that���s exactly what the Wolfpack did, in nine consecutive odds-defying postseason games, starting with a onepoint victory over Wake Forest in the first round of the ACC Tournament in Atlanta. Certainly, the documentary won���t just be a recap of the next eight games, as remarkable as they were. Whittenburg, who was part of perhaps the greatest class of high school seniors to ever go on to play college basketball, tries to put into perspective the competition in the ACC during that time frame. He even got Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski to agree on camera that college basketball was never played at a higher level than it was during the early to mid-1980s, and a good bit of the reason was Ralph Sampson, Virginia���s legendary center from Harrisonburg, Va. Even before there was Michael Jordan, Sampson was the one-name basketball star of his generation, a 7-4 figure large and legendary enough to be worthy of his near-biblical surname. For most opponents, he could have just as easily been known as Ralph Goliath. ���Ralph does not get his just due,��� Whittenburg said. ���He is one of the great players in ACC and college basketball history. There hasn���t been anybody in the last 30 years who has dominated the college game like he did.��� And the Wolfpack, having once been led to a championship with a superstar named David (Thompson), played the role of the underdog throughout the spring of 1983 and slew all the giants of college basketball, including Michael Jordan (twice), Sampson (twice) and Houston center Akeem Olajuwon, just to name a few. The 1983 team played more games against teams that were or had been ranked No. 1 in the nation than any team in college basketball history. What inspired Hock to tell this story is that, in his mind, it���s something that can never be repeated in the current structure of college basketball. The Cardiac Pack was a team molded by three seniors who were driven to win a college championship. The team was populated by younger players such as Dereck Whittenburg (in hat, with Jim Valvano) helped put the film project in motion when he approached film director Jonathan Hock with the idea of telling the story of the Cardiac Pack. photo courtesy greg hatem Charles, Cozell McQueen and Terry Gannon, all of whom were still developing as sophomores. That���s rarely allowed to happen these days, when highly recruited players are expected to produce immediately. ���The facts of this story are not news to anyone, except maybe the very, very young,��� Hock said. ���Everybody has a little knowledge of it, in part because of Coach Valvano���s legacy and the persistence of the V Foundation and its relationship to ESPN. ���But it is uniquely unfamiliar in the current days of college basketball to have three such talented seniors together for their final year. Teams never develop the sense of family and shared commitment and purpose that their team had.��� It didn���t hurt that the season was filled with drama, from Whittenburg���s injury, to the team���s uncertainty about qualifying for the NCAA Tournament, to the come-frombehind nature of nearly every game. State trailed by at least 10 points in the second half in seven of the nine postseason games. Charles won three of them either at the free throw line or with a dunk in the final seconds. Bailey won another over UNLV by grabbing two offensive rebounds on the game���s last possession over a player who, just the day before, said Bailey had never really impressed him. ���We were screening a rough cut of the film not long ago and Dereck said to me, ���Man, we were lucky!������ Hock said. ���But it was more than just luck. They had been preparing for four years for the opportunity to do something like this. Valvano came in, and they followed his dream. This team was never prepared to stop believing in themselves and the shared sense of purpose until the dream was over. ���They weren���t giving up. They weren���t believing the mathematical or statistical probabilities more than they were believing in the coach or themselves. It���s the great characteristic of this team.��� Whittenburg facilitated the retelling of the stories. He helped arrange interviews with the surviving players and key figures in the story, including Krzyzewski and Sampson. He organized a players��� reunion at the Player���s Retreat, the iconic NC State pub located just off Hillsborough Street. Hock put microphones on everyone, hit play on three cameras and let the players tell story after story for three hours. It was an educational experience even for Whittenburg, who learned some things that his teammates experienced that he didn���t know about. ���What I learned through this experience is that we overcame so much more than we ever imagined,��� he said. ���If you could take two inches off the story ��� a bounce here, a bounce there ��� we wouldn���t be talking about that season still. ���It���s a story that couldn���t be scripted. I think that���s what people are really going to like about the film. People remember the run, but they don���t remember the entire journey. They are going to learn what we went through, what we were thinking, what Coach was thinking.��� In the end, however, it���s a story that���s been told before. Now, however, there is a new sense of elation and poignancy to it that was not there before, because of Charles��� death. ���To me, that part of the story makes the miracle that much more human, because it is dawning on all of them how fleeting and enduring it all is at the same time,��� Hock said. ���There is both an overwhelming joy and sadness in this film. Lorenzo is not here to share it. V is not here to share it. Others are not here. ���There is a lot of emotion on the screen, and that���s what makes it a great story to tell.��� ��� Tim Peeler is the author of When March Went Mad: A Celebration of NC State���s 1982-83 National Championship and a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker. He can be reached at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu. March 2013��� ������ 25 24-25.30 For 30 Movie.indd 25 2/26/13 3:47 PM