The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 ■ 37 BY TIM PEELER enny Matthews had a shot. I t wa s n 't a go o d s h o t , slightly contested and a lit- tle off-balance. Still, it could have pre- vented one of the worst out- comes in the history of NC State basketball and completed perhaps the greatest comeback in the legendary annals of the ACC. On Jan. 17, 1979, North Carolina came to Reynolds Coliseum ranked No. 2 in the nation. For the first 20 minutes of the game, Dean Smith's Tar Heels blitzed the home team, building a seem- ingly insurmountable 40-19 lead behind the floor leadership of former walk-on point guard Ged Doughton, who started in place of the injured Dave Colescott. Doughton was prescient enough to get the ball to three future NBA players, Dudley Bradley, Mike O'Koren and Al Wood, to steadily build a lead over the Wolfpack. That was before coach Norm Sloan's squad, led by juniors Charles "Hawk- eye" Whitney and Clyde Austin and sophomore Kenny Matthews, came all the way back in the second half against the Heels, and was in position to score an unlikely and much-needed upset on its home court. The Pack, ranked No. 12 in the preseason, had lost its first three ACC games and fallen from the national rankings. State's pressing defense created turn- overs and missed shots. Whitney and Matthews began making shots, and the crowd went into a frenzy that lit the red light on top of the Reynolds noise meter. Matthews got the lead down to three points with a 22-foot jumper. With 43 seconds remaining, Whitney was fouled. As he was taking his first free throw, UNC freshman Jimmy Black was called for a flagrant foul fighting Matthews for rebounding position. Whitney's made free throw was taken off the scoreboard. On the reset, Whitney made the front end of his one-and-one, missed the second and then made the technical free throw for Black's foul. Both teams were furious. W h e n p l ay re s u m e d , M a t t h ews bombed another 22-footer that would have easily been a three-pointer in to- day's game. It was a clutch shot remi- niscent of his game-winner against Wake Forest as a freshman and the ty- ing shot he made against Maryland that sent the game to overtime. Matthews' jumper gave the Wolf- pack a 69-68 lead, its first since it went ahead 4-2 at the beginning of the game. When Bradley missed a mid- range jumper and State's Tiny Pinder got the rebound, all the Pack had to do was get the ball over midcourt and hold on for dear life. Austin managed to do the first, but as soon as he did, Bradley sneaked around from behind on a double-team, just in front of the scorer's table, took the ball away from Austin and raced down the court for an uncontested two-handed dunk. Matthews had one last shot to win the game — something that might not have been needed if Whitney's free throw hadn't been canceled a few moments earlier — but this time his off-balance shot from the same place as the pre- vious two went right of the goal and bounced off the backboard. The biggest comeback in ACC bas- ketball history didn't happen, and the Tar Heels won 70-69. The Washington Connection Matthews bent over double after the game, tugging the bottom of his short- shorts. Dean Smith, who had recruited Matthews heavily out of Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., gave the 6-foot-4 combo guard a sympathetic pat on the leg. "Coach Smith was a class act," Mat- thews said, recalling the game more than 40 years later. "He knew how much we were hurting." Matthews was an early part of NC State's D.C. pipeline, which flowed from schools like DeMatha Catholic and Dunbar High. Sloan had recruited several players from the Washington suburbs in his early years, but the ties were solidified when he sent assistant Eddie Biedenbach to Hyattsville, Md., to recruit DeMatha prep All-American Adrian Dantley. That didn't work out, but Biedenbach got an early tip about forward Kenny Carr. Dantley went to Notre Dame, but Carr came to Raleigh, where he became an All-American and twice led the ACC in scoring for Sloan's Wolfpack. Before long, Sloan and assistant Marty Fletcher, a longtime member of Morgan Wootten's coaching staff at De- Matha, landed top players from the D.C. metropolitan era who did big things for the Wolfpack. After Carr, DeMatha sent Whitney, Dereck Whittenburg and Sidney Lowe to Raleigh, while Matthews came to State from powerful Dunbar High School and Thurl Bailey came from Bladensburg (Md.) High. KENNY MATTHEWS Men's Basketball (1977-81) Age: 64 Living: Washington, D.C. Occupation: Recently retired from the U.S. State Department, where he worked in security, serving as an escort and special agent for numerous high- level officials Did you know? In Matthews' junior season at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., the team was trying to complete an undefeated season heading into the city championship game against DeMatha Catholic. The opposing team featured freshman backcourt players Sidney Lowe and Dereck Whittenburg, who joined Matthews in fol - lowing Hawkeye Whitney to Raleigh. Dunbar won the city championship over DeMatha and finished with a 29-0 record. K CAPITAL GAINS Kenny Matthews Was Part Of A Cadre Of Washington, D.C., Prospects That Elevated Wolfpack Basketball In The 1970s