48 ■ THE WOLFPACKER
PACK PAST
BY TIM PEELER
F
or the second year in a row, beating
North Carolina was thrice as nice
for NC State's top-of-the-polls men's
basketball team.
During a seven-week span in early
1974, head coach Norm Sloan's Wolf-
pack, featuring the most dynamic
lineup in school history, scored back-
to-back-to-back victories over Dean
Smith's Tar Heels — just as they had
done the year before during an un-
beaten 1972-73 season.
Those six games made up the major-
ity of State's nine-game winning streak
over the Heels, the second longest in
the history of the century-old rivalry,
trailing only the 15-game winning
streak Everett Case put together in the
1940s and '50s.
Two of those wins each year counted
in the ACC standings, and one was
designated a nonconference game as
part of the Big Four Championship in
Greensboro.
The next season, David Thompson's
senior year, the two old foes clashed
four times, with State winning yet
another Big Four meeting and in the
regular-season matchup in Reynolds
Coliseum, while North Carolina finally
ended the run with a win in Carmichael
Auditorium in Chapel Hill and again in
NC State's Victories Over North Carolina In 1974
Foreshadowed A Brilliant Postseason
Tommy Burleson had 22 points and 11 rebounds to help NC State pull away for an 83-72 win in the last of three games between the Wolfpack and Tar
Heels during the 1974 regular season.
PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS
