The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/266935
28 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY TIM PEELER L et's get this off the table from the beginning: The NC State men's basketball team assembled by head coach Norm Sloan in the early 1970s will never be matched or surpassed. There have been and will be great bas- ketball teams in the new Atlantic Coast Conference. None of them compiled a 57-1 record over two years, never losing to an ACC opponent in that span, and ended college basketball's most unbreakable dy- nasty. Simply by the way they competed against high-ranked conference opponents, it changed the entire structure of the NCAA Tournament, the most successful sporting event this side of the Super Bowl. There have been remarkable players who earned their All-America and Player of the Year honors. But none of them are, or will be, David Thompson. If Michael Jordan couldn't surpass his childhood hero's ACC accom- plishments, it's unlikely that anyone else will. So let's stipulate these things as indis- putable: • Thompson, the sky-walking forward from Shelby, N.C., is the ACC's greatest player, even if some of his three-year scor- ing records have been broken over time by four-year players who had the advantage of three-point baskets and possession-enhanc- ing shot clocks. • The college basketball rules committee robbed basketball fans across the country by outlawing the dunk back in the late 1960s to keep UCLA's Lew Alcindor from creating highlight-reel jams, which eventu- ally prevented the world from seeing what Thompson could really do when he was on the receiving end of alley-oop passes from teammates Monte Towe and baseball pitcher Tim Stoddard. • The ACC title game at the Greensboro Coliseum between the Wolfpack and Mary- land is still the greatest ACC game ever played, because of its intensity, its talent and its incredible stakes. The loser of that game had no chance of going to the NCAA Tournament, under rules of the day that al- lowed just one team per conference. • There's never been a more inspired tournament performance than that of 7-2 center Tommy Burleson, who won his sec- ond consecutive Everett Case Award for out-dueling Maryland's Len Elmore in the title game. Burleson scored 38 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in the 103-100 over- time win, all because Elmore made the mistake of calling Burleson out after ACC sportswriters chose him over the Wolfpack big man as the first-team All-ACC center. • No one had better sport coats than Sloan. A Season For THE AGES Looking Back On The 40th Anniversary Of The Wolfpack's 1974 NCAA Championship Head coach Norm Sloan, shown wearing one of his distinctive sports coats, led the Wolfpack to a record of 57-1 over a two-year span, culminating in the 1974 ACC and NCAA championships. PHOTO BY ED CARAM 28-31.1974 BKB Anniversary.indd 28 2/25/14 4:10 PM