The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/470359
MARCH 2015 ■ 71 enrollment increase for State. We think there will be no problem reaching our goal. Things look encouraging this year. [But 10% black enrollment at State or Carolina is unrealistic at the present time because] there are not enough black students to go around for State and Carolina to have sev- eral thousand black students." In many ways, it was a typical setting for nearly any college campus at that time, but State's success in athletics — especially basketball but also football and baseball — seemed, for the most part, to bring the campus together. In the fall, the football team was undefeated in the Atlantic Coast Conference, winning the league title and a Liberty Bowl game with Kansas. During the winter, the basketball team completed a second straight undefeated ACC regular season, won the league tournament for a second conference title, and won four NCAA tournament games, including the national semifinals over UCLA, to capture the national title. While the basketball team was grab- bing the spotlight, the swimming team was winning its 13th ACC title and the 8th in a run of capturing 18 of 20 conference championships. And, in the spring, the baseball team, after an average regular season, won the ACC tournament played on State's home field. Today, to those who were State students that year, the triumphant run by the Wolf- pack basketball team, and the successes of football, swimming, and baseball seem more recent than the more than 40 years before the writing of this chronicle. To those who lived it, to those who closely followed the season, attended the games, and wrote about the team and games for the college newspaper, the Technician, the memories are not distant at all. It seems as if it were just yesterday that David Thompson was soaring with great ease and determined intensity to the rim of the basket in Reynolds Coliseum to gather a bullet pass from Monte Towe and then casually and lightly drop the ball through the hoop. Dunking was not al- lowed. Watching Tommy Burleson "grow up" as a basketball player and become an inside force hard for any competitor to handle is fresh. There was Norman Sloan in his loudly plaid jacket doing his "stor- min'" at courtside, demanding more from his talented team and less from the game officials. The three times I made the short drive to Greensboro to see the Wolfpack win three tournaments — Big Four, ACC, and NCAA — remains a recent memory though it happened in January and March of 1974. Watching Monte impatiently creep to the free throw line, with cramps in his legs, to sink two charity tosses that iced the win for State against Maryland in the greatest ACC game ever played is very clear. Being amazed always but never sur- prised to see David leap higher than Bill Walton to gather a crucial rebound is a neat memory that seems as if it happened a day ago. The sky-hooks of Burleson, knocking in shot after shot over some of the best centers in the game, could have been as recent as the day this is being written. The memories to those who lived it are not just memories. The memories are real- ity. I lived much of the basketball season as sports editor of the Technician, the student newspaper. Ken Lloyd, my predecessor, gave up that position shortly after the Wolf- pack football season in the fall of 1973. Ken wanted to concentrate on academics to make sure he graduated that spring. Also a senior but not having enough credit hours for 1974 graduation, I thirsted to lead the coverage of the basketball team and didn't hesitate to say yes when Beverly Privette, the editor, asked me to move from assistant sports editor to Ken's seat. Getting to know the players was not very hard, especially the juniors and se- niors; most of them were college friends before the athlete-writer relationship. Be- ing a student writer didn't put distance between us. Unlike writers, reporters, and the mul- titude of media types today, who are on the lookout for the tiniest possibility of impropriety, ready to send a tweet or to post a quick story on a website, our staff had unwritten rules to keep coverage to action on the court, much as did the sports- writers and reporters for the daily issues in Raleigh and around the state. We were more likely to be part of the fun of being a student than to distance ourselves from the players. Conversation and activities off the court and away from the locker room were off limits for stories. Friendships and relationships made then remain today. And secrets made then remain secrets today. The players — David, Tommy, Monte, Mark Moeller, Craig Kuszmaul, Tim Stod- dard, Phil Spence, Morris Rivers, Greg Hawkins, and others — were not shielded from campus association though Coach Sloan may have wanted it just a little more than it was. These fellow students, as good as they were on the court and as much as they were worshipped by non-students, especially by members of the Wolfpack Club, were regular guys off the court. They had their fun and included other students. On the court, the players melded into a spectacular team, rolling to a 12–0 confer- ence record and a 30–1 overall mark. It was State's first national basketball title and the best team of two Wolfpack basket- ball national championship squads. There is no doubt that the 1974 championship team would consistently get the better of State's other national title team, the Jim Valvano-coached miracle Cinderella story of 1982–83. If the two squads played a The 1973-74 Wolfpack team went 30-1 and captured the national championship, in the process ending UCLA's run of seven straight NCAA titles. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS