The Wolfpacker

November 2017

The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports

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NOVEMBER 2017 ■ 49 BASKETBALL PREVIEW 2017-18 including an upset of the No. 8 Blue Devils in the title game, at Reynolds Coliseum to win the school's fifth ACC title in 12 years. Maravich was the first first-year coach to win an ACC title. North Carolina's Bill Guthridge is the only other to match that feat, which he did in 1998. Maravich took the Pack back to the ACC title game in 1966, where it lost to Duke. Pete never got his mandatory qualifying scores to enroll at NC State or any other ACC school, and both father and son took off for LSU after the season. Norman Sloan, 1966-67, 7-19 overall, 2-12 ACC, lost to North Carolina in first round of ACC tournament, no postseason A former player under Case, Sloan was a natural to succeed Maravich. In his first 15 years as a head coach, Sloan had turned Presbyterian College, The Citadel and Florida into successful programs and seemed primed to step up to the big time. The Wolfpack, however, was not. After losing Mattocks, Coker, Worsley and Moffitt from the 1965-66 team, Sloan's inaugural team suffered another blow when would-be senior Eddie Biedenbach had to have back surgery prior to the season and was forced to take a medical redshirt. The team lumbered along throughout the year, facing a brutal schedule that included trips to Loyola, Southern California and Utah (all losses), and home games against Tulane and Pitt (both wins). It lost to both South Carolina and Clemson in the North-South Doubleheader and exited the ACC tourna- ment after an opening-round loss to North Carolina. Sloan did not inherit a deep roster, but did manage to add one player in his first recruit- ing class, Fayetteville's Vann Williford, who took the scholarship that was being reserved for Pete Maravich. Center Billy Kretzer, at 11.7 points a game, was the leader of four players who averaged double-digit scoring, but it was not a team that could compete with the likes of Duke, coached by Vic Bubas — a former NC State player and assistant under Case — and North Carolina, which made the first of three consecutive trips to the NCAA Final Four. But the next season, when Biedenbach returned and Williford was eligible to play, Sloan took his second team to the ACC title game, thanks to the infamous 12-10 semifinal win over Duke, in which Kretzer spent the majority of the game dribbling the ball at midcourt. By Williford's senior year, the Wolfpack was fully integrated and loaded enough for Sloan to win the first of his three ACC titles. Williford was named Most Valuable Player of the 1970 tournament, in which the Pack upset heavily favored South Carolina in the title game. Jim Valvano, 1980-81, 14-13 overall, 4-10 ACC, lost to North Carolina in first round of ACC tournament, no postseason Valvano, the brash New Yorker hired from Iona College, inherited a team that had lost Charles "Hawkeye" Whitney and Clyde Aus- tin but was exceptionally tall with 7-5 junior Chuck Nevitt, 7-0 senior Craig Watts and 6-11 sophomore Thurl Bailey. Sophomore guards Sidney Lowe and Dereck Whittenburg had gained valuable playing time throughout their freshman campaigns, when the Wolf- pack finished second overall in the ACC, and were ready to step up as leaders as sopho- mores. The coach thought his team was stocked well enough that he signed only one recruit in his first season, Harold Thompson of Ra- eford, N.C. Valvano's inaugural season began with a bang, winning seven of his first nine games. Included in those victories were three of significance. First, Valvano won his first matchup against the ACC's other new coach, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, in the consola- tion game of the Big Four Tournament in Greensboro. Then he took his team to New York's Mad- ison Square Garden for the ECAC Holiday Festival, where the year before Valvano had led Iona to the championship by beating Lou- isville 77-60 in the title game, an outcome he called the greatest thrill of his playing or coaching career. The Cardinals eventually won the 1980 NCAA title. Valvano and the Wolfpack faced Iona in the first game, a bittersweet matchup for the new coach. After winning, 61-58, the Pack faced St. John's and head coach Lou Carneseca, one of Valvano's heroes. It won that game, 64-55, to give Valvano his second consecutive title in the event, albeit with dif- ferent teams. Valvano's team struggled in ACC play, getting three of its four wins by sweeping Georgia Tech, which went winless in the conference, and splitting two league games against Krzyzewski's Blue Devils. The other ACC victory came in the season finale, a 66-65 win over Wake Forest, which guaranteed a winning first season for Val- vano. The year ended with a narrow loss to North Carolina in the first round of the ACC Tournament in Landover, Md. Les Robinson, 1990-91, 20-11 over- all, 8-6 ACC, lost in the ACC semifinals to Duke, lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to Oklahoma State When Les Robinson came to Reynolds Coliseum with his East Tennessee State Buc- caneers on Dec. 19, 1989, Valvano knew he wasn't likely to return the next season be- cause of multiple investigations on allega- tions of wrongdoing within the Wolfpack program. Before the game, Valvano told Robinson, who had played under Everett Case in the early 1960s, that he would be the perfect Jim Valvano's Wolfpack squads showed rapid improvement after a 14-13 campaign in 1980-81. They reached the NCAA Tournament the following season and won it all the year after that. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS

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