I was born an NC State fan. My parents went here and they live and breathe NC State Athletics. I was taught all about the history of the Pack, specifically its basketball history.

I was also aware of all the Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill fans at school who couldn’t believe that NC State was once so good at basketball it had a national championships, or had even “built” the ACC.

There are NC State greats such as Norm Sloan, Everett Case, and if you have been living under a rock, Jim Valvano. Those are just the coaches.

When the “father of the ACC,” Everett Case, took over the Wolfpack, historic Reynolds Coliseum was still under construction. Case built more than just ACC basketball when he was here as he changed the original blueprints of Reynolds to hold more people than Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium. The plans ended up happening and NC State had the biggest basketball arena in the southeast in 1948. 

In his impressive tenure, Case coached the Pack to five NCAA Tournament appearances, nine regular season championships and 10 conference tournament championships. Case’s teams went 377-134 in his 19 seasons. Case won conference coach of the year five times and is in both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.

To this day, people are honoring NC State basketball history without even knowing it. You can thank Case for the tradition of cutting down the nets.  

After Case built the ACC, former NC State basketball player Norm Sloan returned to his alma mater to coach the Pack.

Sloan also had an unparalleled coaching performance at State, including an undefeated season in 1972-73 and then going on to coach NC State to its first national championship in 1974 with standouts David “Skywalker” Thompson, Monte Towe and Tommy Burleson.

After Sloan left NC State, the Pack hired beloved Jim Valvano, who would lead NC State on its Cinderella run in the ACC Tournament and in the NCAA Tournament ending in NC State cutting down the nets after a last-second win against Houston in the championship in 1983. This win is still considered the one of the best finishes in basketball history.

In his time here, Valvano was credited for six NCAA appearances, two ACC regular season championships and two ACC Tournament championships. Valvano coached teams with players like Dereck Whittenburg, Lorenzo Charles, Thurl Bailey and Sidney Lowe to beat the Tar Heels with Michael Jordan and Virginia with Ralph Sampson, so the Pack was no stranger to upsets.

For the people who say that NC State doesn’t have any basketball history or isn’t “good” it would be interesting to know that NC State had not one, but two national championships before Mike Krzyzewski arrived on Tobacco Road.

NC State then moved on to Les Robinson, Herb Sendek, Sidney Lowe and Mark Gottfried. All of these coaches combined for 478-394. Sendek led the coaches with five tournament appearances and Gottfried ended his NC State campaign with four.

After Gottfried was fired mid-season, fans across the country called NC State “crazy” for running Gottfried out of town after making it to the big dance four out of his six seasons. Unless a fan was paying close attention to the NC State program, it did seem insane. The truth of the matter is that Gottfried had lost the respect of his players and the program was quickly headed to being in shambles.

For years, NC State fans have been called crazy for not performing at the same national level of its Tobacco Road rivals (yes, rivals). NC State fans know their history and are not comfortable with mediocrity, striving for a coach to take the Pack to heights it hasn’t seen since the ‘80s and bring back a national championship.

Finally, we have come down the long road to the present, where Kevin Keatts is coaching the Wolfpack. In his first season, Keatts is looking to build a program here and by the looks of it he is on his way. Fans of other schools say they don’t care about history and Pack fans need to stop “living in the past.” But, NC State should be proud of its basketball history. After all, they always say, “history repeats itself.”