Wow, what a week! I just returned from Las Vegas where I was fortunate to compete in the National Horseplayers Championship, an annual event amongst us that play the races. I did well in the tourney, but this is not what this letter is about. It is about the incredible run of the Pack throughout the ACC Tournament! I would say I have never seen anything like that, but I have.
It was my sophomore year, 1974, and NC State won its first National Championship, beating UCLA and the great Bill Walton in an epic semifinal game in Greensboro, then dispatching Marquette for our first Championship! UCLA had Walton and Coach Wooden, but we had David Thompson, Tommy Burleson and Monte Towe, to name just a few. TEAM.
We celebrated hugely in Syme Hall, hugging hallmates and jumping up and down. Then we went outside and all hell broke loose on Hillsborough Street — lots of streakers running around campus, lots of drinks and the greatest party you will ever be fortunate to say you were a part of until 1983, and Jimmy V.
I was in Dayton, Ohio for a month in a Holiday Inn watching the most incredible and unlikely run of the Pack somehow beating Michael Jordan, Ralph Sampson and many others to win the ACC tourney. Then, the Jimmy V magic began.
I remember the first round of the NCAA against Pepperdine, and the Pack was way down, and I was so sad it would end — and it won in double OT. And then it got crazy, and it somehow found the will to win.
The Pack kept believing, and so did I from that crappy hotel room. Then it beat some top teams in Georgia and again somehow beat Sampson and Virginia, and then it was on to the Finals in Albuquerque, against Houston!
The UH team, Phi Slama Jama, was favored by seven points in the final game. Nobody gave us a chance. Dave Kindred, a great sports writer for the Washington Post, famously wrote on the morning of the championship game: Pigs will fly if NC State beats Houston tonight.
Well, pigs flew.
A last-second Derrick Whittenburg to Lorenzo Charles dunk and we were champs again, Jimmy V running around the court looking for someone to hug. Team. Does it get any better than that? It might. I believe and so should you.
Good luck Coach Keatts and TEAM,
Steve Hendricks, Class of 1976
