The year 1983 was a special year for NC State men’s basketball — it was the year the Pack went on its legendary national championship run and went down as one of the best Cinderella stories in sports history.
As Wolfpack fans from the time will tell you, the Pack had not always looked like a championship team throughout the year, which makes the run that much more improbable and unbelievable.
What was the ultimate spark for the Pack on its path to glory? The answer comes a month before the NCAA Tournament began, against a bitter rival in the Old Barn.
It was February 1983, and NC State was beginning to find its groove without star guard Dereck Whittenburg in the lineup. The Pack had won five out of its last six contests, and up next it had a date with the defending national champion North Carolina Tar Heels, who were led by their two All-Americans — Sam Perkins and a kid from Wilmington named Michael Jordan.
The Heels came into Reynolds Coliseum ranked No. 3 in the country but had lost their previous two games and were looking to avoid a third-consecutive setback. Despite the skid, UNC had beaten the Wolfpack in seven consecutive matchups and NC State head coach Jim Valvano had yet to beat UNC coach Dean Smith since Valvano arrived in Raleigh in 1980.
All of that added fuel to the fire of a fanbase that was desperate for a win over its rivals from Chapel Hill. But what’s even more is that an extra spark came from something that was printed in the school newspaper the day prior.
On Feb. 18, the Technician ran its first-ever parody of UNC’s student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, of which the standout feature was an apparent nude photograph of Smith lying on the floor of Carmichael Auditorium and holding just a basketball. That photo was the doing of Greg Hatem and Mark Ciarrocca, two former Technician photographers who one night had a crazy idea.
Days before the basketball game, Hatem and Ciarrocca broke into Carmichael, then Ciarrocca laid on the floor and held the basketball while Hatem took his photo. Upon returning back to Raleigh, Hatem superimposed a headshot of Smith over Ciarrocca’s head, and a legend was born.
“[Hatem] called me up and he said, ‘Hey, we need to go to Chapel Hill,’” Ciarrocca said. “I was thinking we were going to see somebody, and we went into Carmichael. [Hatem] said, ‘Here’s what we’re doing.’ He didn’t tell me what we were doing until we were there. I’m a pretty modest guy, but it was too good to pass up.”
The photo ran in the paper on the Friday before the game and blew up on newspaper stands across campus, invigorating the NC State fanbase and infuriating UNC students.
“Frankly, I was afraid of getting kicked out of school,” Ciarrocca said. “It was all in the news. It was in the national news.”
That set the stage for what was getting ready to be a rowdy environment in Reynolds Coliseum on Saturday. Much of the younger generation of Wolfpack fans do not know, but before Duke-UNC was the rivalry it is today, NC State-UNC was the preeminent rivalry in college basketball in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and Reynolds was one of the best sports venues in the country.
With all of the hype and the crowd excitement, the Wolfpack experienced some nerves out of the gates, trailing by as many as nine in the first half. However, a technical foul called on Smith with 3:17 left in the half ignited the Pack to go on a 15-5 run and take a 37-36 lead into halftime.
The game remained highly competitive throughout the second half, with UNC holding a slim lead the majority of the time. However, the turning point came with 5:04 remaining when Jordan fouled out after charging into Wolfpack guard Sidney Lowe — a call that delighted the crowd at Reynolds, but one which Smith and Roy Williams, one of his assistants, never got over.
Jordan left the game after scoring 17 points, which gave the Pack an opportunity to put it away, already leading 59-56. Following Jordan’s fifth foul, Lowe knocked down a free throw and Terry Gannon hit a 3-point shot to make it 63-56, and the crowd could smell a victory.
But the Heels weren’t ready to go away just yet. A series of missed free throws by NC State kept the door open for a UNC comeback, and with 26 seconds left, it was a one-possession game at 66-63.
That’s when the Pack was saved by an unlikely hero in Cozell McQueen, who grabbed an offensive rebound off a free-throw miss by Thurl Bailey and proceeded to knock down two free throws himself, giving NC State a 68-63 lead with 17 seconds left. A Wolfpack victory seemed all but sealed.
But the party was just getting started in Reynolds. On the ensuing Tar Heel possession, UNC guard Jim Braddock lost control of the ball, which fell into the hands of Gannon, who passed it upcourt to Lowe.
In a moment that has gone down in NC State basketball lore, Lowe dribbled down the court and passed the ball between his legs to a trailing Bailey, who slammed it on top of Perkins, blowing the roof off the building and sealing a 70-63 win.
“The thing I remember about the game is just the noise,” Ciarrocco said. “That’s my main memory is about how loud it was.”
What followed was a scene of pandemonium as fans began throwing drink cups throughout the stands and rushed the court when the final buzzer sounded. Valvano had just earned his first win over Smith, and NC State now knew that it was capable of hanging with the best in the country — and perhaps making a championship run.
The rest of the 1983 season, as they say, is history. NC State faced off against Jordan and the Heels one more time before it was all over in the ACC Tournament, in which the Wolfpack emerged victorious en route to its first ACC championship since 1974.
The two teams even came within one game of playing each other in the NCAA Tournament that year and would have if UNC had not fallen to Georgia in the Elite Eight.
When looking back on that 1982-83 season, fans often think of the NCAA Tournament games and iconic national championship win, but it’s worth remembering where that run all began: Feb. 19, 1983 in Reynolds Coliseum.
