The 1982–83 NC State Wolfpack men's basketball team represented North Carolina State University. The Wolfpack were a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). The team went 26–10 on the year, winning the ACC tournament and the NCAA National Championship.
Roster
Cinderella run The Wolfpack entered the season ranked in the Top 20 and entered conference play ranked #19 in the nation. Their second conference game was against Virginia, ranked #2 in the country at the time and undefeated against the Wolfpack's senior class. NC State took a lead early behind the shooting of guard and senior captain Dereck Whittenburg. Later in the game, though, Whittenburg was being guarded by Cavalier guard Othell Wilson on a jump shot and when Whittenburg came down, he landed with one foot on the floor and the other stepping on Wilson's foot. Whittenburg was taken off the court with what was later diagnosed as a broken foot.
With Whittenburg injured and facing significant time out, the Wolfpack struggled for the remainder of the regular season. While NC State won ten of the seventeen games that Whittenburg was sidelined with his injury, including a win against rival and defending national champion North Carolina, the seven losses they incurred left them with a 17–10 record entering the ACC Tournament.
At the time, the NCAA had a 52-team field for its annual tournament; the expansion took place just in time for the 1983 tournament, meaning that there were four extra spots available for potential qualifiers. While this did leave the potential for the Wolfpack to get into the tournament as an at-large if they did not win the ACC, a loss in the tournament would make eleven for the year and there would not be much room for error in an era prior to the expansion of the field to 64 teams.
Thus, the only sure thing for NC State would be to win the ACC Tournament outright, which would garner them the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. They did just that, winning three games in the tournament to claim the title. The Wolfpack knocked off Wake Forest in the first game and North Carolina in the semifinals before recording their first victory over then-#2 Virginia in the finals.
On Selection Sunday, NC State found out it would be playing in the West Region of the tournament as the number six seed. This region presented the Wolfpack with a potentially difficult road to the Final Four, as its top three seeds were ranked in the top 10 in the final polls. Not only that, but the top seed in the region was their conference rival Virginia, which meant that the Wolfpack, should they both advance to the regional final, would have to find a way to beat the Cavaliers a second time.
At the time, the NCAA did not employ the “pod system” they use today to determine what teams play where to minimize travel costs and concerns for the first two rounds of the tournament. Instead, two venues per region were selected to host these games. In addition, since the field resulted in each region having an uneven number of teams (thirteen), the structure was different. The top four seeds in each region received byes into the second round of the tournament, and the teams seeded fifth and below played in the first round for the right to advance to face them (except for the team seeded twelfth, as that team would be determined in a game similar to the ones played in the modern tournament's First Four).
NC State was sent to Corvallis, Oregon's Gill Coliseum for their sub-regional. The #6 seed Wolfpack would face the #11 seed in their first matchup, which was Jim Harrick’s West Coast Conference champion Pepperdine; the winner of that matchup would advance to play the region’s #3 seed, the 28-2 PCAA champion UNLV coached by Jerry Tarkanian, for the right to advance to the Sweet Sixteen phase of the tournament in Ogden, Utah at the Dee Events Center.
Trailing late in the game against Pepperdine, the Wolfpack rallied to force overtime and then outlasted the Waves in a second overtime period to advance. There they rallied again against the favored UNLV squad to hand them only their third loss of the season and send the Wolfpack to the regionals.
The Wolfpack’s opponent in the regional semifinal was Western Athletic Conference champion Utah, who like NC State had entered the tournament needing to win their conference tournament to qualify as they had thirteen losses; led by coach Jerry Pimm, the #10 seed Utes defeated #7 seed Illinois and #2 seed UCLA in Boise.
NC State easily defeated Utah to claim a spot in the regional final, with their nineteen-point margin of victory their biggest since their regular season finale against Wake Forest. This set up the Wolfpack’s fourth meeting of the year with Virginia, who toppled #4 seeded Boston College, led by future national championship winner Gary Williams, in the other regional semifinal. For the third time in four games, NC State emerged with a close victory, winning 63-62 after Virginia star Ralph Sampson missed a shot as time expired.
At the Final Four in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Wolfpack finished off their run to the championship game by defeating Georgia in the semifinals on Saturday, which set up a matchup with top-ranked and heavily-favored Houston on Monday night at The Pit. During this run, N.C. State earned the nickname "Cardiac Pack" based in part on their "Wolfpack" mascot and the series of close games that took them to the title.
Fouling strategy Head coach Jim Valvano was noted for employing a then-little used strategy late in games. The NCAA had yet to adopt a shot clock for college basketball, and as the games wore on some teams were just content to keep possession of the ball late in games to protect a lead, passing the ball around until the clock hit zero. Valvano would instruct his players to intentionally foul opposing players, thus putting them on the free-throw line. While this strategy was risky, as it allowed NC State's opponents a chance to increase their lead, it enabled the Wolfpack to extend the game as each foul stopped the clock and the team could also capitalize if the opponents missed their free throws. They used this to great effect in the ACC tournament, including against rival North Carolina and Virginia, and employed it again in four of their six NCAA victories. Nowhere was the strategy more widely seen, however, than in the national championship game.
National championship game
In the final game on April 4 in Albuquerque, NC State led at halftime by a score of 33–25. Houston was hampered by foul trouble that plagued star Clyde Drexler, who picked up three fouls within the first few minutes. Drexler begged to remain in the game, but was forced to come out after Wolfpack sophomore guard Terry Gannon drew a charging foul on him. The foul was controversial as replays showed that Gannon appeared to grab Drexler's legs as he went down, and Drexler believed the foul should have gone against Gannon and not him (Gannon later said that Drexler never forgot the call; in the ESPN documentary about the team, he told his teammates that years later, by which time he had become a sports broadcaster, Gannon saw Drexler in the locker room at the 1991 NBA All-Star Game and once Drexler found out who he was he instantly cursed him out over the foul).
In the second half, the Cougars came out with a second wind and established control of the game. With Cougars coach Guy Lewis shifting his focus to getting center Hakeem Olajuwon the basketball on offense, using the advantage he had over NC State's big men Lorenzo Charles and Cozell McQueen, Houston outscored the Wolfpack 17–2 in the first ten minutes of the half to give themselves a 42–35 lead.
However, things were not all good for Houston. Albuquerque is located in New Mexico's Sandia Mountains at a elevation. Thus, as is the case with other high-altitude cities, athletes are tested by the effects of the elevation as well as their own physical capabilities. One of the players most affected by the altitude change was Olajuwon, who had taken on an increased workload to try and get his team back in the game. Eventually, Coach Lewis had to take Olajuwon out of the game so he could take oxygen and recover. He then decided that in order to preserve his star center's health, the Cougars needed to start slowing the game down. Thus, he called for his "Locomotion" offensive set to be put into play. This meant that instead of driving to the basket every possession, Houston would pass the ball around to wind down the clock before passing to one of the designated scorers.
The move, however, failed for two reasons. One, it deviated from Houston's strength by abandoning their strategy of pushing the ball up the court. Second, it enabled Valvano to go to his fallback option of extending the game by fouling. Exacerbating the situation was that Houston, as high powered offensively as it was, had not been a strong free-throw shooting team during the season. As such, the Wolfpack were able to both force the Cougars into mistakes and take advantage of the missed free throws to chip away at Houston's advantage. NC State outscored Houston 17–10 in the eight minutes that followed and tied the game at 52.
On what would be Houston's last possession, Valvano called for his defenders to sit back and let Cougars point guard Alvin Franklin advance the ball and begin passing it around. Lewis wanted to keep the ball in the hands of Drexler and sophomore forward Reid Gettys, his two best foul shooters, to try and force them to foul either one of those two players and for anyone else to quickly give it up once they had the ball. Valvano instead wanted Franklin, a freshman, to take the shots and instructed his players to foul him once he got the ball back. Franklin received the ball with 1:05 left but instead of immediately passing it, as he had done already on the play, he held the ball for an additional second. Wolfpack senior point guard Dereck Whittenburg took advantage of Franklin's momentary lapse in concentration and committed the foul to send Franklin, a 63% free throw shooter, to the line for a one-and-one. The idea, as later stated by Whittenburg and fellow senior Thurl Bailey years later, was to not only put a poor foul shooter on the line but force Franklin, as the youngest starter on the squad, to face the enormousness of the moment with a sellout crowd at The Pit and millions of viewers watching at home. Whatever the idea may have ultimately been, it worked as Franklin missed the shot. NC State took the rebound and with 44 seconds on the clock, Valvano called a time out and drew up a final play for his point guard Whittenburg to take the last shot.
Houston, meanwhile, needed a defensive stop to extend the game. Lewis decided to move from the man-to-man defense his team had been running the whole game to a half court trap with Benny Anders as the point man, with the goal being to force NC State to spread the ball around and force a turnover. The Wolfpack, who were not expecting the defensive adjustment, were forced to deviate and began passing the ball around just to keep the Cougars from stealing it. Houston nearly got the turnover it was looking for when Whittenburg made an errant pass to Gannon that Drexler nearly came away with before the sophomore regained control. The ball eventually found its way to Sidney Lowe, who found Bailey standing in the lower left-hand corner of the court and passed it his way so he could take the shot. Bailey, however, wanted no part of Lowe's idea as he had not had a good half shooting the ball and began looking back toward Whittenburg. With a pair of defenders on him, Bailey threw what his teammate later called a "poor fundamental" overhand pass that Anders could easily have stolen.