Stat of the day

NCS Basketball Stat of the Day Tradition43

This season marked the 35th anniversary of NC State’s 1974 National Basketball Championship (that, evidently, the NCAA forgot about). This link will take you to some recent related content about the topic.

A friend of ours passed along the following observation that we thought we would share:

I wonder what the RPI of the 1973-1974 team would have been considering that NC State:

  • played #1 UCLA on a neutral site (lost)
  • beat #18 Memphis State on a neutral site beat
  • #11 Purdue AT Purdue
  • beat UNC on three occasions were ranked 4th in the country each time
  • beat Maryland three times when they were ranked #3, #6 and #5
  • beat #5 Providence in the NCAAT
  • beat #13 Pitt in the NCAAT
  • beat #2 UCLA in the NCAAT
  • beat #3 Marquette in the NCAAT

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NCS Basketball Stat of the Day Tradition

43 Responses to Stat of the day

  1. Noah 04/07/2009 at 8:40 PM #

    In two years, we’re going to have the best OL in school history.

  2. turnoffthetv 04/07/2009 at 8:58 PM #

    “Born 2/12/73”

    2/19 here.

    Curious what are your first memories of NCSU? I would say mine were 80-81-82, though its kind of blurry. Wasn’t Chuck Nevitt in the mix back then? I can barely remember my dad and some of his friends talking about him. Not a lot of TV back then.

  3. WolftownVA81 04/07/2009 at 9:31 PM #

    My wife told me she was on campus one day and saw Chuck go through a turn stile and his knees hit the bar. Funny what you remember. I always remember his hustle and defense on the court. We came to campus as transfer students in May of 79 so we got to see Norm’s last year and Jim’s first year. At that time, we didn’t expect to win every game but we had an expectation of being competitive. Looking back now, we almost took it for granted that winning at home was a strong possibility and that we had a decent chance on the road. My how times have changed.

  4. Greywolf 04/08/2009 at 12:29 AM #

    “So Basically you had to win the Acc Tourney to get invited. Is this right? someone help me here.”
    Close. Win the ACCT and you were in. The bastards didn’t have the option of inviting or not inviting. I guess you knew that. I just wanted to say it. Possibly the second best team in the country stayed home in 74, Maryland. Len Elmore got his ass handed to him by Burleson. You don’t want to piss big Tommy off.
    `
    Sloan was a real man. Would look you in the eye and nod if he saw you somewhere in public and saw the look of recognition on your face. Same as Case. I saw the UCLA game and the finals in ’74. UCLA game was the most exciting game I have every seen — exciting in the sense we were down by 7 in OT. Think about it. Down by 7 to UCLA in OT in the dynasty years. I didn’t think it was possible to come back. When we did, strangers were slapping hands hugging, you wouldn’t believe it. Woman in front of me turned to slap hands to people in my row and stopped dead still. “Mister, you’d better sit down.” I thought I was having a heart attack and I took the woman’s advice and sat down the last few seconds of the game.
    `
    You young guys must wonder why me and some of your fathers slowly lost interest in basketball after 73 & 74. Think about being married to the most wonderful woman in the world — beautiful, witty, smart, sexy, you know what I mean, HOT — and she becomes ill and slowly dies. No other woman could ever catch your interest again. That’s how it is with me. Oh, I look at other State teams. I was very happy the 83 team won the NC, but they were not the best team in the tournament. Not even close. If State had played Houston 10 more times, I’m not sure we could have won 1 of them. We “survived and advanced” in 83. We kicked ass and advanced in 74. We beat Marquette by about 14 in the title game in 74 and it wasn’t as close as the score.
    `
    Now football: that’s a different animal. We’ve never figuratively been in bed with the most beautiful girl in the world. We came close a few times — top 5, I believe — but as far as being a football power, we were pretenders.
    `
    This is different. The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all day. This man, this leader of young men, this guy who coaches follow around, this TOB is going to lead us to the promised land of football. What is basketball — men running around in shorts? Something to do between football season and baseball season or as I like to tell my tarhole friends, Spring Practice.
    `
    You guys ought to try it. When the Holes bring up basketball, look down your nose at their ass and sneer at ’em and tell ’em, “Basketball? that’s what the boys do to keep in shape for Spring Practice, isn’t it.” Oh, they won’t take it totally lying down but it will slow their ass down, take nearly all the pleasure away from them and their “championship” shit suddenly becomes bearable.
    `
    And if they can’t take a joke, fuck ’em.

  5. Greywolf 04/08/2009 at 12:42 AM #

    That “white” safety is going to be the next John Lynch. (I made that up. He’s probably a “package deal” with Crisp, but who knows.) Please, let’s not start denigrating him like the 1-Star basketball recruit who is going to just fool the hell out of us and the flippin tarholes. LOL Anybody remember Spud Webb?
    That 5-7 dude won the NBA dunk contest one year. And nobody predicted that, either.

  6. TOBtime 04/08/2009 at 7:01 AM #

    Greywolf, I have some one-liners that have absolutely shut DOWN hole fans. Yours is pretty good as well! Most of the alumni are pretty cool folks. The rest of their “fans” however…

    Just goes to show our NC’s have gone right through the heart of the hole each time. I was also a kid in 73-74 and it is beginning to make sense to me now why Deano hated Sloan so much.

    I brought this up on another thread but anybody know where we can get posters of David T. in the air? I know there is one hanging in the Greensboro COliseum as an ad for the ACC tourney so somebody makes them. Maybe I’ll swing by ACC headquarters and ask Swoff if he knows?

  7. Noah 04/08/2009 at 8:28 AM #

    Curious what are your first memories of NCSU?

    Carter-Finley at some point in the 70s. I remember the Penn State game in 1979, but I was at a game before that. I remember going to a Wake game and spending the day running around the bank goofing off. It might have been that year.

    I remember the 1977 Peach Bowl game because we had tickets and heavy fog ended up cancelling our flight, but I didn’t go to any regular season games that year.

  8. Noah 04/08/2009 at 8:31 AM #

    Anybody remember Spud Webb?
    That 5-7 dude won the NBA dunk contest one year. And nobody predicted that, either.

    Webb was a JUCO all-american, was the MVP of the JUCO national title team, and won several dunk contests at Midland College and in high school.

  9. Greywolf 04/08/2009 at 9:28 AM #

    Noah,
    Point well taken. I was thinking dunk contest in the NBA, not JUCO or HS. Regardless of where he won it, dunking at his height was quite an accomplishment in those days. Sadly enough, it points to the attraction NCSU basketball was in those days: the DC pipeline, etc.
    `
    Those days were different times altogether. I don’t recall recruiting services, AAU wasn’t what it has become, the “interweb” wasn’t “the biggest problem all ADs had to confront.”
    `
    The AAU has IMO has vastly increased the talent pool at the high end. Recruiting services have made the available talent common knowledge, “One and done” is the source of some very different strategies as far as recruiting is concerned. The Sloans, Cases, and Smiths would be scratching their heads trying to figure it all out.
    `

  10. Greywolf 04/08/2009 at 9:40 AM #

    TOBtime
    April 8th, 2009 at 7:01 am
    Greywolf, I have some one-liners that have absolutely shut DOWN hole fans. Yours is pretty good as well! Most of the alumni are pretty cool folks. The rest of their “fans” however…
    `
    I have no problem with alums bragging, basking in the glory. It’s the nose-pickin’ Walmart fans who have never been to one class that annoy me. “Never been to one class…” Hmmm sounds like some ex-State basketball players I knew. 😉
    `
    Here’s a story my Caloriner grad son told me: My son, regional manager for an re-insurance brokerage company, sent an email reply, along with a copy to the “boys in the back room” at his company, to one of his clients saying to not worry about a spread sheet that the client was having a problem reading, he (my son) would get with him and they would get it all sorted out. My son called me right after he got a response from the “boys in the back room” saying, “Garrick, why don’t you let the State grads handle the spread sheets, but if we ever need a POEM written, we’ll call you.” Kinda points to the difference in the education you get from NCSU vs UNX. Ironically enough the UNX grads end up with the more prestigious and higher paying jobs. And their BOG appoints the members of our BOT. What’s wrong with this picture?

  11. yankeewolf 04/08/2009 at 10:43 AM #

    Just thought I’d pipe in about those supposed EweNC fans that I’ve had to listen to for the last 2 weeks. The ones that annoy me the most are the ones that not only didn’t go to Carolina, but don’t even go to games or for that matter watch regular season games. We hear nothing from these “fans” until tournament times…and then all the sudden it’s “Go Heels!” I go to every single State game that I can get to and lemme tell you WHEN we start being relevant again, I won’t be as obnoxious as those WalMart fans.

    As for the topic at hand…my dad introduced me to State and I always wanted to go there. I don’t remember many games before the 1983 championship since we were in NY and didn’t get to see many of their games. But we went to see State play football in Syracuse, I think when i was little. The day I visited State for my interview, Tommy Burleson was on campus with his very pregnant (and short!) wife. He was the tallest man I’d ever seen and my dad knew who he was right away. He was so great, sat down (and looked us in the eyes) and talked to us for a while.

  12. Noah 04/08/2009 at 11:39 AM #

    Those days were different times altogether. I don’t recall recruiting services, AAU wasn’t what it has become, the “interweb” wasn’t “the biggest problem all ADs had to confront.”

    There were a very few recruiting news outlets. My dad subscribed to one and got me hooked. You got news quarterly in a little homemade magazine. If you ever saw the original Bill James Baseball Abstracts, it would look very similar.

    The real problem with AAU is that it’s totally unregulated and exists beyond the reach of the NCAA. As long as there are large amounts of money available, you’re going to end up with pretty unsavory characters there.

  13. ThomYorkepack 04/08/2009 at 12:03 PM #

    ^I feel less like an outcast now. BASEBALL ABSTRACTS!!! Noah, do you get his “Gold Mine” books now? Same writing style, no real team analysis, but great ‘unconventional’ player analysis…

  14. Noah 04/08/2009 at 12:25 PM #

    I haven’t read Bill James in years. From time to time, I’ll stumble across something he’s done and I make sure to read it, but I don’t seek him out the way I used to.

    I really liked his view of statistics. I wish more sports would apply his practical nature.

  15. old13 04/08/2009 at 12:33 PM #

    “Curious what are your first memories of NCSU?” One of my fondest memories of NCSU – NCSU football legacy:

    Earl Edwards built the program from nothing in the 50s, reaching a No.3 national ranking during the 1967 season (my senior year) after beating the University of Houston (#1 in the country at the time as I recall) in Houston. We were 8-0 with two games to go that year and lost to Clemson and Penn State, both on the road, by about a touchdown each (I could look up the actual scores I suppose.) In any case, the balloon was popped, but we did beat UGa in the Liberty Bowl (in Nashville then) by a score of 14-7. Jim Donnan was the QB that year with All-American Dennis Byrd at DT and Chuck at LB. (Ron Carpenter was a freshman or sphomore, I believe.) In any case, that was the best year for Wolfpack football nationally as neither Holtz nor Sheridan ever had a top 5 team at NCSU to my recollection. The D was one of the top 5 in the country, allowing about 7 points per game. The O was conservative with minimal passing (enough to keep the opposing D honest) and ball-control the focus – didn’t score many points, but didn’t leave the D in bad positions much either. BTW in those days we played PSU almost every year as an OOC game.

  16. highstick 04/08/2009 at 9:48 PM #

    Old, you and I would have been in the same class since I should’ve graduated in 67 also except for a 4 year detour beginning in 66 to serve Uncle Sam. Came back in 70 to finish up.

    These guys talk about first memories of State(and if I’m repeating myself to some of the older posters, forgive me). I lived under Riddick Stadium for 2-3 months as a freshman, lived in Carmichael as a gym rat playing and officiating intramural and frat basketball games after moving to Alexander, watched CTC wrestle, ended up on the wrong end of a pile in a basketball game under Joe Scarpatti and Don Montgomery and couldn’t move my arm for 3 days, didn’t miss a basketball game in Reynolds(and my grades reflected it), saw Case, Maravich, Edwards, Sorrell, and even Willis Casey coach the swim team, am old enough to know who Jon Speaks was(bet that’s a name most of you NCSU basketball fans don’t have a clue about) And to cap it all back, came back in 70, sat behind Tommy Burleson in a class, met DT as a freshman, probably know who Cowdog is, cut up frogs with Charlie Young in Biology, and saw Holtz bring respectability back to NCSU football. My bias against Sloan is because one of my roommmates played for Sloan and thought he was a jerk(but in all honesty, the feeling may have been mutual knowing that roommate). So my era spanned from Larry Lakins to David Thompson in basketball to the Italian Mafia to the Buckey twins, Stan Fritts, Charlie Young and Willie Burden.

  17. old13 04/08/2009 at 9:57 PM #

    I was actually in the Class of 1968, highstick. The 1967 football season was the first semester of my senior year. But we do have some common ground. Eddie Biedenbach was in my class. Amato was in my freshman class but graduated in January 1969 I believe. I remember Jon Speaks. And I do remember Larry Lakins – what a bruiser; retired Marine, as I recall! The Pack was mostly a spoiler in BB in the conference in those days. I remember we played Duke to a 12-10 final score in the ACCT one year. I was in attendance at the first game in (then) Carter Stadium in 1966. AND those were the days of Chancellor John Caldwell when all things NCSU were pretty well managed. I always liked him. I was in Owen for my first two weeks at State and lived the rest of my time there in Bragaw.

    I became a Pack follower, however, only after I decided in my junior year of high school to go to State. My mother was a Duke grad and a real sports fan, so I grew up on Duke football mostly – they were good then. In fact, I saw Sonny Jurgeson play at Duke. I do remember as a kid going to a scouting function on the State campus where we attended a State football game (in Riddick) and I saw Gabe play. (We slept on the concrete runway at Reynolds – what a night!)

    I also remember that the academic year 1964-1965, my freshman year, was the first year that it was NCSU (previously NCSC) with about 11,000 students, of which (literally) 10,000 were men! It was also the first year that there was a women’s dorm on campus – Watauga – which was, of course, (unfortunately) dubbed “The Pig Palace!” And somewhere in there, I’ve forgotten what year, the UNC System Board of Governors wanted to change the name to UNC Raleigh (UGH!!!) During the ensuing “discussion” about not dropping the term “NC State” another “great” idea offered was to call it NC State of the UNC at Raleigh! Thank heavens it was finally left at NCSU!!!

    (I should know better than to start reminiscing about the “good old days!”)

  18. Texpack 04/09/2009 at 8:36 AM #

    I recently locate my press guide for the 72-73 team that they handed out at Norm Sloan basketball camp. I also have a program from the North-South Doubleheader that year autographed by the entire team. Somebody asked Norm Sloan one time what we was thinking when we went down seven in the second OT against UCLA. His response, “We’re in trouble.” He said he told the team they just needed to get a couple of turnovers and they would be ok. The phone rang off the wall at our house after that game and my Dad answered every call with “Go Wolfpack.” Most people were calling to see if we were still alive.

    The only win more amazing than the comeback against UCLA was the comeback at Purdue. We were down almost 15-20 points IIRC and mounted a steady comeback to win the game.

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