The Wolfpack is as deep as a kiddy pool. Yet as tired and depleted as they are, they have a quality that wasn’t there three long days ago when the tournament began.
Around them there is calm, a sense that when the game turns tense, they won’t. A scrub will hit a huge shot. The player on the line will make the free throw. The trick defense with which the opponent attacks will have no effect on point guard Elgin Atsur.
The result is that, at least for a week, NC State is special again, and when N.C. State is special, so is the ACC.
As bizarre as the setting is, the cruise ship Inspiration parked outside the arena in Tampa Bay, the final is about North Carolina and N.C. State and the way things used to be.
And if you love tradition, how can you complain about that?
Fans are posting some great NC State-related articles in the comments section of this entry. We don’t want to dissuade you from continuing to do that, but I thought that this piece from the Charlotte Observer had some good quotes that would be good for some of the younger set to absorb.
You can take the ACC basketball tournament out of North Carolina, but you can’t take North Carolina out of the tournament. That’s one way to put it.
Another, in the interest of equal time, is that you can take the tournament out of the state, but you can’t take State out of the tournament.
Many of you feel cheated because the game is not in Greensboro.
Scalpers outside the St. Pete Times Forum on Saturday were asking less than face value for a ticket to the North Carolina-N.C. State game, and they were timid as they did.
What would a scalper have received for a similar ticket in Greensboro? “One arm and one leg,” an ACC official says.
