N.C. State 25 years later Q&A
With four #1 seeds in the Final 4, we look back to the most shocking upset of them all
By Jack Erwin
It’s an unwritten rule of parenthood: Don’t take your 6-year-old to a sports riot. Fortunately for me, my normally hyper-cautious father ignored that rule in 1983 when N.C. State won the national championship. Twenty-five years ago this Monday, the Wolfpack pulled off one of the classic upsets in sports history, beating Houston on Lorenzo Charles’ last second put-back (or alley-oop, depending on your perspective). That night my dad took me up to Hillsborough Street in Raleigh to watch what seemed like the entire State campus parade by in drop-top Camaros. I’ve bled Wolfpack red ever since.
Over the last year, I’ve had the privilege of speaking with most of the players on that team for a 25th anniversary oral history that appears in the May issue of SLAM. Not surprisingly, there were far too many great anecdotes from that year to fit in one issue, so while the magazine piece concentrates on the NCAA Tournament, this special online feature provides the backstory for that season (as in the magazine piece, classes refer to the ‘82-’83 school year).
On March 21, 1980, Iona College’s Jim Valvano is introduced as N.C. State’s 15th coach, inheriting a freshman class that includes Dereck Whittenburg, Sidney Lowe and Thurl Bailey.
Dereck Whittenburg, senior guard: Sidney and I had just graduated from high school and we played in the Boston Shootout. After the game this guy comes up and hugs me and Sid and says, “love you two guys, my name is Jim Valvano, Iona College.” And I said, “You own a college?” That was a standing joke for years.
Sidney Lowe, senior point guard: One of the first meetings after he was hired he told us all that he doesn’t owe us anything, he didn’t recruit us, so it was basically up to us to please him. That was a jolt to young guys like us.

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