‘We couldn’t lose’: Behind the scenes of NC State basketball’s improbable 1983 NCAA title

Forty years later, the images are still as sharp as a starlit Albuquerque night.

Dereck Whittenburg with the desperation heave, from a long way. Lorenzo Charles winning it, on the dunk. Jim Valvano’s mad dash, coattails flying. Thurl Bailey’s tears of joy. Cozell McQueen standing on the rim.

It’s all a part of an indelible story and memory — N.C. State’s magical run to the 1983 NCAA championship. Pack Power. The Cardiac Pack. Jimmy V.

It was April 4, 1983. The Wolfpack, everybody’s underdog, defeated mighty Houston 54-52 in the NCAA championship game at The Pit in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Forty years later, Valvano is gone, the coach dying of cancer in 1993. Charles died in 2011. Whittenburg works at N.C. State. Bailey lives in Utah, where he once played for the NBA’s Jazz.

Everyone who was in The Pit that night has a story to tell. Many of the stories about the ‘83 Pack have been told and retold.

Here are four others, perhaps lesser known but equally compelling, as told to The News & Observer:

The teenager

He was 15 years old at the time, and like many teenagers always up to something: like scouting out better seats at a basketball game and a way to sneak into them.

So it was that April night in 1983 for Eugene Corrigan Jr., known then, and now, as Boo. He went to Albuquerque with his parents — his father, Gene, was the athletic director at Notre Dame — for the Final Four, and he was at The Pit for the semifinal games on Saturday and the title game on Monday.

Forty years later, Boo Corrigan is N.C. State’s athletic director. In thinking back to those 1983 games, he refers to the Wolfpack as “us” in talking about the semifinal win over Georgia and then the upset of Houston, which streaked past Louisville in its semifinal in an awesome display of speed, skill and acrobatic slams.

“Us beating Georgia is not as descriptive in my mind as Houston-Louisville,” Corrigan said. “And it was seemingly a foregone conclusion who was going to win the national championship.”

The Houston Cougars. Phi Slama Jama. Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon, those guys.

But then the ball went up. The Pack led by eight points at halftime. Houston surged ahead in the second half, but the Wolfpack wouldn’t quit.

“And then there was that buzz in the arena as (the Pack) was hanging around, hanging around.,” Corrigan said.

Late in the game, Corrigan left his seats and, as he puts it, “Snuck my way down” closer to the court. And then Charles dunked the Whittenburg miss, beating the buzzer.

“The greatest thing ever,” Corrigan said. “You’re looking to see if the shot goes in and then you see this man jump up and catch it and dunk it.

“Everyone looked around and no one did anything for a second. Part of it is, ‘Did we just see what we thought we saw?’ It was one of those moments.”

Boo Corrigan soon found himself, like Valvano, wildly running around the court.

The ‘83 Pack had a 40-year reunion this season, and the team was honored during the Wolfpack’s game against Wake Forest. The Valvano and Charles families were on hand. Sidney Lowe, the senior point guard in 1983 and later the Pack’s head coach, returned to PNC Arena for the first time since 2011.

Lowe said Corrigan was the one most responsible for bringing them all back together. Corrigan deflects such praise, saying, “It was all about those folks being able to celebrate each other.”

The student photographer

Before he was one of Raleigh’s best-known restaurateurs and successful businessmen, Greg Hatem was an N.C. State student and staff photographer for Technician, the student newspaper.

In 1983, Hatem took the ride of his life. And not just as a college kid making a 3,500-mile round trip to Albuquerque. Hatem experienced all of the Pack’s ride, from Corvallis, Oregon, to Ogden, Utah, to the Pit in Albuquerque.

“I convinced the people (at University Publications) that if they didn’t send me to shoot the first round and by miracle we kept winning, we wouldn’t be able to get (credentials) to the other rounds,” Hatem says. “I flew out to Corvallis, then bused to Ogden. We came back to Raleigh after Ogden, but had hardly any money left in the budget (for the Final Four).

“Five of us drove out in a 1971 Mustang Fastback. We had eight sleeping in a room.”

Hatem also had one of the best seats in the house for the championship game. His one regret: He didn’t get the shot of Charles’ winning dunk, saying he took Whittenburg’s desperation jumper but stopped two frames short of the dunk.

His one fear: the game over and the title won, he wondered if he had enough film left for the Pack’s postgame celebration.

“It was pandemonium, just insane,” he says. “Everybody remembers Jim Valvano running around the court. I got a great picture of him running away from me, away from the camera.”

Hatem had enough film. He still has the camera, a Nikon F3, and the Valvano photo is still his favorite.

“For us, we had never shot anything of that magnitude before,” he says. “It was an amazing ride. Everything came together.”

Hatem now owns a restaurant called The Pit. It’s not named for the one in Albuquerque. For Hatem, that one stands alone.

The trainer

As Jim Rehbock recalls, Reynolds Coliseum was cold and Valvano’s message clear.

The Wolfpack had played at 14th-ranked Louisville just before Christmas 1982, losing 57-52, and had returned to campus for practice after the holiday break.

“There was no heat in Reynolds,” Rehbock says. “Guys were wearing their warmups, with gloves and stocking caps when they met on the court.

“But what’s so vivid is it was the first time I heard Jimmy (Valvano) talk about them being good enough to be national champions that year. I kind of wondered what he had been imbibing in. I thought he was nuts.

“Sure enough, a few months later, there we were in Albuquerque.”

Rehbock, a team trainer, knew how excitable Valvano could be. One of his duties on the bench was to help corral Valvano if he began to edge onto the court during games, which was often.

Once in New Mexico, Rehbock had another concern: a very sick Valvano.

“We were supposed to spend the week (before the Final Four) in Raleigh but the first day of practice Reynolds was packed,” Rehbock says. “Everybody was dunking the ball, Cozell (McQueen) was shooting 3s. With all that craziness we decided to go to Albuquerque early.

“We practiced a couple of days in a high school gym and Dereck (Whittenburg) got sick. Then Jimmy got sick. On the day of the national championship game, Jimmy had a 104-degree fever and spent the day in bed. We weren’t sure if he’d be able to coach.”

Valvano did coach — the game of his life. At the end, Rehbock was one of the mass of people celebrating on the court at The Pit until realizing he had one more duty.

“I had the trainer’s scissors for cutting down the nets,” he says. “I had to go find my kit and get the scissors. I still remember Jimmy cutting down the last bit of net and holding it up as he held on to the rim. It’s one of my favorite memories.”

The sophomore guard

Terry Gannon was open. Standing in front of the N.C. State bench, the sophomore guard was open and waving an arm when Thurl Bailey was being double-teamed by Houston in the far corner. He was open when Dereck Whittenburg got his hands on the ball 30 feet from the basket in the final seconds.

Whittenburg, on the ESPN “30 for 30” special on the ‘83 Pack, would say there was no way he was going to push the ball to Gannon for the last shot. Something about Gannon … panicking? That’s not exactly how Whittenburg describes it, but something like that.

“He is right. I might have done what he did and shoot an air ball,” a smiling Gannon said, tongue-in-cheek. ”Oops, I’m sorry. That was a pass, right? Oh, I’m so sorry, Whitt.

“He said he was never going to throw a pass to a sophomore, then he throws it to Lorenzo! Get your story straight! It was either a pass that he threw to a sophomore or he wasn’t going to throw it to a sophomore.”

Overlooked through the years is that Valvano called a timeout with 44 seconds left in regulation and substituted Gannon into the game for McQueen. With the Cougars in a half-court trap, Gannon handled the ball five times during the last possession and just averted a steal attempt by Clyde Drexler with 12 seconds left.

After ‘83, Gannon played two more years for the Wolfpack before working his way into radio and television, doing various spots for local stations before moving on to ABC and ESPN. Now with NBC Sports and the Golf Channel, he’s one of the nation’s best-known sportscasters.

Gannon said he was a graduate assistant coach at NCSU, thinking of being a coach or playing some pro basketball overseas, when Jefferson-Pilot Sports inquired about him doing some TV work. He turned to Valvano for advice and said he got about 30 seconds’ worth.

As Gannon recalled, “He was like, ‘Who you going to be, Walt Frazier? Get on with your life. Oh, you can get into TV? Sure, go give it a shot. I’ll hire you back.’ That was pretty much it.”

For Gannon, the memories of 1983 and the team’s postseason magic began in the ACC Tournament in Atlanta. The Pack edged Wake Forest by a point, topped North Carolina in overtime and then beat Virginia and Ralph Sampson in the championship game at the Omni.

“We had beaten Wake by 40, scored 130 points six days earlier, and now we needed a miracle to beat them,” Gannon says. “We got in the locker room and someone said, ‘We’re the team of destiny. It was never in doubt.’ We all kind of chuckled.

“Then we beat Carolina in overtime with Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins, who had a shot lip out at the end (of regulation). If that one goes in, who knows …. We get in the locker room and looked at each other and now it’s a little more serious. Team of destiny, oh, yeah. And then we beat Ralph and we believed it, that we were the team of destiny.

“It was complete. We couldn’t lose.”