Dick Weiss on College Basketball
PITTSBURGH– Okay, so maybe this year’s North Carolina isn’t a latter-day version of the late Jim Valvano’s 1983 Cardiac Pack, which came out of
nowhere to win the national championship.
That team had stars like Sidney Lowe, Derek Whittenberg and Thurl Bailey, who earned an unexpected automatic bid to the tournament by winning the ACC tournament,
then defeated Virginia and Ralph its 7-4 All America Sampson before stunning heavily favored Houston’s Phi Slama Jama, 54-52, in the finals on a slam dunk by Lorenzo Charles off an air ball at the buzzer in Albuquerque.
This Wolfpack team was faced with similar obstacles.
On March 11, State was 17-14, having lost four straight games at the end of the regular season. With a 9-11 record in the ACC, they had no chance to earn an
at large spot. They would have to win five games in five games at the conference tournament in Washington, D.C. Impossible. Except it happened. NC State defeated Louisville, Syracuse, Duke, Virginia and North Carolina to make it happen.
Then, as an 11th seed, they defeated South Dakota State and 14 seeded Cinderella Oakland, 79-73, in overtime here to become the lowest seed to advance to a Sweet 16 where they will play second seed Marquette in Dallas.
The State marathon men have won seven games in 12 days. Not even NBA teams do that.
“It’s amazing,” the Pack’s 6-9, 275-pound center DJ Burns said. “To do what we’re doing, it’s just amazing. To us, it’s just basketball. Nobody inside
this locker room thinks of it as a magic carpet ride.
It’s what March is all about. Some teams got here by winning their conference, just like us, and that doesn’t mean they’re a bad team. We just keep playing
for each other.”
Burns, 23-year-old fifth years senior who was the Big South Player of the Year at Winthrop before transferring to State, has been a load for the Pack, winning the MVP in the ACC tournament. He came up big against Oakland, scoring 24 points and grabbing 12 rebounds in 42 minutes against Oakland, which was coming off a huge upset over Kentucky.
He played minutes against the Griz.
“I knew they needed me, man,” Burns said. “When we were in the huddle before overtime, coach (Kevin Keats) was like, I need you to rebound, I need
you to be aggressive.’ He said, ‘Don’t let up.’ I started saying that to myself.”
That had to be music to Keat’s ears.
Burns is an extroverted music love, who plays five different instruments and recorded a rap single called, “Beast Boy.”
He stepped up big to offset a 30- point performance from Trea Townsend and a barrage of six more threes from Jack Gohlke. This was a night when State
needed all hands-on deck. The Wolfpack got a double-double from 6-10 Mohamed Diarra, who finished with 11points, 13 rebounds, 3 blocks and 2 assists, and 12 points and eight assists from guard Michael O’Connell, a Stanford
transfer from Long Island.
“It’s been very, very challenging, because we’re very, very tired,” Diarra said. “But we don’t make excuses because we needed to show everyone who
we are.”
Diarra, a practicing Muslim, has been observing Ramadan since the ACC tournament began. That means he cannot eat or drink from sunrise to sundown. With night
games, he usually gets to break his fast at some point in the first half, with a banana and carbohydrate drink.
But he and the rest of the team survived and advanced, finally taking the game over in overtime to make believers of us all.
“We came from nowhere and we did something special,” Diarra said. “That’s crazy because two weeks ago, it was tough. Two weeks ago, we were a very forgettable
team. Now everyone knows us.”
