NC State basketball’s hard-won victory Monday night over reigning national champion Virginia was rare: It’s only the eighth time in program history that the Wolfpack has defeated the team that won the previous season’s NCAA Tournament.
But is it becoming common?
Because even though it hasn’t happened often, it was the second time in third-year coach Kevin Keatts’ tenure with the Pack that the Wolfpack has done it — both times on the opponent's home floor, no less.
In his inaugural season of 2017-18, Keatts took his team to Chapel Hill and beat defending-champion North Carolina in his first career game against the Tar Heels. The only other time that’s happened was when Everett Case took his 1957-58 team to Chapel Hill and beat Frank McGuire’s defending champs, ending a three-game losing streak to the Tar Heels.
Three years earlier, Case and the second-ranked Wolfpack beat the fourth-ranked La Salle 76-73 in Reynolds Coliseum. It was a victory that so enraged La Salle coach Ken Loeffler that he headed for the railroad tracks outside the arena’s front door and walked the rails back to the team’s downtown Raleigh hotel.
Half of State’s wins over defending champs were against the Tar Heels, including two in 1982-83, when Jim Valvano scored his first two career wins over UNC coaching legend Dean Smith, first in the regular season and then in an overtime win in the ACC Tournament in Atlanta.
Head coach Norm Sloan and his 1974 NCAA champion team beat seven-time defending champion UCLA in Greensboro in the NCAA tournament semifinals, ending the Bruins’ seven-year reign as national champions. Sloan’s Pack won State’s first team national title two nights later by beating Marquette.
The Wolfpack also own six wins over teams that went on to win the NCAA title later that year.
Case was the first to do it, in his first season of 1946-47, when his Red Terrors beat eventual national champions Holy Cross, featuring guard Bob Cousy, in a barnstorming game in Indianapolis.
It didn’t happen again for nearly 40 years, when Valvano and the Wolfpack beat Louisville in Reynolds, the Cardinals’ last loss before winning the 1986 title.
Coach Herb Sendek and his team featuring Julius Hodge eliminated Maryland from the 2002 ACC Tournament in Charlotte, which was also the Terps’ last defeat before capturing the national title.
Half of the wins over eventual national champions were against Duke, the Pack’s other cross-Triangle rival. Les Robinson, Sidney Lowe and Mark Gottfried each scored a win over teams that eventually led Blue Devil coach Mike Krzyzewski to national titles.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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