For multiple reasons, Monday nights have never been a big night for ACC basketball during the era of national and syndicated television broadcasts, at least not until the 2013-14 season when ESPN added the expanded Atlantic Coast Conference to its popular Big Monday broadcasts.
There are even more this year, as the ACC began its 20-game league schedule for the first time this season and needed more games on ESPN to go with its inaugural season of broadcasts on the ACC Network.
NC State hasn’t been a regular in any of those Monday night broadcasts, playing an average of one a year since ACC Big Mondays began.
But against North Carolina? That hasn’t happened in nearly half a century. At one time, however, it was practically a tradition to play the Tar Heels on Mondays.
Throughout the 1960s and into the ‘70s, the league had regular game on the first night of the week, and of course the NC State-UNC rivalry was a huge part of that, playing at least one Monday night game in six consecutive seasons.
On Feb. 12, 1968, Dean Smith’s third-ranked Tar Heels beat Norm Sloan’s Wolfpack 96-84 in Chapel Hill, thanks to a then-career high 32 points by UNC sophomore Charlie Scott. The Tar Heels won the next four Monday night games in the seasons that followed.
Then, on Feb. 5, 1973, a different sophomore phenomena named David Thompson from Boiling Springs, North Carolina, teamed with 7-foot-3 center Tommy Burleson of Newland, N.C. as the second-ranked Wolfpack beat the No. 8 Tar Heels 76-73, in Reynolds Coliseum, ending a five-game Monday night losing streak to the Heels.
In that game, Carolina controlled the tempo and maintained a small lead throughout the game, thanks to a pressure zone defense and a pre-Phil Ford four-corner offense. Still, Burleson came through with 21 points and Thompson had 22 to keep the Wolfpack in the game, even after the Tar Heels opened the second half on a 12-2 run to take a six-point lead.
Late in the game, with the Tar Heels ahead 73-72, UNC guard (and future successful NBA coach) George Karl stepped out of bounds with six seconds to play, turning the ball over to the Wolfpack.
Sophomore Mark Moeller scored on a jumper immediately afterwards, and Thompson sealed the victory with a pair of free throws for the third win over UNC in what turned into a record-setting nine-game winning streak over Smith and the Tar Heels.
The two teams have not met in a Monday game since then. Until tonight.
In all, Monday conference games are rare for all ACC teams. For NC State, tonight’s contest is the 30th Monday league game out of the 982 ACC games in program history.
In both the 1970-71 and 1971-72 seasons, the Wolfpack played three Monday night conference games each year before the league eventually abandoned the concept of starting the week with conference contests.
For the first time since then, the Pack will play three Monday games against league opponents this year. The next one is on March 2 at Duke.
State is 3-0 on Monday nights against the Blue Devils.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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