Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 8, 1990 TAG: 9004080149
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
"I tell them jokes," he once said when asked how a New Yorker became so popular on Tobacco Road.
He also won, making it easier for fans to overlook the fact that he was winning championships with players whose citizenship was less than exemplary.
So when one player stole a student's stereo, when another held up a pizza deliveryman, when professors began to complain about academic problems among players, the attitude was "boys will be boys. And besides, Coach V won us the 1983 national championship."
That title, stolen from a far more talented Houston team, was the peak for Valvano, who parlayed it into more than a half-million dollars a year from television appearances, clinics and sneaker contracts. It didn't hurt that he could evoke instant laughter with lines like this one about officials:
"I asked a ref if he could give me a technical for thinking bad things about him and he said, `Of course not.' I said, `Well, I think you stink.' And he gave me a technical."
But the laughs officially came to an end Saturday when Valvano was forced out as North Carolina State University coach after 10 years.
Valvano was born 44 years ago in New York, the son of a well-regarded high school coach named Rocco Valvano, who had St. John's coach Lou Carnesecca among his friends. He grew up in Seaford, N.Y., and played at Rutgers, where he teamed with Bob Lloyd to form one of the nation's better backcourts.
After a year as an assistant at Rutgers and two more at Connecticut, he became head coach at Johns Hopkins, a school known for its rigorous academic standards. In 1969, he coached the Blue Jays to a 10-9 record, their first winning season in 24 years.
After coaching at Bucknell from 1973-75, Valvano went to Iona and put the school on the nation's basketball map, coaching the Gaels to a 94-47 mark and two NCAA Tournament appearances.
In 1980, it was on to N.C. State, where, in 1983, he coached a nearly perfect game in the NCAA final against a Houston team that featured Akeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. He slowed down the pace and won 54-52 when Lorenzo Charles snatched Dereck Whittenburg's desperation shot out of the air and jammed it through at the buzzer.
Valvano guided N.C. State to the Final Eight three times, won the Atlantic Coast Conference title twice and averaged 21 victories per season.
He continued to tell jokes; North Carolina State celebrated and few cared that Charles, another New York import, had been arrested two years earlier for holding up a pizza delivery man on campus.
Then there was Chris Washburn, a 6-foot-10 North Carolina high school star admitted to State despite scoring only 470 on his Scholastic Aptitude Test, 70 points more than the minimum.
Washburn, charged with stealing a stereo while on campus, left after his sophomore year to turn pro, was eventually banned from the NBA for drug use and was arrested last week in Atlanta for cocaine and marijuana possession.
Anti-Valvano sentiment began to escalate in 1988 with pre-publication information from a book to be called "Personal Fouls." It alleged that the Wolfpack program was riddled with academic problems, that players used drugs and sold complimentary tickets to games.
The NCAA and the University of North Carolina System began investigations. Even before the probes had been completed, N.C. State Chancellor Bruce Poulton resigned in August 1989.
Meantime, prompted by problems at N.C. State, UNC System President C.D. Spangler issued a report on ways to improve athletic programs throughout the system. One of them was to bar coaches from holding dual roles as athletic directors - forcing Valvano to abandon the athletic director's job he got in 1986.
by CNB