Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 11, 1993 TAG: 9303110218
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL BRILL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
BIGGEST AND BEST
DURHAM, N.C. - I was asked recently by a Washington, D.C., sportscaster why the Atlantic Coast Conference was the nation's best in college basketball."Proximity" of the schools, especially in North Carolina, "and the tournament," I said.
Believe it, too.
The ACC Tournament is not the nation's oldest - the Southern Conference, from which seven current ACC members defected in 1953, holds that status.
However, it clearly is the biggest and best, and it celebrates its 40th anniversary this week in Charlotte.
For years, the ACC Tournament has been considered the nation's toughest ticket. National brokers who can get tickets for anything, including the Masters golf tournament, fail to obtain anything from the ACC.
There has been no public sale since 1966. All of the tickets in the 23,532-seat Charlotte Coliseum are divided nine ways, and there are few students on hand. Most of the fans come from major contributors to the schools' booster organizations.
In other words, it often costs thousands of dollars in contributions just for the right to purchase the $140 tickets.
The ACC tournament is a social event. Fans come early and stay until it's over. Even if their teams lose in the first round, for the most part, they do not go home.
It was not always so.
In 1954, the first ACC Tournament was held at North Carolina State's Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, where the seating capacity was 12,400. Tickets for the entire session, seven games, sold for $6 and $9. There were 5,214 books sold. Only the semifinals on Friday night sold out. Total attendance was 39,200. The conference grossed $70,252.
Within two years, the semifinals and final were sellouts. Attendance climbed until 1961, when North Carolina, on NCAA probation, elected to sit out the event. Reynolds was only half-filled for the games Thursday afternoon, and the total attendance of 38,100 was the lowest ever.
By 1965, however, the tournament was sold out, and it has been ever since, even though every game is on television.
For the first 13 years, the ACC Tournament was held at North Carolina State, which had the largest arena. The Wolfpack of coach Everett Case won the first three championships, and the other coaches constantly complained about the home-court advantage.
In 1967, the tournament moved to Greensboro, and since then has been played in Charlotte; Landover, Md.; and Atlanta. A three-year contract with the Greensboro Coliseum, now undergoing expansion, has been signed.
Once the tournament left Reynolds, it never again was played on a college campus.
When the tournament was moved, Duke athletic director Eddie Cameron said, "There has been a continued request that it be played on a neutral court."
In truth, said Marvin "Skeeter" Francis, retired publicist for the ACC and a longtime tournament director, "the other schools got tired of seeing the same N.C. State fans in the midcourt seats every year."
The seating chart for the tournament now is rotated annually, providing some of the best seats for different schools each year.
When the tournament began, there was a VIP section, for the various school presidents, faculty representatives and athletic directors.
That ended because, Wake Forest faculty representative Jack Faber said, "it was too damn polite. You might be sitting next to a person who was affiliated with the school your team was playing. You couldn't cheer."
Nobody has that problem anymore.
Neither snow, nor ice, nor gloom . . .
My second ACC Tournament was in 1960. I headed for Raleigh in a company car with Roland Hughes, sports editor of the Roanoke World-News.
It was snowing so hard we could not see the road. Once we left Danville, Va., headed south on Virginia 86, all we could do was judge where the road was by the trees on either side, and we tried to stay in the middle.
Finally, we arrived at the intersection of 86 and Virginia 70, which led to Raleigh. There, stopped in the road, was the Wake Forest team bus.
I parked behind the bus and spoke to Francis, who was then the sports information director of the Deacons. "You can follow us to Raleigh," he said.
We followed the bus a couple hundred yards - directly into a snowbank. The bus finally got out. Hughes and I left the car in the snow and boarded the bus. We picked up the car four days later.
During the same storm, Maryland sports information director Joe Blair was driving to Raleigh with Washington Star sports writer Merrill Whittlesey when their car got stuck near Henderson, N.C.
Blair got out to push and was able to get the car started down a steep incline. Whereupon Whittlesey took off and left him stranded.
Blair had no alternative except to hitchhike.
"I knew there were some Maryland people behind me," he said, "and nobody else was crazy enough to be out on the road."
Fortunately, Blair was picked up by Maryland athletic director Bill Cobey, who couldn't believe what had happened.
When they arrived at Raleigh, they found Whittlesey had unloaded Blair's gear and placed it in his hotel room.
"I was just afraid to stop because I thought I'd get stuck again," he told Blair. "And I knew there were other Maryland people behind us."
In 1980, with the tournament being played in Greensboro, a blizzard-like storm hit on the night of the semifinals.
By Sunday, when Duke was to play Maryland for the championship, the city was paralyzed. Five inches of snow had fallen, followed by ice and freezing rain. It was 13 degrees with a 29 mph wind. Somehow, 10,392 people showed up.
The opening shot of the telecast that afternoon was through the open back doors of the Greensboro Coliseum, showing the parking lot, empty and covered by drifting snowbanks.
Darkness on the edge of town
In 1961, N.C. State was on probation and could not advance to the NCAA Tournament. After North Carolina won its semifinal game to gain a spot against the Wolfpack in the ACC final, Tar Heels coach Frank McGuire said he might not use his regulars. "I might save them for the NCAAs," he said.
Underdog N.C. State took an early lead and, midway through the first half, McGuire pulled his starters. He played them again at the start of the second half, then sent in the subs.
An apparently outraged fan broke into the transformer room at Reynolds and pulled the light switch, breaking it in the process. For eight minutes, the coliseum was plunged into almost-complete darkness. The only light came from the red exit signs.
Emergency work was done, and the game was finished with dim lighting, especially displeasing to television crews. N.C. State won 80-56.
McGuire insisted the game was over before he inserted the reserves. "The regulars lost the game," he said.
Taking in some off-court traditions
In its early years, there was a big party the night before the tournament began, sponsored by a Raleigh clothing store.
Door prizes in 1962 included a $100 suit and a $75 tuxedo. Dick Herbert, sports editor of the Raleigh News and Observer and executive secretary for the sports writers and sportscasters association for the conference, reminded all media members to get there early for the drawings.
"Gov. Hodge will be there, but they've promised me there won't be any speeches," he wrote in a letter to the membership.
One of the other prizes came from a Raleigh bank, which awarded $2 for each field goal made by the winning team in the championship game.
Wake Forest was in the final, and Skeeter Francis won the drawing. He was keeping the score book for the Demon Deacons, all along screaming at coach Bones McKinney, "Get the ball to Chappell."
Len Chappell, the ACC's scoring leader with a 30-point average, had 10 of the Deacons' 27 field goals as Wake Forest won 77-66.
"I won $54 and the bank sent me a letter, asking me if I wanted to open an account," Francis said. "I just told them to mail me the money."
One of the other features of the tournament was a Friday night party after the semifinals, for all school officials and the media.
The press corps arrived late, of course, and the pickings often were slim at the midnight breakfast buffet.
Bob Quincy of the Charlotte News asked for some eggs, and when he was told there weren't any more, he decked the chef. That was the end of the Friday functions.
I have been a willing participant in a more modern tradition, which now takes place on Saturday night after the semifinals, or, more accurately, early Sunday morning.
It started several years ago, when I was wheeled into the media hospitality room on a luggage cart to offer my predictions on which teams I believed would make the NCAA field of 64, and where they would be placed.
What's that they say about nice guys?
Animosity filled the early years of the tournament. Fans hated each other. Teams hated each other. Coaches and players hated each other.
In 1960, Wake Forest had a hatchet man, Dave Budd, who was suspended by commissioner Jim Weaver for fighting during the season. The competitive Budd earlier had been involved in an altercation with Cincinnati star Oscar Robertson. Many believed it was intentional.
By the ACC Tournament, Budd was a marked man. With 18 seconds left in the semifinal against N.C. State, Budd got into a fight with Anton "Dutch" Muehlbauer. Commissioner Weaver promptly suspended Budd for the title game against underdog Duke, which had lost by 17 and 19 points to the Deacons during the regular season.
Saturday afternoon at 5, the ACC's executive committee overruled Weaver and permitted Budd to play. Although he scored 10 points and had 15 rebounds, Duke upset the Deacs 63-59.
"We'd have won easily if Budd hadn't played," McKinney said. "But when we got him back, we played too much like gentlemen."
Wake me when it's the last 2 minutes
Stall-ball has a place in ACC history.
In 1966, North Carolina and top-rated Duke met in the semifinals, and Dean Smith elected to hold the basketball against the Duke zone.
"I didn't want a good game," he said. "I wanted to win it."
In the first half, the Tar Heels held the ball up to four minutes at a time. By halftime, the Blue Devils led 7-5, and UNC had taken five shots.
It appeared the Tar Heels' strategy would work when Carolina led 17-12 with 10:03 left, but Duke finally forged a tie at 20.
The Blue Devils fouled Johnny Yokley with 1:40 left. When he missed, Duke held for a final shot.
After a timeout with 16 seconds left, Duke set up a play for star Bob Verga, but he couldn't get open. Verga passed to center Mike Lewis, who was fouled on his attempt with four seconds left.
Lewis missed the first free throw but made the second for a 21-20 victory.
Duke coach Vic Bubas, commenting on Smith's strategy, said, "It's in the books for a coach to choose his style of play. If he wants to slow it down, that's his business. If we had lost, I would have said the same thing. You can't be a crybaby."
The Tar Heels did not make a substitution in the game.
Duke also was involved in the ultimate slowdown two years later in Charlotte, and this time the Blue Devils weren't as fortunate.
Facing Duke in the semifinals, N.C. State coach Norm Sloan elected to hold the ball, trying to pull Lewis away from the basket.
"We never talked about it, never practiced it, or never considered it until the game actually started," Wolfpack forward Vann Williford said.
However, Bubas wasn't about to chase.
"The truth of the matter is, we couldn't pressure a team of grandmothers," the Duke coach said.
So N.C. State's Bill Kretzer stood near midcourt with the ball for 14 minutes. It was perhaps the fastest half in history, ending with the Blue Devils ahead 4-2.
Radio stations couldn't get their commercial breaks because there was no stoppage in play. Finally, the North Carolina network elected to run its ads while the game was going on.
When the network resumed broadcasting, play-by-play man Bill Currie assured his audience it hadn't missed a thing. "This is as exciting as artificial insemination," he said.
The teams didn't really play in earnest until there were two minutes left and the score 8-8. N.C. State's Dick Braucher made the clinching free throw with three seconds left for a 12-10 victory.
Duke made two of its 11 field-goal attempts; N.C. State was 4-of-13.
Bubas and Sloan called nine timeouts in the last two minutes, which took longer to play than the first 38.
For its victory, the Wolfpack advanced to the final, where it lost 87-50 to North Carolina in the most lopsided ACC championship game ever.
BILL BRILL, the former Roanoke Times & World-News executive sports editor, has covered the ACC Tournament each year since 1959.