Throwback Thursday: A March To Madness (Part 1)

Click here for David Griggs’ News and Notes for January 14, 2016

Click here for Chad Sherwood’s UTR Game of the Day between Fort Wayne (IPFW) and South Dakota State; also click here for Chad and David’s weekly UTR Podcast

Finally, click here for Joby Fortson’s latest installment of the Nitty Gritty Rankings

Last month, I had reviewed John Feinstein’s The Last Amateurs documenting the 1999-2000 season in the Patriot League; today we take a look at his earlier book A March To Madness which detailed the ACC in the 1996-97 season. The Atlantic Coast Conference has historically been the most consistently strong conference from top to bottom; this season was no exception. This was a season in which Tim Duncan took an expected victory lap for his senior season at Wake Forest; Dean Smith would coach North Carolina for the final time (although this wasn’t known until his retirement just before the beginning of the next season), and Mike Krzyzewski in essence rebuilt Duke’s storied program for the 2nd time.

While North Carolina got off to a slow start in ACC play (they were 3-5 in the first part of the season with home losses to Maryland and road losses at Wake Forest, Virginia, Florida State and Duke), they got red-hot in the 2nd half of conference play and would not lose again until they reached the Final 4 in Indianapolis. This also represented a time when Dean Smith would pass Adolph Rupp on the all-time victories list after beating Colorado in the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament in Winston-Salem. With a star cast that included Vince Carter, Antwain Jamison, Ademola Okulaja, Ed Cota and Shammond Williams, the Tar Heels would win 15 straight games en route to a #1 seed in the East Region and East Region championship before losing to Arizona.

Clemson was in Year 3 of the Rick Barnes era, and began their season with a flourish with a win on a neutral floor against Kentucky in their season opener. Their other signature wins included a win at home over Duke and a regular-season sweep over Maryland (although the Terps got the last laugh in the ACC Tournament). While Clemson did falter down the stretch in the regular season, they got a new lease on life when they were assigned to the Midwest Region as a #4 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They defeated Miami-Ohio and Tulsa in the Kansas City subregional before losing a double-overtime thriller to Minnesota in the Sweet 16 in San Antonio – click here to watch this classic.

Duke was 2 years removed from a disastrous season in which Mike Krzyzewski was sidelined with a back injury and would miss the bulk of ACC play from the bench for the Blue Devils. They got a signature win at Villanova (at what was then the debut of the First Union Center) before entering ACC play. After seething over a close loss at Maryland in which he felt his team had settled for a moral victory, Coach K figuratively and literally drew the line in what was an intense week of practices leading up to their annual rivalry with North Carolina. He debuted a smaller lineup featuring Chris Carrawell, Steve Wojciechowski, Trajan Langdon, and Jeff Capel; the Blue Devils would win a thriller at home en route to a regular season championship in the ACC. The Blue Devils would be upset by Providence in the 2nd round in Charlotte (Southeast Region), but reinforcements were on the way to Durham for the following season.

Wake Forest had the highest expectations in the preseason, and early on the Demon Deacons were looking like a sure bet to advance to the Final 4. They beat #1 Kansas AND #2 Missouri at separate points in the nonconference schedule, and also had decisive wins over UNC and at Duke (the only home loss for Duke all year) in the first half of ACC play. After losing a pair of heartbreakers at home to Maryland and NC State (click here for the NC State game – note the ending of this particular game), the Deacons seemed to lose their mojo in the 2nd half of ACC play. Duke, North Carolina and even Florida State would avenge earlier losses to Wake. While they ended up with a #3 seed in the West, they would be upset by the Stanford Cardinal in the 2nd round in Tuscon. (And yes, the Pac-10 incidentally had all 4 teams who qualified for the NCAAs advance to the Sweet 16, to say nothing about eventual national champion Arizona).

Maryland was another reclamation project in the ACC; when Gary Williams took the job for the 1989-90 season, he inherited a program that would be NIT bound in his debut season before getting hammered with a ban on NCAA Tournament play AND TV coverage for 2 seasons for transgressions committed in the Bob Wade regime. Keith Booth was the star for the Terrapins; they began the season unranked and would climb into the Top 10 in January. Only Wake Forest was able to beat the Terps in the 1st half of ACC play; they would limp to 5th place in the conference at the end of the regular season. They beat Clemson in the opening round of the ACC Tournament but failed to take advantage of Duke being upset by NC State the previous day. They would lose to the Wolfpack and ultimately were upset by College of Charleston in the 1st round of the NCAA Tournament.

The only team in the ACC that had to sweat out Selection Sunday were the Virginia Cavaliers; they were a team that advanced to the Elite 8 under Jeff Jones only 2 seasons earlier. However, going through the turmoil of off-season arrests and Jones’ own divorce would take an emotional toll on the Cavaliers. They did beat North Carolina and Maryland at home; they fell short at home against Duke in a very controversial ending (click here for game highlights) involving a clock malfunction and a failure by officials to allow a substitution by Virginia after a made free throw late in the game. While the Cavs were shipped west in the NCAA Tournament, they were blown out by Iowa in the 1st round of the NCAA Tournament.

The Cinderella story in the conference this season was the North Carolina State Wolfpack. In Herb Sendek’s first season as head coach, the Wolfpack began conference play 0-8 while losing one heartbreaker after another. In the 2nd half of conference play, they would actually finish 4-4 with home wins against Clemson, Florida State and Georgia Tech and at Wake Forest. Their 4-4 record was better than Maryland and Clemson and equal to that of Wake Forest. In the ACC Tournament, they beat Georgia Tech in the 1st round (aka the Les Robinson Game) before upsetting Duke in the quarterfinals and Maryland in the semifinals. Even North Carolina struggled to finish State in the ACC Championship; it would represent the first time since 1979 that the ACC runner-up would be relegated to the NIT. Even that was a huge step up for State fans given their decline after the late Jim Valvano resigned earlier in the decade (and may be the only time a program’s own fans would chant “NIT” after their first 3 wins in the ACC Tournament).

Florida State was another program that had been in a decline after their first 2 seasons in the ACC yielded a Sweet 16 appearance in 1992 and an Elite 8 run in 1993. There were whispers about the fate of Pat Kennedy after he had interviewed for other jobs in the offseason the year before; they grew louder as Florida State slumped to a 6-10 record in ACC play. They did beat Wake Forest and North Carolina at home, but their only notable road win was at Clemson. Still, they did advance to the finals of the NIT before losing to Michigan in the championship game at Madison Square Garden.

Only Georgia Tech would not qualify for any postseason in 1996-97. It was the first time at Tech that Bobby Cremins would finish last in the ACC since his first season in 1981-82 when he inherited a program in ruin. What really hurt the Yellow Jackets was Cremins’ inability to have a point guard ready to play when Stephon Marbury had declared for the NBA Draft last season. This was a program that went from Lethal Weapon III in 1990 (Kenny Anderson, Dennis Scott and Brian Oliver) to Travis Best to Stephon Marbury. Tech still had a star player in Matt Harpring (or “Hopping”, as Feinstein noted on Cremins’ pronounciation) but not nearly enough complimentary pieces to hope to compete in the ACC that season.

Next week, we focus more on the coaches of the ACC and some of their back stories (i.e. Which coach had to agree to coach women’s soccer as a condition of becoming a top assistant coach in men’s basketball). Stay tuned!