Wolfpack Legends: Fire & Ice
2/20/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Editor's note: This was orginally published in the book "Legends of NC State Basketball," by GoPack.com managing editor Tim Peeler (SportsPublishing LLC, © 2004). It is reprinted here with permission.
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. – From one of the first times they played together as N.C. State teammates, it became hard to separate Chris Corchiani and Rodney Monroe, the Wolfpack's famed "Fire & Ice'' guard combination.
Granted, in that one particular pickup game at Carmichael Gym during their freshman season, the difficulty was in prying the two flailing guards apart, so intent were they on beating each other's brains in.
It was the late summer, and both Corchiani and Monroe had arrived as well-decorated high school point guards. Oh, Corchiani, the McDonald's All-America who was twice named Florida's "Mr. Basketball'' in his career at Miami Lakes High School, had heard that Monroe wanted to play the shooting guard position in college, but he also knew from their meetings at the summer basketball camps that Monroe had played the point position for four years at St. Maria Goretti High School in Baltimore, Maryland.
He had also heard from some older, trouble-making teammates that Monroe might want to play the point, and Corchiani was out to make sure nobody messed with his turf. So, at one point in the endless afternoon, Monroe called a foul on Corchiani. First, they got in each other's faces. Then they started swinging. Then Chucky Brown, who stepped in as a peacemaker, got a fat lip.
Two more times, Corchiani and Monroe let their tempers take over and needed to be separated by their new teammates. The next day they were sore and bruised. Corchiani's jaw hurt.
"Nobody was going to back down,'' Monroe says, smiling at the memory. "I think that is when our relationship really got started, after those rough-and-tumble incidents.''
And after a trip to talk to head coach Jim Valvano, who heard about the scuffles from other players on the team. The coach, who envisioned four years of having the two guards run his transition offense, was hardly thrilled that they were at each other's throats from the first tip.
"He told us, in his own way, that we needed to work together,'' Corchiani remembers. ""He told us we were the backcourt of the future, and we better start behaving that way.''
That was really the beginning of a friendship that eventually ended with Corchiani, the emotional ""Fire'' part of the combination, becoming the NCAA's all-time assists leader and Monroe, the stone-faced shooter known as ""Ice'', breaking David Thompson's school scoring record.
Could they have done the same thing had they not played their entire college careers together? That's the perfect chicken-and-egg question for the two guards. Would Monroe have scored so many points (2,551, third most in ACC history) had Corchiani not been there to throw him the ball? Would Corchiani have had so many assists (1,038, now the second most in NCAA history behind Duke's Bobby Hurley) if Monroe hadn't been there to hit so many baskets?
"I don't know if you can answer that question,'' Monroe says, some 15 years after their playing days together have ended. ""We both could have had good careers if we had gone to other schools and played with different people. Chris is a true point guard; all he needed was someone to pass the ball to. He could have played with another shooting guard and had a very successful career. I could have played with another point guard and been pretty good.
"Would we have been as good as we were together? It's hard to say, but I don't think so.''
But Corchiani believes their special bond on the court may have been a detriment to both of them when it came to assessing their value in the NBA, where both desperately wanted to have success.
"We benefited from our play together in college, but I think we hurt one another for the next level,'' Corchiani says. ""The scouts told me I was too dependent on Rodney and that I never developed into a scorer or a shooter and that he was too dependent on me to handle the ball.''
But during their magical careers, which included three trips to the NCAA Tournament, the two were the inseparable combination of "Fire & Ice,'' a promotional name given to them by N.C. State sports information director Mark Bockelman.
"The name was perfect, because it fit our personalities so well,'' Monroe says.
Even in his high school days, Monroe was hard to rile. He never argued with officials' calls. He never got in anyone's face. Only once did he ever get into a fight with a teammate, and that was probably more Corchiani's fault.
"He was that way on and off the court,'' Corchiani says. "Whether he was walking to class or at a nighclub or in the middle of an overtime, he was always very, very reserved. Nothing ever got to him.''
At least not outwardly. Monroe could get riled, but he mainly used it as motivation.
Chucky Brown remembers the night before the Wolfpack was supposed to play Iowa in the second round of the 1989 NCAA Tournament. He and Monroe were riding in an elevator at the team hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, with, of all people, Iowa stars B.J. Armstrong and Roy Marble.
The four opponents knew exactly who the others were, but Marble and Armstrong began a derogatory conversation between themselves for the benefit of Brown and Monroe. They were talking about how they had been in such big games, like their win that year at North Carolina, and how N.C. State had not. They talked freely about how they were going to win the game the next day.
"We were looking at each other like, "Damn, we just came in first place in the ACC,' '' Brown said. "But we didn't want to start nothing.''
The Wolfpack teammates kept their silence throughout the elevator ride, but when they got off and the doors closed, Monroe turned to Brown and said: ""Let's go kick their [CENSORED].' ''
And you know what? Monroe did, almost single-handedly. He scored 40 points in the double-overtime victory, including game-tying baskets in both regulation and in the first overtime. The second shot was over a swarming double-team by Armstrong and Marble.
At one point in the game, Marble told Brown, ""He ain't going to keep shooting that good.''
Brown responded: ""He will if you keep leaving him open.''
Monroe, who had already made an improbable tip-in with two seconds remaining in the regular-season finale against Wake Forest to send the game into a record four overtimes, made a career out of making clutch plays. As a senior, he scored 47 points against Georgia Tech and was named the ACC's Player of the Year.
Wolfpack fans will always remember Corchiani's hard-scrabble toughness. He never made first-team All-ACC, but few guards ever had more control of the pace of games than Corchiani did.
Nor did they generate as much emotion. Corchiani remembers many games when he was smacked, slapped and kicked you know where. Sometimes he goaded opponents into doing those very things.
"I didn't really mind,'' Corchiani says. "They would get frustrated with the way I played and do something like that. When that happened, I knew I had won. That was part of my game.
"I loved doing that kind of thing at home, getting right in somebody's face, because it always got the crowd into it.''
Corchiani was always willing to do whatever Valvano asked, whether it was defending Georgia Tech center Tom Hammonds in a trademark junk defense or cooling his head after Valvano's departure finally came about.
Loyal to his head coach, Corchiani vowed that if Valvano left, he was going too. ""I don't care if John Wooden is the next head coach, I am not staying,'' he said at the time. Monroe countered by considering his professional basketball options.
Valvano, who had already accepted a $600,000 buy-out from the school, invited Corchiani to lunch one afternoon.
"What the hell are you doing?'' Valvano said. "I appreciate the gesture, but you need to do what is best for you and it doesn't make any sense for you to transfer.''
"He was the one who told me to stop all this nonsense,'' Corchiani says.
So, in the end, Corchiani and Monroe both returned for the senior seasons to play for first-year head coach Les Robinson. In turn, Robinson essentially turned the team over to his two captains and let them take the team as far as it would go.
"Every time I see Coach Robinson, I thank him for making our senior year something special,'' Corchiani said.
Though they were roommates on the road for one season, Corchiani and Monroe say they weren't really as close during their college days as people assume. Generally, after games and practices, they went their separate ways.
But once their college careers ended, they became closer, as each pursued professional careers that took them to all points of the globe. Corchiani played in Italy, Turkey, Germany and Spain, as well as for the Orlando Magic, the Boston Celtics and the Washington Bullets. He has settled down in Raleigh now with his wife and five children, and has begun a career in residential real estate.
"Playing professionally was fun,'' Corchiani says. "I had been playing basketball my whole life, and I didn't want to stop. I thought it was a great opportunity for me financially and culturally, to see so many parts of the world.''
He even adopted a son, while playing abroad in Turkey, something that gave Corchiani a connection to Herb Sendek's program when guard Engin Atsur was recruited to play for the Wolfpack and became the first Turkish native to play in the ACC.
Monroe began his career as a second-round pick of the Atlanta Hawks, but played only 38 games before being relegated to the vagabond life of a career professional player in Europe. He made stops in Australia, Israel and the Czech Republic, before settling down in the Italian leagues. [He played there from 199-2007, before retiring from professional basketball and settling in Charlotte, where he is now a middle school basketball coach.]
It's not the kind of career that Monroe envisioned when he finished his Wolfpack career, but it has been financially rewarding.
"When I left N.C. State, I was expecting to be a high draft pick in the NBA,'' Monroe said. "People were telling me I would be a top 15 pick. That's what I expected, and I expected to play many years in the NBA.
"When I first went to Europe, I knew I could have a career playing basketball over there, but my goal was to play in the NBA. Sometimes things don't work that way.''
Every summer for 10 years, however, Corchiani and Monroe returned to Raleigh to conduct the popular ""Fire & Ice'' basketball camps. They meet up on occasion now for family vacations. And, at the beginning of the 2003-04 basketball season, they hooked up one more time on N.C. State's home court, to have their jerseys raised together in the rafters of the RBC Center.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.