North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State, Louisville Have Tournament History
3/25/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
TOURNAMENT CENTRAL | SWEET 16 POSTSEASON GUIDE
In college athletics, there's no particular relevance to historical stats or trends for current teams. Unless of course, you can use them in your favor.
There's not much to favor in the rivalry between NC State and Louisville, a pair of newly minted ACC foes who meet on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the NCAA Sweet 16 in Syracuse, New York. It's the second time in four years that the Wolfpack has advanced to the regional semifinal round under head coach Mark Gottfried.
The Wolfpack holds a slight 9-8 edge in the series between the infrequent rivals thanks to a 74-65 upset over the No. 9 Cards in Louisville on Valentine's Day, though there were two times in history that they played regularly. For three years prior to the formation of the ACC (1950-52), coaches Everett Case and Bernard "Peck" Hickman scheduled a trio of home-and-home matchups at Reynolds Coliseum and Louisville's Jefferson County Armory.
And in the 1980s, legendary coaches Jim Valvano and Denny Crum played seven times over six consecutive years.
The Wolfpack has won three in a row in the series and four of the last five. So, as NC State heads off to Syracuse, N.Y., to face fellow ACC member Louisville in the Sweet 16 on Friday night, here are a few other nuggets to chew on.
- NC State has never lost a tournament game to Louisville. This will be the fourth time the two infrequent rivals have faced each other in a tournament game - though the other three were in-season, holiday tournaments that weren't exactly on the magnitude of March Madness.
One of them, though, was awfully close: On Dec. 29, 1958, NC State trailed Louisville in the opening round of the greatest Dixie Classic tournaments ever played. The Wolfpack featured a pair of All-Americans that year, Lou Pucillo and John Richter. But it trailed the Cardinals, led by All-American Don Goldstein, by six with less than two minutes to play, but State's Dan Engelhardt led his team back to tie the contest in the final moments. State won 67-61 in overtime, then went on to beat Cincinnati and its All-American Oscar Robertson and Michigan State and its All-American Johnny Green over the next two days to claim the holiday tournament title. The Wolfpack was ineligible for the tournament that year, but both Cincinnati and Louisville advanced to the Final Four.
In 1978, guard Clyde Austin and forward Kendal "Tiny" Pindar led the Wolfpack to a win over Louisville in the 1978 Sea Wolf Classic in Anchorage, Alaska, with both contributing 15 points in the title game. Austin was named the tournament's most valuable player.
In 1987, Valvano took the Wolfpack to Honolulu, Hawaii, where it faced Louisville in the semifinals. A halftime pep talk by Valvano inspired his listless team, which beat the Cards 80-75 in the semi and then Arizona State the next night in the final.
- The Wolfpack's last Sweet 16 win came in 1986, when Valvano led his team to a second consecutive berth in the Elite Eight with a 70-66 win over Iowa State in Kansas City. It's been to the Sweet 16 three times since then, losing to Georgetown in the regional semifinal in East Rutherford, N.J., in 1989; to Wisconsin in Syracuse in 2005 and to Kansas in 2013 in St. Louis.
- This will be just the fourth time that two active ACC members have faced each other in the NCAA Tournament. Used to be, the NCAA mandated that two teams from the same conference couldn't meeting until the regional finals, but that rule was abandoned a few years back when the ACC expanded to include all 345 NCAA Division I basketball teams. Or something like that.
The other meetings were in 1981 when North Carolina beat Virginia in the national semifinals; in 1983 when NC State beat Virginia in the West Region finals; and in 2002 when Duke beat Maryland in the national semifinals.
-- Tim Peeler, University Communications
