‘Teammates for life’: NC State’s original dream team reflects on time in the spotlight

Has it really been 50 years?

David Thompson says there are days when it seems impossible; so much time has passed since he was flying high at N.C. State and the Wolfpack was winging its way to winning the 1974 NCAA basketball championship.

“Then I start walking, and my knees start popping,” Thompson said, smiling.

Thompson is 69 years old. Most of the members of that ‘74 team, the first to win a national title for N.C. State, are in their 70s.

When a halftime ceremony recently was held for the ‘74 team at PNC Arena during the Pack’s game with Boston College, it took a little extra time for them to make their way to midcourt, a reminder that, yes, it has been 50 years.

There was Tom Burleson, 72, still towering over everyone at 7 foot 2, still the tallest man in Avery County, with gray in his beard. Monte Towe, the 5-foot-7 point guard on that team, is 70 and still coaching basketball. Big Tim Stoddard, the power forward on the ‘74 team, was there.

Some have had health issues. Some have died, including guard Morris Rivers and their coach, Norm Sloan.

“We’re still here and still enjoying it,” Towe said after the ceremony. “It surprises me a little bit that people still remember us, but I think we were a team for the ages. We might not live forever, but they might remember us forever.”

Thompson jokes that he no longer has the 44-inch vertical leap — matching his famous jersey number at State — that made him the player called “Skywalker” by some, a 6-foot-4 small forward who was a three-time All-America and two-time national player of the year for the Pack.

“More like 24 inches now,” he said, almost wistfully.

Photos: A look back at NC State’s 1974 National Championship basketball team

‘Our team was special’

All these years later, while the videos of their exploits look a bit dated and the saved newspapers with banner headlines have aged and yellowed, the ‘74 Wolfpack is remembered as the team that had Thompson at his best, that went 30-1 and still is considered one of the greatest in college basketball history.

It beat Maryland in an ACC Tournament championship game that became an instant classic and changed the course of future NCAA tournaments. It beat UCLA, which had created an intimidating mystique after winning seven consecutive NCAA titles, that had All-America Bill Walton at center and was coached by legendary John Wooden. It beat Marquette in the national championship game.

“Maryland was great, and we beat them,” Towe said. “UCLA was great, and we beat them. I know I’m biased, but I think we were one of the best of all time. We could hold our own with anyone.”

The Pack had gone 27-0 in 1972-73, winning the ACC title but denied an NCAA tournament appearance because of NCAA violations involving Thompson’s recruitment when he was at Shelby’s Crest High.

There were no NCAA restrictions the next season. There was no holding the Pack back, either.

“Our team was special,” Thompson said. “We had an exciting style of play. We played above the rim, we played fast. It was just the style of play and the excitement we brought to the game, and I think other ACC teams even enjoyed watching us play.”

Thompson hesitated for a moment, not sure if he should say it the same way he has for 50 years. But he did: “We had the circus team. We had Monte Towe the midget, and Tommy the giant.”

Thompson, soft-spoken and humble, is the kind who can say that without making it sound offensive. The rest he has no problem saying.

“We won 24 straight ACC games, which is crazy,” he said of the Pack’s two-year undefeated run in the conference. “Nobody will ever do that again.”

It was a team that was close that fit well together. Burleson offered senior leadership, Towe ran the team, Rivers was a relentless defender and Stoddard a versatile power forward. Phil Spence, Mark Moeller, Steve Nuce, Greg Hawkins and others all had their moments coming off the bench.

“Coach Sloan knew what he had, he gave us an offense we could run, and he kept us in check all the time,” Stoddard said. “He never let us get big heads.”

Thompson was nigh unguardable, too quick for bigger players and able to leap up and shoot over smaller guys. There was no 3-point shot, but he scored 26 points a game for the ‘74 team, the junior often rising high on alley-oop passes from Towe or Stoddard to drop the ball in the basket during a time when dunking was prohibited in college basketball

“David just had a different game from everybody else,” Stoddard said.

The classic game

In 1974, the NCAA tournament field was smaller. Only one team could represent the ACC — the tournament champion.

The ACC Tournament was set for the Greensboro Coliseum. The NCAA East Regional was to be played at Reynolds Coliseum, on the Pack’s home floor. The national semifinals and finals — not promoted as the “Final Four” until later — would be in Greensboro, a first for the basketball-mad state.

The path was set for the Wolfpack, which moved to No. 1 in the polls after UCLA stumbled late in the regular season and slipped back to No. 2.

“And it worked out pretty good for us,” Stoddard said, smiling. “But we probably realize that now, how important that was, more so than back then. Then, it was just about the next game.”

When the Wolfpack and Maryand’s Terrapins took the court on March 9, 1974, both believed they could return to Greensboro and win a national championship. Only one would get the chance. They all knew that when the ball went up.

“There were six All-Americans on the floor,” Thompson said. “The pressure was so thick you could cut it with a knife.”

Sloan, who died in 2003, once said it was the only time he felt like he had cotton in his mouth. The Terps, ranked No. 4 and coached by Lefty Driesell, were playing well, taking a 25-12 lead and leading 55-50 at halftime.

“I don’t think any of us were thinking that things could go bad or they would win, but there was always that chance,” Stoddard said. “Maryland had great athletes and our games with them had been so close.”

Photo gallery: Take a look back at Tobacco Road basketball action in NC through the years

Burleson, not Thompson, would be the Pack’s biggest hero that day, playing the game of his life, scoring a career-high 38 points. Maryland center Len Elmore had been named first-team All-ACC. Burleson was placed on the second team and was not happy about it, nor about hearing Elmore had claimed he was the better player.

Thompson scored 29 points, but Burleson played like a man possessed.

“Burleson killed us,” Driesell later said.

State won 103-100 in overtime, a score etched into ACC lore.

“Survive and advance” was a term that would be repeated often by another Wolfpack coach in 1983, but that’s what the Pack did that March night in Greensboro.

As Spence put it, “It’s like a one-and-one free throw. You miss the front end, you don’t get a second. You had to get the first one.”

Driesell, who died Feb. 17 at age 92, lost the game but showed a sense of humility afterward, bounding up into the N.C. State team bus to offer his congratulations in that growling Lefty drawl.

“We beat the second-best team in the country,” Sloan said to reporters.

The NCAA, always slow to change, would enlarge the tournament field to 32 teams the next season, allowing more than one team from a conference to be selected. No more Marylands.

“That game changed the history of the tournament,” said Burleson, who later had Elmore as a teammate in the NBA, no longer a rival.

The Big Fall

Many who witnessed it that day at Reynolds Coliseum believed he was dead.

“There were reports I was dead,” Thompson said.

In the NCAA East Regional final against Pittsburgh, Thompson was incensed about being fouled on a shot with no whistle and stormed back down the floor, intent on blocking whatever the Panthers put up. Up he went, seemingly higher than 44 inches and …

Thompson flipped over the shoulder of Spence, landing on the back of his head and upper back in the lane. His eyes were fixed. He was bloodied. Reynolds fell quiet.

“It was scary,” Spence said. “I felt guilty, and I cried a lot.”

Thompson was quickly taken to Rex Hospital, then on Wade Avenue at St. Mary’s Street. It took 15 stitches, he said, to close the gash on his head. It also took some coaxing to get the doctors to allow him to go back to Reynolds, agreeing to return to Rex after the game.

“I knew the guys on the team would be worried and upset,” Thompson said.

Not to mention a capacity crowd at Reynolds and those around the country — including CBS anchor Walter Cronkite — watching on TV.

“The unknown was the biggest fear for us, because it could have been anywhere from being dead to having a broken neck to having a bad concussion,” Towe said.

Thompson came back into Reynolds with what he called a “turban type” bandage wrapped around his head, giving him the look of the wounded basketball warrior. The Pack players rushed over to hug him, if gently. Thompson took a place on the bench to watch the game, although so many eyes in Reynolds were watching him.

“That was the day we realized that love and camaraderie trumps basketball games,” Burleson said.

Reynolds Coliseum roared. All was well again.

“I was kind of groggy,” Thompson said. “But I wanted them to know I was OK. I also wanted them to win the game because I wanted to play UCLA the following week.”

The Wolfpack won, 100-72. UCLA awaited in Greensboro.

National champions

Thompson is the first to say if it was 2024, he probably would not have been able to play against UCLA or anyone else.

“You know, with today’s concussion protocols,” he said.

Thompson was concussed after the fall. But he was back and ready for practice a few days later at Reynolds and even joked about the injury with Sloan.

Noting the movie “The Exorcist,” Thompson said he once rolled his head around and rolled his eyes back during a team meeting that week as if in convulsions. That startled the ever-intense Sloan.

“He said I almost gave him a heart attack,” Thompson said, laughing.

Thompson then would give Walton what the UCLA big man said was a recurring nightmare he hasn’t been able to shake for 50 years.

The Bruins handed the Pack its only loss that season in a made-for-TV game played at St. Louis in December. UCLA won 84-66, even with Walton in foul trouble much of the game, but the Pack came away convinced it could win if given another chance.

UCLA had won 88 straight games until being upset at Notre Dame in January 1974. Walton, the big redhead, was a 6-11 dynamo who had scored 44 points in the 1973 NCAA championship game against Memphis State, hitting 21 of 22 shots.

“UCLA was like the Yankees back in the days when teams would be beaten before the game just seeing the Yankee pinstripes,” Towe said. “But we knew we could play with them.”

The Wolfpack got another chance in the semifinals. Down went UCLA, 80-77 in two overtimes.

Thompson had 28 points and 10 rebounds, and Burleson had 20 and 14 while guarding Walton for much of the game. The Pack rallied from seven points behind in the second overtime, with Towe clinching the win with two free throws.

Walton, who had 29 points and 18 rebounds in his last college game, said a lasting memory was having Thompson “float and elevate” over the court. Thompson once rose high to block a Walton shot under the basket, and photo of Thompson soaring over Walton was on the cover of Sports Illustrated the next week. The headline: “End of an Era.”

Two days later, the championship game against Marquette seemed almost anticlimactic, with the Pack winning 76-64 as Thompson had 21 points. The nets came down again at the Greensboro Coliseum and N.C. State was presented its first NCAA championship trophy.

Sloan, who could be a stern taskmaster of a coach, was beaming. Sloan was recruited to N.C State by Everett Case, who brought big-time basketball to the state in the 1940s and won ACC championships but never a national title. Now, the Wolfpack had its first.

Sloan could be brash, could be outspoken, could be tempestuous. He was called “Stormin’ Norman,” although he like to jibe reporters and say they only called him that because it rhymed.

“He was a great, great competitor, whether in recruiting or coaching,” the late Billy Packer, a college basketball analyst, said in a 2014 N&O interview. “He did not fear anyone, and his team took on that attitude.”

The Pack returned to Reynolds Coliseum — “The House Case Built” — the day after winning the title, some of the players a bit groggy, for a raucous reception filled with “We’re No. 1” chants.

State fans would chant it again at Reynolds in 1983, after Jim Valvano coached the Pack to an improbable national championship.

There has been some basketball success, but not a lot of it, since Valvano stepped down as coach in 1990. The Pack’s most recent ACC men’s championship came in 1987.

Cherishing the legacy

Those on the ‘74 team went their own ways after their years at State, although several have returned from time to time to see games and cheer the Pack. They text and try to stay in touch.

Thompson was the No. 1 draft pick in both the NBA and the ABA, signing with the Denver Nuggets of the ABA. After the two leagues merged, he was a four-time NBA All-Star and had a 73-point game against the Detroit Pistons in 1978. He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996.

Burleson also was in the NBA before returning to Avery County, where he served as a county commissioner and planning director. Towe coached in college, first with Sloan and later with Sidney Lowe at N.C. State, and is a high school coach in Florida.

Stoddard, 71, pitched in the Major Leagues for 14 years and appeared in the 1979 World Series with the Baltimore Orioles. The pitching coach for 22 years at Northwestern, he’s still instructing young pitchers at North Central College, a Division III school outside Chicago.

“Timmy was a winner, a competitor and a tough guy,” Towe said. “He was a great athlete who gave up a lot of his game to make sure he fit the role that Coach Sloan wanted him to do.”

Rivers died last November at age 70. A junior college transfer to N.C. State, he started alongside Towe at guard for two seasons and was as cool and unflappable as Towe was fiery and feisty.

“Morris came in and adapted his game,” Towe said. “He was really a scorer coming out of junior college who adapted and was a great defender. He always got the toughest draw defensively. And when we needed points, Mo could go get ‘em off the bounce. Good guy, good player. We miss him.”

Wolfpack fans cherish the past. There was a large gathering outside Reynolds Coliseum on Dec. 6 when a statue of Thompson was unveiled, sitting atop a 44-inch high pedestal.

Gracious to N.C. State for the tribute, Thompson, who graduated from NCSU in 2003, said it was a testament to what he accomplished in his career and what the Pack accomplished in 1974.

“It’s something you never forget, being a part of a national championship,” Thompson said that day. “It’s something that draws the school together and the state together.

“A lot of my success was predicated on the team’s success. We’re teammates for life.”

Fifty years and counting.