Last NC State basketball ACC regular season title team rallies again
Nearly thirty years ago, former NC State basketball players gathered at Reynolds Coliseum to play in a charity fundraiser for Brian D’Amico, their former Wolfpack teammate who was paralyzed in a 1992 car accident.
The customized van they purchased for the 6-11 center from Reading, Pennsylvania, lasted well beyond its life expectancy, but it died last year, leaving D’Amico without transportation and unable to travel to job interviews after being laid off from his network systems administrator job during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Saturday, when the NC State athletics department honors the 1988-89 team that won the school’s last Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season championship, D’Amico’s teammates are hoping to raise enough money to purchase a new van with a wheelchair lift.
Spearheaded by Raleigh’s Chris Corchiani and supported by all members of head coach Jim Valvano’s next-to-last team, the GoFundMe effort to raise $60,000 is organized by former team manager Tor Ramsey.
The team will be recognized during the second half of Saturday’s 3 p.m. game against Notre Dame for the unrecognized championship it won 33 years ago.
“Brian is our friend and our teammate,” Corchiani said. “We want to do whatever we can to help him because once a teammate, always a teammate.
“It’s incredibly hard to find the right van to accommodate a 6-foot-11 person, and it’s not cheap. We’re hoping we can use this opportunity to give Brian the assist he needs to improve his lifestyle.”
The Pack won its second regular-season title under Valvano during D’Amico’s junior season, was eliminated in the first round of the ACC tournament and advanced to the Sweet 16 in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where it was eliminated by Georgetown in one of the more controversial endings in NCAA championship history.
D’Amico started 28 of the Wolfpack’s 30 games as a senior in 1989-90, Valvano’s final season at State. He averaged 6.8 points and 5.5 rebounds as a proud member of the Italian coach’s Pasta Patrol that included players like Vinny Del Negro, Mike Giomi, Tom Gugliotta and Corchiani.
“They don’t play because they are Italian,” Valvano used to say. “They play because I’m Italian.”
They all had a hand in the 1987 ACC tournament championship and the ’89 regular-season title.
D’Amico suffered a spinal cord injury on July 31, 1992, in Muhlenberg Township, Pennsylvania, in a single-car accident.
The next year, former players gathered for an all-star fundraiser at Reynolds to help buy D’Amico his first custom van. Among the basketball alumni who participated in that game were Corchiani, Tom Burleson, Cozell McQueen, Clyde Austin, Chuck Nevitt and the late Lorenzo Charles.
D’Amico’s plight harkens back to the spirit of the 1988-89 team, which overcame unprecedented pressure and adversity to post a 22-9 overall record and a 10-4 ACC mark.
It was a team of limited expectations, even though it won 12 of its first 13 games, and was the only team in Valvano’s tenure that was ranked in the nation’s top 25 every week of the season.
Much of the joy of the season was sapped on Jan. 7, 1989, when the Wolfpack beat Temple at Reynolds Coliseum. That outcome was overshadowed by a newspaper report about an upcoming book called “Personal Fouls” that would eventually end Valvano’s coaching and athletics director career at NC State.
Though the most outrageous allegations were eventually discredited, Valvano admitted he was in a deep funk, hardly the wisecracking, ebullient personality NC State fans had known and loved for nine years. He closed ranks, pulled his team together and concentrated on succeeding on the court.
“The players have been my support system,” Valvano said. “When adversity hit, they were my comfort.”
One of the big wins that season was a delayed contest at No. 14 Georgia Tech, in which an ice storm kept much of the Wolfpack traveling squad in Raleigh while six players and a handful of staff found their way to Atlanta on two separate commercial flights.
The Wolfpack won its title on the next-to-last day of the regular season, thanks to a four-overtime victory over Wake Forest in Greensboro.
It was the last championship of any kind Valvano ever won.
“I’ve gotten more out of this team than any other that I have coached,” Valvano said about that squad. “We were not the best team in the conference by a long shot, but for 14 games we were focused on one thing, and we accomplished that (by winning the ACC regular-season championship).
“If it’s possible to have something good come out of this adversity, it’s the closeness we felt as a team. I don’t think I have ever been prouder of any team I ever coached.”
And that NC State basketball team’s current efforts to help their struggling teammate this weekend would only make him prouder.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at [email protected].
| No. | Player | Pos. | Ht. | Year | Hometown |
| 52 | Chucky Brown | F | 6-8 | Sr. | Leland, N.C. |
| 13 | Chris Corchiani | G | 6-1 | So. | Miami, Fla. |
| 54 | Brian D’Amico | C | 6-11 | Jr. | Reading, Pa. |
| 24 | Tom Gugliotta | F | 6-7 | Fr. | Huntington Station, N.Y. |
| 3 | Mickey Hinnant | F/G | 6-6 | Jr. | Raleigh, N.C. |
| 22 | Brian Howard | G/F | 6-7 | Jr. | Winston-Salem, N.C. |
| 23 | Jamie Knox | F | 6-7 | Fr. | Vicksburg, Miss. |
| 25 | David Lee | F/C | 6-8 | Jr. | Torrance, Calif. |
| 32 | Avie Lester | F/C | 6-9 | Jr. | Roxboro, N.C. |
| 21 | Rodney Monroe | G | 6-3 | So. | Hagerstown, Md. |
| 30 | Kenny Poston | F | 6-6 | Sr. | Cherryville, N.C. |
| 34 | Byron Tucker | F | 6-11 | Fr. | Oxon Mill, Md. |
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