Tim Peeler: Looking back at the last time NC State won without a made 3-pointer
Some statistics defy belief, even 35 years after the fact.
Yet in the longest game in Atlantic Coast Conference history, NC State pulled out a 110-103 victory in four overtimes against Wake Forest in its final game of the 1988-89 regular season without making a 3-point basket.
It’s the last time the Pack has won a game without making a 3-pointer until Tuesday night’s victory over the Demon Deacons at PNC Arena – a span of 1,115 games.
That victory three-and-a-half decades ago clinched the most recent ACC regular-season championship in program history, thanks to a Duke win over North Carolina the next day.
Jim Valvano’s Wolfpack not only didn’t make a long-range shot, it needed an intentionally missed free throw by Kelsey Weems to have a chance to win the game that had 13 lead changes and 11 ties, and just 20 combined turnovers for the two teams. Wake stayed close, fighting back from the game’s only double-digit deficit by making five of its 13 3-point attempts.
It was a pretty big send-off in the final game played in the old configuration of the Greensboro Coliseum, before it shut down for two years to expand to its current capacity.
One hero of the game was Rodney Monroe, the sophomore shooting guard who rebounded Weems’ miss at the end of regulation and put back a game-tying shot as the buzzer sounded. The soft-spoken guard with a big scoring voice went on to break David Thompson’s school record for points with 2,551 and hit 322 career 3-pointers.
The other hero of the game – and the reason Valvano’s Wolfpack didn’t need to make any 3-pointers and was able to survive a 20-for-32 team performance at the free-throw line – was senior Chucky Brown, who scored a career-high 34 points, grabbed eight rebounds and promptly gave the greatest explanation of why he needed his team to pull away for the victory in the fourth extra period.
“I was getting tireder than the tiredest man in the world,” said Brown, who played an ACC-record 59 minutes in the game. “I don’t even feel like getting undressed. I just want someone to carry me to the bus and go home.
“I told Rodney in the second overtime I was tired. Then, in the third overtime I told him I didn’t know how much longer I could go.
“He said, ‘Suck it up.’”
Monroe, who played a paltry 56 minutes in the 60-minute game, contributed 26 points and five rebounds. Chris Corchiani had 10 points and 10 assists, a number from the statistics crew that seemed awfully low. Avie Lester scored 18 points and had eight rebounds. The perpetually underrated Brian Howard had 11 points and 12 rebounds against his hometown team. The Pack had 14 points off the bench, nine of them by Weems, whose intentional miss kept him from being the team’s sixth double-digit scorer.
But no one made a 3, a team effort of 0-for-11. Corchiani and Monroe were the only Wolfpack players on the floor who attempted more than one.
Since the game in 1989, State has played two other contests without making a 3, but both ended in losses.
The first was on Feb. 10, 2010, against Virginia Tech, when Sidney Lowe’s Wolfpack went 0-for-11 in a 72-52 loss that broke the Pack’s streak of 654 games with at least one made 3-pointer. The next was on Dec. 30, 2014, when Mark Gottfried’s squad lost to Cincinnati with an 0-for-5 performance from the arc.
State improved to 13-4 overall and 5-1 in the ACC, with sole possession of second place in the league standings heading into Saturday’s noon game at PNC Arena against Virginia Tech.
The teams of both Les Robinson and Herb Sendek had at least one 3-pointer in every game they coached for the Wolfpack, while the coaches of every team before Valvano played prior to the NCAA adopting a universal 3-point shot for all men’s college basketball teams for the 1986-87 season.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at [email protected].
