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State Vs. Maryland Was Game For Ages

By MARTIN FENNELLY

Published: Mar 7, 2007

They smile softly this time of year. They watch TV and someone is yapping about an NCAA Tournament "bubble" team, some unranked 19-11 do-nothing that still has a chance to squeeze into the oversized dance hall, the one their blood, sweat and tears helped build on a March night 33 years ago.

Fifteen years ago, somebody from Duke - Duke - beat the horn and Kentucky to go to the Final Four. Christian Laettner was the hero in "The greatest game ever played." To a man, they wonder about that.

"We'll give any game a run for the title," Monte Towe said.

The Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament is in Tampa. Towe is an assistant coach at North Carolina State, where he played the point on a national championship team, with and against giants.

"Folks always ask about the game," former Maryland coach Charles "Lefty" Driesell said. He's 75, retired, but he's here this week. And he'll hear people swear there's never been anything like the night Lefty and his equally fiery friend, Norman Sloan, threw their teams on the floor in Greensboro, nothing like N.C. State's seminal 103-100 overtime victory against Maryland in the 1974 ACC Championship Game.

"Greatest loss ever been associated with, for sure," Driesell said with a laugh. "Good Lord just didn't want us to win."

There wasn't a field of 65 to make, or even 32. It was the last time only one team from a conference made the NCAA Tournament. That ACC final decided who was in, who was out.

So the top-ranked Wolfpack, led by the wondrous David Thompson, and Tom Burleson and Towe, played the fourth-ranked Terrapins, with Len Elmore, Tom McMillen and John Lucas. They had five losses between them. But one of them had to go home. For 45 remarkable, frenzied minutes, neither would.

"Some things," David Thompson said, "are timeless."

'How Do You Explain This Game?'

Elmore, the Maryland center that night, a lawyer and basketball TV analyst today, sees the problem.

"There's no frame of reference for people today," Elmore said.

It was before Bird-Magic, before Jordan-Ewing. NCAA rules didn't permit dunking or provide 3-pointers, so there was nothing for ESPN. Just as well, since there wasn't ESPN.

"You can't explain the absurdity of only one of us going to the NCAA Tournament," Elmore said, "Or how we put up 203 points without a 3-pointer, without a dunk, with no shot clock. How do you explain this game?"

If then was now, Maryland, the loser that night, would, at worst, be a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Instead, they lost everything. The Terrapins were 24-4 before that night. N.C. State was 25-1. Both had lost to seven-time defending national champion UCLA that season. Both wanted the Bruins again.

Len Elmore was a senior. So was the 6-foot-11 McMillen. And there was Lucas, the amazing sophomore point guard, and Mo Howard, a slick shooter from Philadelphia.

But always there was State. Six times in two seasons, North Carolina State beat Maryland in close games.

"They were always just a sliver better," Elmore said.

Thompson, Burleson and Towe were a sight, and not only because they went 57-1 across two seasons.

"I compare that team to a circus," Towe said. "We had the giant. We had the midget and we had the high-wire act. And you had the ringmaster in Coach Sloan."

There was the 7-2 Burleson, listed as 7-4 by N.C. State sports publicity for bad measure. The 5-7 Towe, a junior, answered to Midge for Midget. Everyone answered to Sloan, who shouted orders over his deafening plaid jackets. And floating above them all was David O'Neil Thompson of Shelby, N.C. The Skywalker.

"David Thompson was Michael Jordan's idol," Mo Howard said.

They can still see the three-time All-American catching an alley-oop from Towe, him and his 44-inch vertical leap, before gently dropping the ball into the cylinder as if lowering a baby's head onto a pillow, all for those no-fun fools at the NCAA.

State had gone 27-0 in 1973, but sanctions related to Thompson's recruitment kept them from the NCAA Tournament. Now there'd be no tournament again if Maryland wasn't beaten again.

"But we were always excited to play Maryland," Thompson said. "They were a team that didn't really fear us. [North] Carolina would sometimes slow it down, do the four corners. Maryland would just come at you. We went and went."

Tom Burleson remembers being a kid, shooting at the hoop on the barn on his family's farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains, "and it was always the ACC Tournament."

Championship night, you couldn't spit without hitting an All-American. There were 10 future NBA draft picks in the game. There were 14,451 in the steamy Greensboro Coliseum. Hank Nichols was there, too. Nichols, one of the great referees, who worked 10 Final Fours and six national championship games, easily picks a favorite.

"That ACC final," Nichols said.

Early on that night, there was a minor skirmish, probably Tom Roy, the self-described "craziest, meanest son of a [gun] who ever played for Maryland," the team's top frontcourt reserve, tangling with Thompson. Hank Nichols jumped in.

"Not tonight boys," he said. "Not in this game."

Burleson Played Game Of His Life

Maryland hit 12 of its first 14 shots. State was down a dozen. Wolfpack guard Moe Rivers ran into an Elmore pick. Rivers played with cotton in his nostrils to stop the blood. And yet he remembers it as maybe the cleanest game he'd ever played in. "It was pure basketball," Rivers said.

"It was surreal how well it was played," McMillen said.

State was within five at halftime. It was 55-50. Then they went and went some more.

"I remember watching the highlights," Elmore said. "You can see them with the smelling salts and ammonia under my nose."

The bigger problem: Tom Burleson.

He played the game of his life. Hooks with both hands, jumpers, follows, everything fell. He finished with 38 points. It was like at the barn back home.

"That game was all about God," Burleson said.

State finally pulled even late in regulation. Tied at 97, Maryland held for the last shot. With seconds left, Mo Howard found himself open with the ball on the left baseline. David Thompson gasped.

"For a second, I thought, 'We're gone.' "

But Howard, sensing Burleson, threw out to Lucas, who tossed up a desperate shot at the horn. No good. Overtime.

Maryland led again, 100-99. But Lucas missed the front end of a one-and-one. Towe found Phil Spence, the other State forward, who laid it in. "Yes I did," Spence said. Maryland had one last chance, but Lucas overthrew Elmore. Towe sank two free throws. And then it was over.

Lucas wept. So did Towe. The exhausted wobbled off.

Maryland shot 61 percent from the field and lost. In the locker room, Driesell asked about the NIT, which Maryland had won in 1972. His players said forget it. "We just played for the national championship game," Roy remembers someone saying.

Driesell later climbed onto the N.C. State bus.

"I'm proud of y'all," Lefty said.

"And he told us to beat UCLA," David Thompson said.

You know, in the other game.

Led To Expanded Tournament

Two weeks to the night of the ACC final, on the way to a national title, in the same Greensboro Coliseum, N.C. State beat UCLA in overtime in a national semifinal.

And something happened after that: The NCAA expanded its tournament from 25 teams in 1974 to 32 in 1975, allowing more than one team per conference, in no small part because of that ACC final, the ridiculous sight of Maryland heading home.

"It changed the basketball world," John Lucas said.

Tom Burleson returned to his hometown of Newland, N.C., population 700, to raise a family. Norm Sloan, who died in 2003, bought a home there. Burleson works for the county. Every year or so, "on a snowy evening," he'll pop in the '74 game.

"My kids have seen it," Len Elmore said. "They say, 'Gee, Dad, those shorts were really tight.'"

David Thompson is 52. He lives happily and prays for his ever after. After he soared, he fell - drugs, jail, everything. So he went back to God. Now he runs a sports ministry in Charlotte. By the way, he has good news.

"Oh, yes, I can still dunk," Thompson said. "Tell everyone that The Skywalker can still sky."

Some things are timeless.