Basketball: Whittenburg cherishes memories of 1983 miracle

By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — The late Bill Buckner amassed 2,715 hits and was good enough to last 22 seasons in MLB, but he’s remembered for one miscue in the 1986 World Series.

And so it is with former N.C. State guard Dereck Whittenburg. He was a deadly shooter who made 482 field goals for the Wolfpack and scored 1,272 points, but his name is etched firmly in memories for one airball he hoisted. He is forever young, forever linked with the most famous miss in college basketball history.

But unlike Buckner, Whittenburg’s miss had a happy ending. Teammate Lorenzo Charles re-routed his desperate airball — it was short and wide right — and dunked it to win the 1983 national championship, while Houston Cougars stood transfixed, watching helplessly as history unfolded around them in Albuquerque, N.M.

Considering the impossible odds, the crazy postseason journey that was made, with wins against teams led by Michael Jordan and Ralph Sampson, and the opposition in the finals provided by NBA all-time greats Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon, the 1983 miracle was the greatest moment in N.C. State hoops history, maybe in all of hoops history. The images of Wolfpack head coach Jim Valvano going berserk and losing his mind in the aftermath remain an integral part of the lore and legend of March Madness.

The zaniness of 1983 had a much different feel than the 1974 Wolfpack’s triumphs over UCLA and Marquette for the program’s first national title in Greensboro, as the 1974 Wolfpack was a certified national powerhouse, acknowledged as one of the great teams in the land all season long and included the transcendent David Thompson, the best player the ACC had ever seen. Fifty years later, DT is still arguably the best in the ACC as far as his college career.

Whittenburg works for the Wolfpack now in public relations, fundraising, things like that, and the foundation that bears his name has provided more than 160 college scholarships. But he still takes time to share his experiences, his trials and tribulations. As a guest speaker for the Rowan-Kannapolis ABC Board’s ABC Upward! he was in Salisbury on Wednesday. He spoke to students at West Rowan Middle School.

There was quite a bit of good timing. West Rowan High’s two-time champion state champion girls basketball team was recognized Wednesday by ABC Upward! with a meal at DJ’s restaurant, so Whittenburg got to salute coach Ashley Poole and the team verbally, along with former UNC star Al Wood, a regular on the ABC Upward! circuit, and  John Thomas Ray (Tommy) Barnhardt, the former South Rowan quarterback who was quite a punter for UNC and who averaged 42.1 yards for 14 NFL seasons.

Whittenburg was in Salisbury at a time when North Rowan graduate Larry Dixon, a current Wolfpack assistant coach, is part of another improbable run by the Wolfpack that has brought back echoes of 1983. N.C. State, 10th-seeded in the ACC tournament, has won seven straight postseason games, all of them sudden-death.

“It’s a great story,” Whittenburg said. “Very much the same story as 1983. What a great run we had and what a great run we’re having now.”

Whittenburg, a shooting guard built like a linebacker, was major star in high school at DeMatha Catholic in Hyattsville, Md., a few miles from Washington, D.C. Whittenburg and high school teammate Sidney Lowe were part of a monster program led by Morgan Wootten, who was considered the nation’s leading high school coach. DeMatha was 84-7 during Whittenburg’s era and went undefeated in 1978 against a challenging, national schedule.

“National champions my junior year,” Whittenburg said. “Played everybody.”

N.C. State’s head coach in 1979 was Norman Sloan, who had guided the 1974 national champs to the Promised Land. The Wolfpack believed it had Dominique Wilkins, a great in-state player, sewed up, but Wilkins signed with Georgia. On that same day, however, the Wolfpack got a nice consolation prize — Whittenburg and Lowe. They followed the trail of former DeMatha stars Hawkeye Whitney and Kenny Carr to Raleigh.

Whittenburg was a first cousin of the great David Thompson and jumped nearly as well. He was 6 feet tall, but he was strong and quick and won the two biggest high school all-star games his senior year with last-second shots — the McDonald’s game in Charlotte and the Capital Classic, a game in which the metro D.C. all-stars took on the rest of the nation.

Whittenburg paid dues as a freshman contributor on Sloan’s final team, slowly developed into a double-figure scorer in Valvano’s first season in 1980-81 and continued to grow into a starring role as a junior, when he averaged 13.4 points per game.

His senior season (1982-83),  Whittenburg got a boost as the ACC was using an experimental 3-point line (19 feet from the backboard) during the regular season. Whittenburg had been connecting on 2-pointers from 22 feet for three seasons.

“I’d been making that shot for two, and now we got an extra point for it,” said Whittenburg, “So that was big.”

Whittenburg and his coaches envisioned him making stacks of 3-pointers, but in a Jan. 12 game with Virginia, he broke a bone in his right  foot when he went up for a jump shot and landed on Othell Wilson’s foot.

While the injury was initially feared to be a gloomy, season-ender, Whittenburg had suffered an identical injury in high school, so he knew what it would take to get back on the floor and exactly how long it would take him. Six weeks.

The silver lining was that without Whittenburg, freshman Ernie Myers had to step up,  the bigs had to score more and Valvano had to coach harder and tougher. NC State got deeper and proved how good it was getting by beating third-ranked North Carolina in mid-February when Lowe drew a charging foul from Michael Jordan with a little over five minutes left.

When Whittenburg did make it back — well, the rest if history. Then the Wolfpack got really good. Seeded fourth in the ACC tournament after finishing 8-6, NC State pulled out three spine-tingling ACC tournament games over Wake Forest (by one point), UNC (in overtime) and Virginia (by three).

NC State won in two overtimes against Pepperdine in its first NCAA game after being down six with about a minute left. Then came a one-point win against UNLV. Then the Wolfpack beat Utah, Virginia again, Georgia and Houston to win it all.

NC State finished 26-10, ranked 16th in the final AP Poll — and national champion.

Whittenburg scored 14 points in the national championship game (they didn’t use the 3-point shot in the postseason) and 20 in the national semifinal with Georgia. He scored 24 on 11-for-16 shooting in the West Regional final game against Virginia that ended Sampson’s college career.

“Twenty-four points — and zero assists,” joked Wood, who reached the championship game with the Tar Heels in 1981. “Dereck wouldn’t pass you the toast at breakfast.”

Whittenburg and Wood are friends who enjoy poking needles in each other. They did agree that during their time in the ACC the rivalry that mattered most was UNC-NC State, not UNC-Duke.

Whittenburg said he still misses Valvano every day, but he holds wonderful memories of the Wolfpack’s wild run in 1983, and he’s a member of a small club that can claim to be a national champion in both high school and college.

“As state champions, you’ve got a platform to reach people,” he reminded the West Rowan basketball team. “You’ve got a chance to use your experiences to help people.”

Wood, who came close to achieving championships at UNC and in his Georgia high school days, only to fall one game short, took his hat off to the Falcons.

“State championships are hard, and to go back-to-back is just unheard of,” he said. “So many things can derail you. Injuries can and jealousy can. But you finished the journey, and you’ll have that the rest of your life. No one can ever take it away from you.”

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