NC State Wolfpack: The 1983 team gets to Washington
The NC State Wolfpack got their trip to see the President some 33 years after winning the Basketball National Championship.
In the long history of NC State Wolfpack athletics there are few scenes more iconic than Lorenzo Charles putting in the Derrick Wittenburg shot to beat the Houston Cougars in the 1983 NCAA Basketball Championship game. It allowed an underdog State team to achieve immortality by taking down Phi Slamma Jamma with Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler on board.
What you may not have known is that team never got a Washington, DC to see the president. That was rectified two days ago when the surviving members of the team came and met President Barack Obama and presented him with a Wolfpack jersey.
Not present was Charles, having died in 2011. Neither of course was Coach Jim Valvano, who lost his battle with cancer years ago.
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Among the participants was former NC State basketball coach and 1983 guard Sidney Lowe. Wittenburg has also tried his hand in the coaching ranks and was there. Former guard Terry Gannon has become a sports announcer for NBC and can be found on the Golf Channel as well.
They and their teammates all got together courtesy of some rare bipartisan action in Washington. Former State player Thurl Bailey got a letter through to the President through the middleman of Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. That letter led to the ceremony two days ago.
For someone who is not a natural State fan, the 1983 State title is a uniquely State achievement. Even though it was a little early for Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke teams to arrive on the scene at that point, State’s role in the modern ACC era has been as underdog compared to the Heels. In 1983, Virginia was pretty tough as well.
Next: Three Wolfpack to NC Sports Hall of Fame
Despite all this, State won a national title in the age of Jordan, Ewing on Georgetown, and Olajuwon on Houston. Even with Villanova’s exciting win in the most recent national title game, no one will ever win the title quite the way the 1983 State did.