‘Is This Really Happening?’

The clock ticked down in the 2024 ACC Men’s Championship game, and the N.C. State Wolfpack were about to win their first men’s basketball title in 37 years. 

My buddy Joel and I were watching the game at my house, on the edge of our seats just about the whole game. We’ve been through the thick and thin of Wolfpack success and failure together since we were undergraduates at State.

With 45 seconds left in the game, I turned to Joel and expressed what many Wolfpack fans were feeling all at the same time.

“Is this really happening?” I said.

The old mantra from 1983, ”survive and advance,” hung in the air. 

But even more present was the thought: Is this really happening?

It’s a sentiment informed by nearly four decades of close calls, disappointment, and the ever-present dark cloud of what felt like a curse. 

As an N.C. State graduate, lifelong Wolfpack fan, and now a university employee, I’ve felt the longing heartache acutely, along with my fellow fans, all my life. And in a lot of ways, what’s happened in the last month still doesn’t feel real. 

What N.C. State’s basketball programs have done this season has felt like a plotline that only happens in feel-good movies.

You know the story: A scrappy underdog team fights the arrogant across-town rival to regain former glory.

But it is real, and it did happen.

Not only did it happen; the movie continued and got better and better.

N.C. State — both the men’s and women’s basketball team — entered the NCAA Tournaments, and continued to survive and advance. Now, both of them are in the Final Four. It’s the first time in school history that both the men’s and women’s teams are there at the same time.

They face juggernauts for sure in the Final Four games taking place in Phoenix and Cleveland, respectively. But they’ve faced down those giants all season. Somehow, through grit and long three-pointers, and on the backs of DJ Burns and Aziaha James, the Wolfpack managed to slay them.

The night of the men’s ACC Championship, Joel and I made our way to campus in Raleigh, to N.C. State’s landmark, the Memorial Belltower, lit up in red. Students crowded around its base, chanting, singing, celebrating. 

This was a moment of catharsis: pure, pent-up, unadulterated, unmitigated joy. It was as if the ghosts of the past were sent into the heavens on the cheers of generations of Wolfpack fans. 

I met some of my students there, these young people who are living out the ultimate college experience: Their team just won a championship. That’s something that my friends and I never experienced as college students, and it is seared into our souls.

The last time N.C. State’s men’s team went to the Final Four, it was 1983. Jim Valvano and the “Cardiac Pack” went on a Cinderella run to defeat Houston to win the NCAA National Championship. 

While storied Wolfpack coach Everett Case built the tradition of Tobacco Road with Carolina, Duke, N.C State, and Wake Forest playing in the Dixie Classic, it was the 1983 team’s improbable run that created the idea of March Madness. The idea that an underdog team can catch fire in the tournament, beat teams bigger and better than them, and win it all. We’ve all seen the archive video of Valvano running around the court, looking for someone to hug after winning the title.

That’s why we tune in, year after year, to experience the collective thrill of March Madness. The field of 68 may be set by committee, but once the games start, you never fully know what will happen.

Both N.C. State men and women won their respective ACC Championships in 1987, with Valvano still riding high, and Naismith Hall of Fame coach Kay Yow solidifying her legendary career. 

But all that was also right before the fall — when Valvano left N.C. State under a cloud of scandal. He died of cancer in 1993, at age 47, but not before leaving the Wolfpack and the world with the mantra “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”

Things were never quite the same after that. 

While N.C. State was an equal to Carolina and Duke in men’s basketball after the 1974 and 1983 championships, they fell behind their blue brothers after Valvano won his last ACC title: 12 Final Four appearances and four national championships since then for Carolina; 13 Final Four appearances and five national championships for Duke. 

As Carolina and Duke rose to the heights of athletic glory in the 1990s and into the new century, N.C. State struggled and languished for 30 years, seemingly resigned to some cruel fate. 

Kay Yow kept the dream alive for a while on the women’s side, leading the team to the Final Four in 1998. But she, too, died of cancer, in 2009, and until now the women hadn’t been back to the Final Four.

The curse, ignominiously named “N.C. State Shit,” was born and set in, whether you believed in it or not. Was it fate? Was it a true and proper curse? Were we just doomed to wander in the desert? 

It felt like the cosmos was conspiring against us. The Wolfpack would make gains, then get kicked back on their heels. 

The fan base, as vicious and moody as ever (there’s a reason we are called the Wolfpack), often bayed for blood after tough losses, always hoped for glory, but were left wanting. We were relegated to “little brother” status, always kept at arm’s length. 

But with this season’s storybook run to the Final Four for both teams, the pent-up pangs have been released all at once.

The women’s team seemed destined to get to this point. Coach Wes Moore took the women to three back-to-back-to-back ACC Championships from 2020 to 2022. They landed strong wins this season against UConn and Colorado, going from unranked preseason to a mainstay in the top 25. They won their way to the ACC Championship game against Notre Dame. They dropped that game, but they remained undeterred.

But it was the shocking postseason success on the men’s side that unleashed the torrent of emotion hitting Tobacco Road like a tsunami. In early March, the Wolfpack had lost four straight games and Coach Kevin Keatts was on the hot seat to keep his job. That’s when the spark lit underneath the team, and they were on fire. Five wins in a row for the first ACC Championship since 1987—and a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

The night of the ACC title, as students danced and cheered, older fans, many in their 40s and 50s, came to the Belltower as if they were at the end of a long journey only the Greeks can tell about. They took group pictures, with the tower painted in deep red light in the background. They laughed and cheered. 

But mainly, they were in awe of the moment — a moment many of them had never experienced, and one they thought they would never see.

Fast-forward through two weeks of tournament games: Texas Tech and Oakland and Marquette and Duke for the men; Chattanooga and Tennessee and Stanford and Texas for the women.

On Easter Sunday, the day of the Elite Eight games, my radio partner Jacob and I went to Historic Oakwood Cemetery for the sunrise service the local Moravian church holds every year. 

We stopped by the graves of Jim Valvano and Lorenzo Charles—the player who made the dunk heard around the world that won the game in ’83. Coach and player are buried around the corner from each other. Their headstones were decorated with stones and flowers in signs of respect: red-and-white roses, a basketball, a Jimmy V bobblehead. Next to Lorenzo’s headstone stands a garden flag with the Block S logo. 

My friend Robin Simonton, who oversees Oakwood Cemetery, said she gets Wolfpack fans all year long. But since the ACC title game, the cemetery has seen a steady stream of fans on a pilgrimage to pay their respects, to conjure up that “Cardiac Pack” spirit.

As we stood by Jimmy V’s headstone, I remembered his admonition: I thought a little, I cried a little, and I laughed. A lady behind us reminisced about the ’83 team. She talked about the excitement of it all. 

I told her the story my parents always told me: I was eight months old and sleeping in my crib in the back of the house. They were in the front of the house, watching the game, enthralled by the excitement, but trying to stay quiet so I wouldn’t wake up.

That Easter night, the Wolfpack men and women survived and advanced again, all the way into the Final Four. 

My friends and I went back down to the Belltower to celebrate—this time, the crowd spilled out into Hillsborough Street. I explained to my students just how special this moment was, as we took in the celebration that engulfed us.

I envy them, my students, but that comes with a twinge of sadness. 

They are entering a new era of college sports, where the present is breaking quickly with the past. Where conference realignment is rending old rivalries left and right for the sake of making more money. Where college football and basketball are changing into the minor leagues for professional teams. 

There is little room for surprise in sports anymore, because everyone is trying to game the system, playing moneyball and building dynasties. That may be better for the business of sports, but not for the fans. 

What makes college basketball so exciting is that it is so unpredictable. The errant pass that leads to a dramatic turnover. The long-shot three-pointer launched from half-court at the buzzer. Those scrappy underdogs that come out of nowhere and make fiery runs to the mountaintop to get their One Shining Moment. 

Today’s Tobacco Road is not the one of yore. We’re a long way from Everett Case and the Dixie Classic in Reynolds Coliseum. From the ACC of Dean Smith and Coach K and Jimmy V. Heck, we are already light-years away from Roy Williams and Coach K, just in the space of a couple of years. 

When Hubert Davis and Jon Scheyer took over at UNC and Duke, N.C. State fans hoped it was time to reset the rivalry. But while Davis and Scheyer aren’t Roy or K—it’s not fair to expect them to be—they came out swinging, and it looked like N.C. State was still the Triangle’s “little brother.” 

After this season, though, the dynamic really has changed. The rivalries are renewed. Carolina and Duke are bloodied and bewildered. That’s going to make next season even more exciting. 

The ACC as it has been may cease to exist. Next year will see the first season of the ACC Tournament where not all the conference teams will be invited to play. It is very much in the realm of possibility that there will be a tournament in the future that leaves out one or more of the Big Four of Tobacco Road.

I don’t think Carolina and Duke fans are prepared for that, and it will be a rude awakening for them if it comes. 

Even if neither the Wolfpack men nor women make it to the national championship games this year, this season has been magical. What makes it even sweeter is that both teams made their runs side by side, together, feeding off each other’s energy.

Their tournament runs have been the shots in the arm that Tobacco Road has needed for a long time.

I welcome that, not only for myself but for my students and future generations of Wolfpack fans. It has reignited the spirit of Tobacco Road, even if Tobacco Road ain’t what it used to be. 

The question that hangs over the Wolfpack’s improbable run—Why not us? —still rings in our ears.

Did it really happen? Yes it did. 

And you can’t take that away from us. 

Ben McNeely has practiced journalism in some form and fashion since he was 14 years old. He spent his career at local North Carolina newspapers, and 10 years as a political producer at Spectrum News 1. He currently serves as editorial advisor for student media at North Carolina State University.