Tim Peeler: What happened the last time NC State, UNC clashed on a snowy day
The day before NC State hosted North Carolina at Reynolds Coliseum on Feb. 3, 1996, State’s student newspaper published its annual spoof issue called “The Daily Tar Hell” – and the next day it all froze over.
That’s because embattled Wolfpack head coach Les Robinson and his team led by Todd Fuller and Ishua Benjamin took down the No. 8 Tar Heels in a wintry late-night that ended 78-75 in NC State’s favor. Just about all 12,400 fans rushed the Reynolds floor and some 2,000 of them continued the postgame celebration by shutting down slippery Hillsborough Street, snow and ice be damned.
Much like tonight’s 7 p.m. game in Chapel Hill, there were questions about whether a winter ice storm should cause the Saturday evening game to be postponed. Wake Forest’s game against Saint Louis in Greensboro earlier in the day had to be canceled because the Billikens couldn’t get either a charter flight or a commercial flight that could land on the icy runways of Piedmont Triad International Airport.
Duke’s season-opening baseball game was postponed, and State’s wrestling match against Virginia was cancelled.
As was typical back then, the 10-degree weather and frozen precipitation did not disrupt fans from attending a game at the historic on-campus area, even though the classic southern ice/snowstorm knocked out power to some 300,000 North Carolina residents, including 30,000 residents of Wake County.
The klieg lights at Reynolds, however, came on just fine. Maybe they were even the reason Robinson’s Wolfpack came out so hot, racing to a 19-point lead against a UNC team that featured Vince Carter, Antawn Jamsion and Shammond Williams on the floor and head coach Dean Smith on the bench.
The Wolfpack, which entered the game with a 2-6 ACC record and 12-8 record, swished nine 3-pointers in the first half and 14 of 33 attempts for the game against a UNC-CH team that had finished at the top of the standings in the first half of the ACC season.
Smith’s team, however, had needed big comeback wins in its previous two games, against Wake Forest and Duke, to complete its successful first half of the season. Their good fortune ran out against the Wolfpack, despite a furious scoring rally led by Jamison and shooting guard Dante Calabria that knocked a 19-point lead down to one.
Fuller, the senior center from Charlotte who led the ACC in scoring and averaged 9.9 rebounds per game, provided the winning margin with 9.9 seconds to play by hitting a pair of free throws after being fouled by future NBA Hall of Famer Carter. Fuller had a game-high 24 points, including two 3-pointers of his own.
The Tar Heels managed to put up a trio of 3-point shots that could have tied the game. However, Williams’ attempt from the corner, closely contested by Fuller and Benjamin, bounced off the back of the rim as time expired, adding another victory to the Pack’s long list of success in snow games.
“They are the masters of coming back,” Robinson said after the game. “They’ve been coming back since the Fifties.”
State’s win kicked off a three-game losing streak for the Tar Heels, which lost 7 of their final 12 games and were eliminated in the first round of the ACC tournament and the second round of the NCAA championship.
Th win was Robinson’s final over the Tar Heels. However, NC State didn’t beat another ACC team that season until the play-in game at the ACC tournament. It finished with a 15-16 overall and 3-13 ACC record. Robinson was let go after the season, even though his teams had always played well (5-7) against the school’s biggest rival.
The victory was the Wolfpack’s final of 30 wins over Smith, who won three games the following season, including in the ACC Championship game in Greensboro. Smith retired just before the 1997-98 season.
State hasn’t faced the Tar Heels in a similar snow game since then.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
The post Tim Peeler: What happened the last time NC State, UNC clashed on a snowy day appeared first on On3.
