The Pecan Park Eagle

April 4, 1983: Lorenzo Charles dunks the winning basket for NC State in their 52-50 victory over Houston in the NCAA final game at Albuquerque.- Coach Valvano launches into insanity run as the face of shock in celebration.

Most of us Cougars remember it as the UH game in all sports that we would most prefer to forget. Yet here I sit near the 29th anniversary of its cruel unfolding, writing about it again. Thank you, Sacher Masoch, for being a little more than am historical figure of Freudian speech. Maybe I will get you out of my system this time.

As many of you recall, 1983 was the nationally famous college basketball season of Houston’s famous Phi Slama Jama club featuring Hakeem (know then as Akim) Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler rolled into the championship game at “The Pit” in Albuquerque, NM as the heavy favorite to roll over the challenge of the Wolfpack from North Carolina State. UH was coached by the legendary Guy V. Lewis; NCS was led by the young “back east” upstart named Jim Valvano.

There was no 3-point line in those days; and no shot clock. Phi Slama Jama bedazzled foes in those days with some athletic big man work in the post, good perimeter shooting, speed on defense, and an adept use of Coach Guy’s four-corner keep-the-ball-away-and-kill-the-clock defense late in the game.

April 4, 1983 did not work out so well for the Cougars.

NC State took a quick 6-0 lead, before UH roared back to go ahead, 7-6. The rest of the game was fairly nip and tuck, with UH appearing to pull away late when Michael Young’s shot made it 40-35, Cougars. With the Wolfpack on the ropes against the late game razzle dazzle, Lewis mad the decision that most probably (and still unfairly) has kept him from election to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Instead of keeping the offensive pedal to the metal, he elected to go into the four-corners defense and try to run out the clock.

NCS countered by fouling, sending UH to the line to miss free throws that the Wolf pack then captured and adrenaline-drove back into a tie with UH and time running out. With 13 seconds to go in a 50-50 game, NCS inbounded for a one last shot try at winning the game. Then came the play that did the Cougars in.

After one attempt to drive the ball to the left perimeter was well guarded, NCS moved the ball back to the center of the court to guard Dereck Whittenburg, near the mid court line. At the moment of contact, one of the Cougars (I forget who) tried to steal the ball, but he only succeeded in causing the ball the bounce a few feet away.

That trickle bounce away from Whittenburg for maybe a full second only was enough to change everything. The visual of the briefly free ball under these dangerous circumstances was enough to draw all five Cougars reflexively toward the ball, including Olajuwon from his distant spot away as guardian under the basket.

Whittenburg quickly recovered the ball and, with time running out, he got off a high arching 30-foot air ball shot in the direction of the basket. And sadly for UH by this time, Olajuwon is no longer in the basket area. The ball is apparently destined to miss the basket and send the game into overtime.

Not to be.

Before the buzzer can sound to end the game, NCS forward Lorenzo Charles zooms in from out of nowhere, grabs the uncontested ball that no doubt would have gone to the taller, more dominant Olajuwon, had he remained home. Charles stuffs it for the uncontested winning basket and a 52-50 NCS victory in the finals that launches that pirouetted dance down the court by Coach Valvano that we have been forced, ever since, to watch every year during March Madness time – and always for us, in bleeding commemoration of our greatest Cougar sorrow.

Just thought I’d beat the national writing suckers to the punch this year.

If there is an NCAA title for Intimacy out there, it should go to my Houston Cougars. No one else is more famous for “getting close” than we are.