The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

If you arent' watching it, you have to catch the newest 30 for 30 (I'm sure it will rerun plenty of times in the next couple of weeks) It is about the 1983 NC State team and is fantastic. I loved 80's basketball and this captures the time perfectly. Very moving.

Loving it.

I've been anticipating it since they started running promos though. It has not disappointed.

The early 1980's produced some of the greatest basketball players ever. Olujuwon, Sampson, Ewing, Wilkins, Jordan. Great era.

I enjoyed it. What an amazing person Jimmy V was, and that National Championship team was special to say the least.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr. :bustacap:

It's bad enough that every March Madness that comes I gotta watch Derek Whittenburg launch that fat airball, only to have Lorenzo Charles come out of nowhere and turn a crap shot into the winning dunk. I have to see Akeem Olajuan on his knees, pounding the floor in hurt and frustration, every March, and I love the NCAA tournament.

Now ESPN is gonna slob Vlavano's knob for an hour.

Yeesh.

/rant over. Sorta.


Pant, pant.


We hates them, NC State, oh yes, my precious! You have no idea how much I enjoyed UAB spanking NC State in the NIT a couple of years ago. As much as you enjoyed it, multiply that times four or five. I'll have to gargle a 55 gallon drum of Listerine to get the bad taste out of my mouth, because, yes, I'll watch it too.


Thirty years and it hurts as if it were yesterday.

Akeem was in the documentary. He got over it.

Quote:Now ESPN is gonna slob Vlavano's knob for an hour.

And do they finally mention why he lost the NC State job, or just cut to the "never give up" speech?

Somebody mentioned that Valvano cheated like an em effer.

If that is true combined with the fact that Lorenzo Charles couldn't spell basketball if you spotted him the basket & the fact that his drug use would make North Jefferson county meth lab residents blush, it wouldn't be a team that I worshiped.

(03-18-2013 02:08 PM)the_blazerman Wrote:  Somebody mentioned that Valvano cheated like an em effer.

If that is true combined with the fact that Lorenzo Charles couldn't spell basketball if you spotted him the basket & the fact that his drug use would make North Jefferson county meth lab residents blush, it wouldn't be a team that I worshiped.

And both of them are dead now. It's a nice documentary about a good time in basketball. Have never bought into the Valvano worship, and I still enjoyed it.

The game itself was classic, no doubting that.

NC State was still a classic underdog story, and against any team except my UH Phi Slamma Jamma guys I would have enjoyed the run. That was my only experience of having one of the smaller, non enormous state type teams I love to pull for going to Number One, and I loved the ride, I just loved it.

It was bad enough that they lost, but to lose that way, it broke my heart. Guy V. should have let those thoroughbreds run!

To be a rules nerd for a minute, one thing I've noticed about that clip is that the clock doesn't stop in the last minute of the game after a made basket like it does now.

What made that team and championship so compelling was how they only finished 17-10 in the regular season and had no chance of even making it into the Dance without winning the ACC tourney but kept winning close game after close game. In the ACC tourney, they beat Wake Forest by one point, then beat UNC in OT, then beat UVA (with 3-time National POY Ralph Sampson) by three in the championship game. In the NCAA, they barely escaped the first round by beating Pepperdine in OT, then they beat UNLV by one point in the second round. They had a breather over Utah, and then beat UVA again by one point to make it to the Final Four. After beating Georgia by seven, they pulled off the extremely unlikely last-second win over Houston which nobody thought they could do.

The only basketball story I found compelling that year was the Saga of the Three Freshmen propelling a 15-13 UAB team through the Sun Belt tournament and into the NCAA's, punctuated by a thunderous Cliff Pruett dunk to seal the championship.

(03-18-2013 03:53 PM)FNblazer Wrote:  To be a rules nerd for a minute, one thing I've noticed about that clip is that the clock doesn't stop in the last minute of the game after a made basket like it does now.

Correct. They didn't play mamby pamby games with the clock like they do now either.