WRAL Archives

I use google alerts to help keep up with new stories. Interestingly, some very old stories have been popping up. I'll take a guess that maybe WRAL is slowly going through their entire story archive and putting really old stuff on the web, and in the process, those stories show up as new.

Anyway, just saw this one pop up. Or, maybe, since it is something written by Tim Peeler, maybe it is something special he is doing to follow the 83 teams track to the championship. Now that I think of it, the couple of others I saw were from 83 as well, so maybe this is somehow related to his new book When March Went Mad.

Harold Thompson Lends Hand vs. Michigan State
State 1983 Michigan State VO

By Tim Peeler

N.C. State junior Harold Thompson made the most of his 57 seconds on the floor Saturday night against Michigan State.

The junior from Raeford, the last recruit signed by former Wolfpack coach Norman Sloan, didn’t mind that he was limited to that lone minute, since it happened during some of the most important moments of the No. 18 Wolfpack’s 45-41 victory over the Spartans at Reynolds Coliseum.

His first steal of the season secured the Wolfpack’s fourth consecutive victory and ensured that third-year coach Jim Valvano and his team (4-0) will go into a 10-day break for exams with an unblemished record.

Thompson, inserted in favor of senior guard Dereck Whittenburg as a last-ditch attempt to stop Spartan star Sam Vincent, deflected an inbounds pass from MSU forward Derek Perry to N.C. State senior guard Sidney Lowe. Teammate Thurl Bailey put the finishing touches on the old-style victory with a pair of free throws with one second remaining.

“Vincent was trying to run me off the top of the pick,” Thompson said. “I knew if I got caught on the pick, he’d get the ball. So when the guard set the pick, I stepped around him and ran right to Vincent and got my hands on the ball.”

Worth checking out the WRAL page for this, as they have video story on it. Worth a watch just to see:

• A much thinner, faster Sidney Lowe.
• Reynolds in action.
• A bit of V on the sidelines.
• That insanely short 3-point line the ACC used in '83. (My range pretty much ends 6 inches beyond the current 3, and I dread the day it gets moved back, but anybody could shoot from that 1983 line).