After waiting a lifetime for an ACC title, NC State can finally stop living in the past

Even by the time they were starting to sweep the red-and-white confetti off the floor, as the ladders were folded up under the now-naked rims, it was still too soon to absorb what had just happened. Something so long in coming will take longer to understand.

There were fans in the stands who had seen this before, 37 years ago, wiping away the occasional tear, and ex-players who were denied this moment feeling finally vindicated as coaches, and players who came from all over — from other ACC schools, or home to Raleigh — with the vague hope of this possibility in mind, and a coach whose future had certainly been in considerable doubt now an instant legend for removing a collective burden that had taken on a life of its own.

It had been a lifetime since N.C. State won an ACC championship, a drought long enough to have a midlife crisis, which made what happened Saturday the title of a lifetime — a 37-year-old lifetime.

And not just that it happened, although that alone would have been earthshaking after all this time, but how it happened.

Five wins in five days, all over teams that have won a national title since the Wolfpack’s last. Victories over the top three seeds. A win over Duke, which had won 15 ACC titles since N.C. State’s last. A win over Virginia, which had won two ACC titles since N.C. State’s last. And finally, Saturday, an 84-76 win over North Carolina, the regular-season champion and top seed, winner of eight ACC titles since N.C. State’s last.

“The most dangerous team to play against is a team with nothing to lose,” said D.J. Horne, the Raleigh native who transferred from Arizona State. “We came into this tournament with, I wouldn’t say disrespect — but you know, I’m going to say disrespect. A lot of people probably didn’t think we could be here, the fact that we’re here now, this is literally why I came home. I don’t think I can process what it’s really going to mean in the long run, man, but I love my city, I love my team.”

It seems sometimes that N.C. State can’t take a step forward without looking backward. Even Levi Watkins, the ex-Wolfpack player who finally came home to join Kevin Keatts’ staff, couldn’t celebrate this moment without mentioning how he was still “haunted” by falling short in 2003. But that’s a product as much of the passion for basketball as the expectations that started with Everett Case and were revived by Norm Sloan and Jim Valvano and, now, Keatts.

If N.C. State asks a lot of its basketball program, of its coaches and players, maybe even too much at times, it’s only because it once knew the view from atop the ACC, and has never forgotten.

“I would have never come to Raleigh if I didn’t think it was possible,” said Casey Morsell, who started his career at Virginia. “We have all the tools, all the resources, we have the group. Why not us?”

That question has been asked so many times over the intervening 37 years, but for so long, the Wolfpack has had no choice but to take mental refuge in 1974 and 1983 — and 1987, among 10 other ACC champions past. Those were great moments, the kind any university would envy, but they were elevated as much out of necessity as anything else, over and over and over again.

The joke was already going around, before the second net was even cut down, that the celebration of the one-year anniversary of the 2024 ACC championship was less than a year away.

But this group unquestionably earned it, the highest seed to ever win a power-conference tournament, the most unlikely ACC champion since Florida State in 2020, the first team to win five games in five days anywhere since Connecticut did it to win the Big East tournament in 2011 … and the Huskies went and won the next six as well.

If the Wolfpack has learned anything this week, it’s that anything really is possible, because a program that has minted legends out of necessity over the past four decades suddenly has some fresh ones who stepped up and claimed that status for themselves.

D.J. Burns, for becoming the powerful fulcrum of the offense it always seemed he could be, the first Wolfpack player to win the Everett Case Award as ACC tournament MVP since Vinny Del Negro, not to mention the first 3-pointer of his five-year college career.

Horne, for battling a balky hip flexor — he didn’t even play the opener against Louisville — to lead the Wolfpack in scoring Saturday with 29 points. Michael O’Connell, for not only hitting the incredible banked-in 3-pointer to force overtime against Virginia on Friday but taking his entire game to a new level this week. Mo Diarra, for becoming a four-category player even while fasting for Ramadan.

And on and on and on. In every game, a different player seemed to step forward and make a play that titled the tide toward the Wolfpack. The more games N.C. State played, the more energy it seemed to find. As one win turned into another, a team that had set the goal this week of not beating itself, a lesson hard-learned over a long and frustrating season, found itself almost impossible to beat.

The Wolfpack even found a way past top-seeded North Carolina in the title game as a massive underdog, a team of destiny finding a way to beat a team of inevitability, right from the moment Horne’s first shot hit the back rim, bounced high in the air and fell straight down through the net.

In an electric atmosphere in Greensboro-sur-Potomac, the rivals showed what happens when two teams that deeply dislike each other play for something that truly matters. The most anticipated ACC tournament game since Zion Williamson and Duke faced North Carolina in Charlotte in 2019 lived up to every expectation.

And even confounded a few: Turns out, the ACC does have red confetti packed away somewhere.

“When I came to N.C. State, I wanted to deliver a championship. I said it in my press conference,” Keatts said. “And everybody said, ‘Nah, man, it’s never going to happen.’ Throughout this thing, you’re going to have ups and downs and people that believe in you and don’t.”

The people believe now. They have seen it. It really happened.

The Wolfpack no longer has to live in the past. The new legends are here, now, among us.

And they’re not done yet.

Never miss a Luke DeCock column. Sign up at tinyurl.com/lukeslatest to have them delivered directly to your email inbox as soon as they post.

Luke DeCock’s Latest: Never miss a column on the Canes, ACC or other Triangle sports