Steeped in Tradition and Lore
by Will Stewart, TechSideline.com, 3/10/05

Everybody who grew up in the region that stretches from Maryland to Georgia has their childhood story about the ACC tournament, about how it causes a big stir and how time stops in some places when the tourney starts. My story is a small, seemingly unimportant one that goes back to my sophomore year at Albemarle High School in Charlottesville.

I was in the library. I don't remember what class I was there for, but I was supposed to be studying. I didn't get much studying done, though, because a junior named Lisa Noble that I had a crush on was in the library with me, and I was competing hard for her attention with a guy named Mike, whose last name escapes me now, over 20 years later.

(For the record, though I didn't know it at the time, I had already won that competition. It was me that Lisa had eyes for, not Mike, and she and I would later go out a number of times, until the age difference � a whole year! � and young male stupidity � mine � got in the way of what could have been a pretty good high school romance. Ah well, she was a sweetie, and I haven't seen her in over 20 years, and I hope she's doing well. She would be thrilled to know that when I picture her in my mind's eye, she's still full of the vigor and beauty of youth. Oh, well, enough reminiscing�)

It was March 5, 1981, and it was the first day of the ACC basketball tournament. I even know what time it was � it was between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. I know because I watched Wake Forest beat Clemson on the library's television set. A little Internet research reveals that Wake was the 3-seed, Clemson was the 6-seed, and that year, the 3 and 6 seeds played the first game, the noon game. During my class, I watched most of the second half of the game, and that's how I know it was between one and two o'clock.

Wake Forest won, 80-71. I didn�t remember the score, of course; the Internet helped me with that. What I do remember is how impressive Clemson great Larry Nance was that day. Wake was fully in control of the game, but the 6-10 Nance, who went on to have a nice NBA career, was a monster. The problem for Clemson is that Nance was the only monster the Tigers had, so they lost.

I remember it so clearly because back then, it was a big event to have the library TV rolled out and turned on. For those of you who grew up in the last couple of decades, after the rise of cable TV, inexpensive VCRs, and videos as teaching tools, this might not seem like such a big deal. But back in my day, TV wasn't as omnipresent, particularly not at school. When the TV got wheeled out and turned on, it was a big deal, especially if nothing educationally-related was being shown.0

The fact that the librarians wheeled the TV out, tuned it into a basketball game, and let the students fritter away valuable learning time watching hoops tells you something about the ACC tournament. It tells you what an event it is, like a holiday. Even the wheels of high school academia ground to a halt for the ACC tournament.

Back in those days, between classes, the news of what was happening in the ACC tournament buzzed among the students, as those who had transistor radios or had been in the library where the TV was on passed on the news to those who didn't have any access. Then we would sit daydreaming in class, knowing that the ACC tournament was in full swing, wondering what was happening in that first day of quarterfinal games, that day when anything was possible and any team could win it all.

I first became aware of the ACC tournament back in 1976, when I was just 11 years old, and the Virginia Cavaliers won their first and only tournament championship. The 6-seed Cavaliers, behind the exploits of Cavalier great Wally Walker, knocked off the 3-, 2-, and 1-seeds on their way to the title, a remarkable run that set Charlottesville on its ear, cemented Terry Holland's reputation as a coach, and became the stuff of legend. In Charlottesville, anyway.

At age 11, I was in my infancy of sports awareness, but the thrill created by what Virginia had done permeated the entire town � you could still call the city of Charlottesville a "town" back then � and you would have to be completely unaware not to pick up on it. My interest in hoops started in March of 1976, spread to the NBA, where Philadelphia was my favorite team, and played itself out on the driveway basketball goal of my friend Tim Kauffman. That's where Tim and I made game-winning shot after game-winning shot � sometimes you needed to rebound a miss and stick it back in, right? � while pretending we were Monty Towe, Phil Ford, or one of the Virginia giants of our youth: Walker, Jeff Lamp, Lee Raker, or even Ralph Sampson.

As I have written before (Hell Freezes Over, 7/2/03), those ACC dreams were put behind when I started at Virginia Tech in the fall of 1983, replaced by epic clashes in the Metro Conference, which didn't have the history and tradition of the ACC but nonetheless was compelling basketball theatre. I'm sure there are hundreds of you reading this, maybe more, who had a similar experience, ACC tournament thrills of youth put aside because the Hokies weren't part of it.

Now it's 2005, 24 years after that day in the school library, romancing Lisa Noble and watching Larry Nance go out in a blaze of glory. Will the kids in school today have access to a TV with the games on, I wonder? Maybe, maybe not. If not, those with access to a computer will get on the Internet, check real-time stats, and text message their friends on a cell phone or IM them from one computer to another about the games. The tools are different, but I imagine the same buzz will be created.

Into this decades-old event the Virginia Tech Hokies we have loved for so many years finally stride. Properly respectful, they will acknowledge the tradition and lore of the ACC tournament, but not by bowing and scraping. They'll show respect for the ACC by playing the way ACC teams have always played the tournament � hard, at a hundred miles an hour, hanging on every shot and rebound, because the ones you miss are the ones that will send you home early.

They'll play in front of a big crowd in the 20,000-seat MCI Center. If you watched the first round Big East tournament or Conference USA tournament games Wednesday afternoon, you were treated to mostly-empty coliseums, with all the ambiance of a closed-down auto-parts plant. Not so with the ACC. As I write this, it's early in the first half between Clemson and Maryland, the 8 and 9 seeds, and the MCI Center is almost full, and you can clearly hear the crowd � not the echoing bounce of the basketball.

It's not likely that the Hokies will repeat what the Cavaliers did in 1976, nor is it likely that the Hokies will repeat what they did in the Metro Conference, winning their first-ever Metro Conference tournament in 1979. But it's also not likely that Virginia Tech will play with an it's-really-great-to-be-here attitude. These Hokies will come to compete. Because they've waited a long, long time for this.

Let's be honest. In the 20 months since the Hokies received their invitation to the ACC, many a glowing, sappy word has been written about what it's like to finally be in the ACC. "Coming home" is a phrase that has been bandied about until it has almost lost its meaning, though it is very accurate. So I won't fall into that trap of waxing eloquent. I'll just say that any event that leads to Wes Durham and Mike Burnop calling a game between Maryland and Clemson, as they're doing on the radio while I write this, is pretty cool with me.

Enjoy the ACC tournament.

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