Pining for 2005 with Pack, ACC reeling

BOSTON – Make no mistake, this is a great week to be covering college basketball for the Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer with Duke and North Carolina playing highly anticipated NCAA regional semifinal games on consecutive nights.

But as I wait (and wait, and wait) for Duke’s 9:57 p.m. tipoff tonight against Villanova, I can’t help but be nostalgic about 2005. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I graduated from Notre Dame and don’t care who wins or loses.

But at this stage in 2005, the Triangle was abuzz about college basketball in a way that I haven’t seen before or since. Because N.C. State was in the Sweet 16 along with Duke and North Carolina.

Wolfpack fans are a passionate bunch, and it’s great to see them excited about something. But the 2005 NCAA Tournament captured in a nutshell the quandary of former coach Herb Sendek.

He got them to the Sweet 16 with a well-executed upset of Connecticut, then got ahead of Wisconsin in Syracuse. But then the Badgers, who might have been the only team in the tournament with an offense more boring than Sendek’s, bounced back and won 65-56.

Instead of playing North Carolina in the regional final, Sendek was going home. In many ways, it had been a great season for the Wolfpack, but it wasn’t nearly enough for the fans, especially when the Tar Heels went on to win the NCAA title.

For me, that Final Four was fun to cover because the most outstanding player, Sean May, was one of my favorite athletes to work with as a reporter. Because of his injury problems, May hasn’t had a good NBA career with the Bobcats, but he was a fantastic college low-block scorer, a class act with a great sense of humor.

For N.C. State fans, that Final Four must have been agonizing. Sendek is done torturing them now and followed a pattern familiar to them with a second-round NCAA exit at Arizona State this season.

Now they face a new kind of torture. Sidney Lowe, a coach whose legacy they love as the point guard of the 1983 NCAA championship team, hasn’t even come close to the kind of production Sendek provided. And with the roster N.C. State has returning, next season doesn’t appear especially promising.

As for Duke and North Carolina, there is a lot of pressure on both this week to make a big statement on behalf of the ACC. Boston College may be the top basketball draw in town, but this still is Big East country in many ways with its proximity to Connecticut and New York.

The consensus here is that five ACC teams failed to make it past the second round of the NCAA Tournament because the ACC just isn’t tough enough. The ACC is carrying on the legacy of beautiful basketball that’s been established through the years with high-flying players such as David Thompson and Michael Jordan.

Roy Williams runs a gorgeous fast break at North Carolina that relies on speed rather than bulk. Duke rains 3-pointers on opponents but doesn’t have much power in the post.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski offered a plausible explanation for the ACC’s troubles this week when he said recent newcomers to the NCAA Tournament from the league (think Clemson and Wake Forest) may just need a year or two to get accustomed to the tournament in order to advance.

But it seems to me that the toughness theory rings true. And that’s a shame. If I want to watch forearm shivers, I can watch football. I’m not really into gymnastics, so I watch basketball to see style and grace, which is disappearing from the game.

If only it were 2005 again. – Ken Tysiac