NC State’s 1973-74 Team Earns a Spot on The Sporting News’ Top-15 College Basketball Teams of All-Time

To celebrate their 140-year anniversary, The Sporting News looked back and put together their rankings of the Top-15 college basketball teams of all-time. NC State’s 1974 team that won the National Championship landed at 8th in the rankings.

1. UCLA (1967-68) – 29-1
2. Kentucky (1995-96) – 34-2
3. Indiana (1975-76) – 32-0
4. UCLA (1971-72) – 30-0
5. Duke (1991-92) – 34-2
6. UNC (1981-82) – 32-2
7. UCLA (1972-73) – 30-0
8. NC State (1973-74) – 30-1
9. San Francisco (1955-56) – 29-0
10. UCLA (1968-69) – 29-1
11. UCLA (1966-67) – 30-0
12. Georgetown (1983-84) – 34-3
13. UNLV (1990-91) – 34-1
14. UCONN (2023-24) – 37-3
15. Kentucky (2011-12) – 38-2

Here’s what The Sporting News had to say about the 1973-74 Wolfpack squad:

8. NC State 1974

Record: 30-1

Coach: Norm Sloan

Championship game: NC State 76, Marquette 64

All-Americans: F David Thompson

NBA bound: F David Thompson, C Tom Burleson, G Monty Towe

Overview: No offense to the Golden Eagles, but this was one of those years when the true championship game was played in the semifinals because of the old style of bracketing, before the No. 1 seeds were ranked by the selection committee.

UCLA came in with Bill Walton trying to win his third, but the Bruins had lost their 88-game winning streak to Notre Dame in January and then fell twice more, on a weekend trip to the Pac-8’s two Oregon schools.

NC State came in flying, comfortable winners against Providence and Pitt even though Thompson suffered a head injury when he fell tripping over a teammate’s shoulder (and the teammate was 6-9 power forward Tim Stoddard). Thompson connected with guard Monty Towe in making popular the “alley-oop” play, a lob pass above the rim that only Thompson could jump high enough to gather. He wasn’t allowed to dunk the ball at the time, but he mastered the art of dropping it through the goal.

Their double-overtime classic was one of the great NCAA Tournament games ever played, and is in the short list with UCLA-Gonzaga 2021, Duke-UNLV 1991, Michigan-Illinois 1989 and UCLA-Louisville 1975 of the best semifinals ever. But the Wolfpack were better, with Thompson finishing with 28 points and 10 rebounds. A few weeks earlier, they’d been involved in another classic just to make the field: 103-100 over Maryland in the ACC Tournament final.

“To have a chance to beat Maryland in the greatest game in ACC history, to play for a national championship, it was unbelievable,” Thompson told the Winston-Salem Journal in 2023. “The pressure of the game: You had two of the best teams in the nation playing against each other, and us coming out on top is just a special memory.” (TSN)

I could make the argument that NC State’s 1972-73 team should also be on the list. The Wolfpack finished the regular season undefeated, and went on to win the ACC Tournament, but weren’t allowed to participate in the NCAA Tournament due to recruiting violations in landing David Thompson.

The Sporting News also recently released their All-Time All-American Teams, and NC State’s David Thompson made the 1st Team.