Survive and Advance – A True Story About Mental Strength
I don’t know about you, but when I when think of March Madness, one of the first images that pops into my head is legendary NC State men’s basketball coach Jim Valvano running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to find someone to hug after his team won the whole damn thing on a Lorenzo Charles dunk following a Dereck Whittenburg airball. It’s the iconic moment of the NCAA Tournament, a mainstay in the hearts and minds of college basketball fans everywhere for the past 30 years.
While the head basketball coach at North Carolina State University, he won the 1983 NCAA Basketball Tournament against long odds. Valvano is not only remembered for running up and down the court after winning the 1983 NCAA championship, seemingly in disbelief and looking for someone to hug, but also for his inspirational 1993 ESPY Awards speech, given just eight weeks before he died of cancer.
Valvano’s 19-year career as a head basketball coach included stops at Johns Hopkins, Bucknell, Iona, and NC State. Valvano made his debut at NC State on November 29, 1980, when the Wolfpack defeated UNC-Wilmington 83-59.
His career record was 346–210. During his 10 year NC State career, Valvano’s teams were the ACC Tournament Champions in 1983 and 1987 and the ACC regular season champions in 1985 and 1989. The Wolfpack won the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship in 1983, in addition to advancing to the NCAA Elite 8 in 1985 and 1986. ‘Coach V’ was voted ACC Coach of the Year in 1989. Valvano became NC State’s athletic director in 1986.
Valvano’s famous reaction of running around on the court looking for somebody to hug in the moments after the Wolfpack victory came after the game-winning shot in the 1983 NCAA finals. Dereck Whittenburg heaved a last-second desperation shot that was caught short of the rim and dunked by Lorenzo Charles as time expired.
By a score of 54–52, NC State beat a top seeded University of Houston team that was on a 26-game winning streak and was led by future Basketball Hall of Famers Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. Previously, NC State won the college basketball championship in 1974 when it ended UCLA’s streak of seven consecutive national titles when it beat the Bruins 80-77 in overtime in the national semi-final game.
The ESPY’s
When I think college basketball, I think of Jimmy V at the ESPYs, delivering the greatest, most heartfelt and gut-wrenching speech in sports history and those immortal words of the V Foundation, “Don’t give up; don’t ever give up.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuoVM9nm42E[/youtube]
Thirty years ago, Jim Valvano led the North Carolina State Wolfpack on the most improbable and seemingly impossible run the sport has ever seen. Last night I was fortunate enough to watch ESPN’s 30 for 30, “Survive and Advance,” about Valvano and that 1982-83 Wolfpack team.
If you didn’t watch it, do yourself a favor and figure a way to watch it! Drop everything your doing and find a way to watch it.
Director John Hock tells the magnificent story of that team, of the hardships, the stumbles, the underachievement, and then that magical run through the ACC Tournament, defeating the seemingly insurmountable Ralph Sampson, followed by slaying the Virginia dragon again in the NCAA Tournament and winning the whole damn thing.
A team that quite literally had to win out from the day it took the court for its conference tournament did just that, led by a trio of senior leaders in Dereck Whittenburgh, Thurl Bailey and Sidney Lowe, and the flamboyant coach who dreamed an impossible dream and had his players buy in.
Survive and Advance: The Jim Valvano Story
In 1983, the NC State Wolfpack, coached by Jim Valvano, stayed alive in the postseason by winning nine do-or-die games in a row — seven of which they were losing in the final minute — beating the likes of Michael Jordan and three-time National Player of the Year Ralph Sampson. The unlikely squad made it to the national championship game against No. 1 Houston, aka Phi Slama Jama, a team featuring future NBA Top 50 all-time players Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. NC State was one of the biggest underdogs ever in the final game, one that went down as possibly the best college basketball game in history-ending with one of the most well-known plays of all time.
But the documentary was not about the troubles or even the personality of Valvano, even though his gigantic persona was impossible to ignore. The documentary was about this team “surviving and advancing.” The title of the film was not only the team’s rallying cry during that remarkable season, but it turned out to be an apt metaphor and descriptor for Valvano himself. Just as his Wolfpack squad survived and advanced time and time again 30 years ago when all logic said they could not, Valvano’s spirit and drive has survived and advanced even in his death.
Thanks to the V Foundation, hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised to fund cancer research, and progress has been made on that front. Jimmy V has survived and advanced in spirit. His inspiration and zest for life give people who never got to meet him, people who never got to see him coach, people who never heard him broadcast opportunities and strength to fight cancer in all its forms.
To its credit, Survive and Advance, airing on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU, doesn’t sanitize or minimize any of it. Per the sports documentary format, it offers thrilling, grainy TV game segments, talking-head interviews with players and coaches, and some well-known images (say, Valvano cutting down nets after a couple of games or, after beating Houston to win the NCAA Tournament in Albuquerque, running around on the court looking for someone, anyone, to hug).
It also offers something else, which is a reflection on why it might be important to remember this experience and others, how sports—in this case college basketball—shape lives and characters, and how teams, as an idea and practice, can provide inspiration and structure and support, in good and difficult times.
Jimmy V not only showed what it is to have mental strength, but physical and spiritual strength as well.
