Players figure out roles, now North Carolina State is rolling

BeeJay Anya was smiling brightly in the North Carolina State locker room minutes after his Wolfpack had beaten No. 1 seed Villanova the other night when he was told that N.C. State had beaten top seeds just twice before — and that both came during the 1983 NCAA men's basketball tournament.

"Maybe that's a good omen," Anya told USA TODAY Sports, his smile growing even wider. "You never know what can happen. We play our best against the best teams."

Wolfpack fans know that 1983 is the sainted year when N.C. State won an unlikely national championship, the one in the montages where coach Jim Valvano runs around looking for someone to hug.

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N.C. State's players wear T-shirts that say "Wolfpack Destiny" — a slogan that seems to be coming to life. They trailed LSU badly in their Round-of-64 game and staged an improbable comeback, winning with a 10th of a second left on Anya's baby hook from 8 feet. It played on the rim for a long moment, before falling through. Then they outplayed Villanova soundly in the Round of 32.

And look who N.C. State gets next: Louisville, a familiar opponent, in Sweet 16 on Friday. The Wolfpack were 14-11 in mid-February before they played at Louisville and won 74-65, turning around their season. Today they are 22-13.

"We are a team that had a lot of ups and downs this year," Anya said. True enough: The Wolfpack beat Duke 87-75 on Jan. 11 — and promptly lost four of their next five. But they are 8-2 in their last 10, beginning with Louisville on Valentine's Day.

"Now that we are jelling toward the end of the season, we are trying to play our best and people are trying to realize how good we really are," Anya said. "At the beginning of the season, we were trying to figure each other out. Now that we've figured out everybody's role, we're rolling."

That includes guard Anthony Barber, popularly known by his nickname, Cat. He didn't acquire it, as one might suspect, for his cat-quick first step. "My sister gave me that," he said, "because I used to run around a lot when I was young and climb up on the counters to get things out of the cabinets."

There was a point in the season when the Wolfpack looked like a long shot to make the NCAA tournament. Now they could be the long shot that makes enough long shots to crash the Final Four party. It takes four wins to get there — and they're halfway.

"Two down," Anya said, "and now we got to keep it going."

Once in the Final Four, it takes two more wins to earn a national championship. Is it crazy to think of N.C. State, a No. 8 seed, in the mix for that? No more crazy than it was in 1983, when the sixth-seeded Wolfpack beat Georgia in the national semifinals. Oddsmakers, and most everyone else, thought the national champion would come out of the other semifinal, a matchup of top seeds: Houston and, wait for it … Louisville.

The Wolfpack would go on to beat heavily favored Houston in the finals. If this year's team keeps advancing, you'll see lots of video of the famous last shot, an air ball from Dereck Whittenburg that Lorenzo Charles grabbed out of the air and slammed home. Another omen: These days Whittenburg is the team's director of player development.

"Some people thought we weren't supposed to be on the floor" with Villanova, guard Desmond Lee said. "But that's how the NCAA tournament is. That's why they call it March Madness. You got to be ready to play at all times. You only have one chance to do it — 40 minutes. And if we play our A game, we're most likely going to win more games."

Barber thinks it isn't crazy at all to think N.C. State could be the one cutting down the nets at tourney's end.

"Yeah, we're capable of winning it," Barber said. "It's going to be hard, going through the trials of getting there. But we can play with anybody, whether it's the one seed or the last seed."