Wake Forest Athletics News

ACC Tournament Notes

March 4, 2002

By Jay Reddick

The ACC is all about anniversaries in the next couple of years. The ACC Women's Basketball Tournament, to be played in Greensboro March 1-4, is the 25th annual event, making it the oldest women's conference tournament in America.

And next season, the league will celebrate its 50th year with its 50th annual college basketball tournament.

Men
2002 will be Wake Forest's 66th consecutive year competing in a league tournament of some sort in men's basketball - the Southern Conference, which Wake Forest joined in 1937, was among the first leagues to hold a postseason event. Wake Forest was victorious in its final Southern Conference tournament appearance, beating N.C. State 71-70 in the 1953 finals.

According to the 2001-02 ACC Basketball Media Guide, the Deacons have played in 11 overtime games in the ACC Tournament, the second-most of any school (North Carolina has played 12). Five of Wake's overtime games, in fact, have been against North Carolina, most recently in consecutive seasons (1994 and 1995).

The Deacons got a head start on the field in the overtime category, as all three of their games in the first tournament in 1954 went to OT, including a finals loss to the Wolfpack.

Wake Forest is one of two schools to appear in five consecutive ACC championship games - it did so from 1960-64. Duke did the same from 1963-67, it would equal that record with a title-game appearance this year.

If history is any guide, Skip Prosser may need this year to get accustomed to the ACC Tournament - or he may just need one game. First-year coaches are 9-31 in the event's first round, but four of those first-round winners went on to the conference championship game, and three - Duke's Vic Bubas in 1960, N.C. State's Press Maravich in 1965 and UNC's Bill Guthridge in 1998 - won the conference title. (The only title-game loser in the bunch was N.C. State's Herb Sendek in 1997.)

Wake Forest and North Carolina are the only two schools who have had players who scored 40 or more points and pulled down 21 or more rebounds in a tournament game (not the same players, obviously). UNC has had three 40-point scorers, led by Lennie Rosenbluth's 45 in the first round of the 1957 tournament, Wake's best effort was Randolph Childress' 40 against Duke on the first of the celebrated "Three Days in March" in 1995. Lee Shaffer pulled down 21 rebounds for the Heels against Clemson in 1959, but Tim Duncan did that one better during the '96 finals.

Childress and Duncan are actually the only two Deacons who hold official ACC Tournament records. Duncan's '96 output brought the one-tournament record for rebounds (56), the two-game record for boards (37) and the finals record for glass-cleaning (22). The next year, he also set a single-game record for free-throw attempts when Florida State sent him to the line 23 times (he made 13).

Childress' 107 points in the 1995 Tournament comprise a record that may not be approached anytime soon. In fact, the closest anyone has come to the record since Childress set it was...Duncan, who had 68 points in three games in the 1996 tournament. During Childress' outburst in Greensboro, he not only set the scoring record but every 3-point record on the books for one game (nine made and 17 attempts in the finals) and for the whole tournament (23 made and 44 attempts).

The Deacons have won a total of one game in the last four ACC Tournaments, a 58-52 victory over North Carolina in the 2000 quarterfinals. Current senior Craig Dawson was WFU's leading scorer in that game with 17 points off the bench, Josh Howard, Darius Songaila and Ervin Murray were starters in that game who remain on the roster.

Women
A display celebrating the first 24 years of women's basketball in the ACC will be at the Greensboro Coliseum during this year's tournament.

The Deacons' all-time record in the tournament is 6-24, and the team has advanced to the semifinals of the event only twice, in 1986 and '88.

The two Deacons found most often in the ACC Tournament record book are Janae Whiteside and RaeAnna Mulholland. Whiteside's 1999 event included five 3-point field goals (and a game-high 21 points) in a first-round victory over Maryland, then seven more 3s (and 23 points) in a narrow 71-67 quarterfinal loss to second-seeded Virginia. The seven 3-pointers are a tournament record, as are the 12 3s in one tournament.

Mulholland, in a first-round victory over Florida State in 1994, had 12 points and 17 rebounds. The rebounding total is tied for the fifth-best such game in tournament history. Interestingly, one of the four efforts ahead of it is Katina Cobbins' 18 boards for FSU in the same game.

Mulholland's is one of 10 double-doubles by Deacons in the tournament. Jenny Mitchell had three, Mulholland and Tracy Connor had two each, and Barbara Buchanan, Cynthia Kelley and B.J. Thames had one apiece.

The Deacons' 75-68 loss to top-seeded Duke in last year's first round was WFU's first overtime game in the ACC Tournament. It also was almost the closest a No. 1 seed has come to losing its first game in the tournament. In 1979, top-seeded Maryland beat N.C. State 71-69 in the semifinals after receiving a bye. The closest previous first-round or quarterfinal involving a top seed was Virginia's 70-56 victory over Wake Forest in the 1987 tournament.

Whiteside and Olivia Dardy last year are the only two Deacons named to the all-tournament team since 1994. Whiteside was a first-team selection in 1999, and Dardy's 30-point performance against Duke last year earned her second-team honors.