1997 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament
The 1997 Atlantic Coast Conference Men's Basketball Tournament took place from March 6-9, 1997 in Greensboro, North Carolina at the Greensboro Coliseum. In what would be Coach Dean Smith's last season as the head coach of The University of North Carolina, his Tar Heels won the tournament, defeating a surprising NC State team in the final.
NC State became the first team in ACC history to advance past the quarterfinal round after playing in the play-in game. The ACC adopted the play-in game format in 1992 when Florida State joined the conference. After defeating top seed Duke in the quarterfinals, NC State surprisingly defeated #5 seed Maryland to advance to the championship game. Their Cinderella run through the tournament ended against rival North Carolina in the final. The 1997 NC State Wolfpack remained the lowest seeded team to ever make the ACC Tournament Final, until the 2007 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament. Shammond Williams was the tournament MVP.
Read more about 1997 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: Bracket
Famous quotes containing the words men and/or basketball:
“Men are the enemies of women. Promising sublime intimacy, unequalled passion, amazing security and grace, they nevertheless exploit and injure in a myriad subtle ways. Without men the world would be a better place: softer, kinder, more loving; calmer, quieter, more humane.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)