What's That Name Again?

The problem wasn't that the school was not playing good basketball. A 45-7 record over two years and 21-5 this season is most acceptable. The problem was that not enough people knew about UNCC—and certainly not the people who make up postseason tournaments. It was frustrating, and it shook down into a sure-enough identity crisis. And that's where this story begins.

The low point came a month ago when John Edgerton, a Charlotte, N.C. TV executive, went to Madison Square Garden in New York . How about televising the UNCC games in the National Invitation Tournament , he asked. Never mind that UNCC did not have an NIT bid at the time. "What they told me," says Edgerton, summing it up, was, " 'What's a UNCC ?' "

That was the situation, right there. A UNCC , he told them, is the University of North Carolina at Charlotte . There is no hyphen or comma in its name; it is not a branch of the University of North Carolina or North Carolina State , those bigger schools up the road a piece. UNCC was founded in 1965, eight miles from downtown Charlotte . It has 7,500 students. It also has a new basketball coach. Lee Hyden Rose had coached at Transylvania College in Lexington, Ky. In eight years there, his teams had a 160-57 record. Nobody noticed that, either.

Before Rose arrived, UNCC had a pep band, a spirit squad, a hostess committee, Gold Diggers to spur the 49ers and a community that didn't seem to care one way or the other. Then Rose began to roll up victories, beating such notables as Florida 73-64 and Vanderbilt 78-61. But instead of acclaim, those upsets seemed to provoke more yawns.

Rose figured that UNCC epitomized the words of Plautus: "How often the highest talents are wrapped in obscurity." And while he wanted to unwrap those talents, an NIT offer, he knew, was unlikely. He sought advice from that past master of attention-getting, Adolph Rupp of Kentucky . Rupp vetoed Rose's plan to call the NIT selection committee. Rose says, " Rupp told me, 'Calling is one thing, but if you go up there and show them you're determined and dedicated, it'll be received much better.' "

So Rose showed them. He hustled to Manhattan to present packets of information about his team to the NIT selection committee, and he called anyone else he could think of who might help in pleading his case. Back in Charlotte , he sat at home by the phone all day Sunday, March 7, waiting for the NIT to call. But it wasn't until the next morning, when he was about to give up in despair, that the phone rang. UNCC was in the NIT.

On Friday, March 12, UNCC faced favored San Francisco in the opening round. At the final buzzer, Kevin King, a 6'6" UNCC freshman, tied the score at 69 with a layup and clinched a 79-74 overtime win when he unfurled a court-length pass to 6'4" Lew (the Machine) Massey, who converted it into an easy basket. Massey, the team's scoring leader with a 22.8 average, wound up with 25 points. Cedric (Cornbread) Maxwell, a 6'8" junior, had 28.

Sure enough, the game was televised by Charlotte 's WBTV, and the folks back home were enraptured. Never had there been such cavorting. The crowds were so lusty that they brought traffic to a halt on Highway 49 in front of the university. Students "rolled" the campus, festooning it with toilet paper. Both the Charlotte Observer and News fired the fever, printing headlines including ECSTASY and DELIRIOUS and 49ERS STRIKE GOLD.

Three days later UNCC met mighty Oregon . With his team down 22-13, Rose ordered the 49ers "out of a passive zone and into an aggressive man-to-man." Mel Watkins, a rugged, 6'3" junior (whose heart is twice the normal size and beats at half the usual pace) covered Ron Lee , Oregon 's main man. Watkins cooled off Lee ; Maxwell scored 30 points; Massey added 20—and UNCC stunned Oregon 79-72.

A disgruntled Oregon rooter said, "Losing is bad enough. But to come 2,500 miles and get beat by a team nobody ever heard of...."