By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — North Rowan graduate Larry Dixon — Class of 1990 — is on top of the basketball world right now, as an integral part of the coaching staff of the ACC champion N.C. State Wolfpack.

Dixon goes way back with N.C. State.

“Like a lot of people, I remember that exact moment when N.C. State won the national championship against Houston in 1983,” Dixon said. “It was a Monday night, late, they were playing in New Mexico, and I was watching the game on TV in my bedroom. When Lorenzo Charles dunked in the winning points at the buzzer, I jumped up and shouted out loud. My mom ran in wondering what had happened. I told her N.C. State won and she tells me to quiet down and go to sleep.”

Charles’ dunk of a desperate airball thrown up by Dereck Whittenburg created legions of loyal Wolfpack followers. Duke hadn’t gotten non-stop good yet, and some people just didn’t care for UNC or UNC fans.

“I’ve gotten to know Dereck over the years,” Dixon said with a laugh. “Still claims that was a pass, not a shot.”

After the Wolfpack’s miraculous run to the 1983 national championship — they had to win the ACC Tournament just to get into the NCAA Tournament — there was more glory to come in the Jim Valvano coaching era. There was an unlikely ACC tournament championship in 1987 with a win over UNC in the title game. Unlikely because N.C. State went 17-13 in the regular season and finished sixth in an eight-team ACC. Players such as Bennie Bolton, Vinny Del Negro and Charles Shackleford earned their place in Wolfpack history.

“In 1987, I was a ninth-grader who was trying to convince coaches I could play basketball,” Dixon said. “That was the last time N.C. State won the ACC tournament.”

That unfortunate streak ended on Saturday after the most scintillating run in tournament history by the 10th-seeded Wolfpack. No double-digit seed had ever won the ACC tournament.

Five wins in five days. No one had accomplished that feat anywhere in any league since UConn came out of nowhere to win the Big East tourney — and the national championship in 2011.

N.C. State lost seven of its last nine games in the regular season, including the last four in a row. Head coach Kevin Keatts’ job status was a frequent topic of discussion on sports radio talk shows as late as Monday, with the tournament starting on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

“I think you have to give Coach Keatts a lot of credit,” Dixon said. “Through everything, he stayed positive and he believed we could win the tournament, so the staff believed and the players believed. We never talked about having to win five games in five days. All we ever talked about was finding a way to win the next one. I know when we went to Washington, none of us packed for a night or two. We all packed for a week. It’s not like guys were up there doing laundry every day.”

N.C. State has a mature group. Guard DJ Horne, a transfer from Arizona State, who returned to his hometown of Raleigh, scored his 2,000th college point at a crucial moment during the tournament. Big man DJ Burns is a transfer from Winthrop, where he won Big South Player of the Year honors. Guard Michael O’Connell is a transfer who started for Stanford.

Dixon is a seasoned coach, who has enjoyed a long basketball journey. He developed into a star at North Rowan, averaging 20.4 points his senior season. He went on to Johnson C. Smith University and gradually became a standout for the Golden Bulls, earning accolades such as Most Improved Player and Best Defensive Player. He played for two CIAA Southern Division champs and competed in a CIAA championship game.

He got his first chances to coach at South Rowan and at Carver High in Winston-Salem. He was the toast of Charlotte, the Observer’s Mecklenburg County Coach of the Year, as a young coach on the rise at Garinger before taking a leap of faith — and a major pay cut — when he left Garinger for the college ranks, taking an assistant job at St. Andrews College.

There have been a lot of assistant-coaching jobs since St. Andrews — South Carolina State, East Carolina, Winthrop, Georgia Southern, South Florida.

Dixon’s recent five-year run at South Florida ended with a coaching change there. He had interviewed several places, but he was at a mall, shopping with his daughter for back-to-school clothes in August, when he got a call from Keatts telling him to buy her some nice stuff because he had a new job. College coaching staffs expanded by two prior to this season, and Dixon got the opportunity to return to his home state.

N.C. State is talented, but there aren’t any easy ACC games, and it’s been a roller-coaster season for Dixon and every member of the Wolfpack.

“I’ve enjoyed working for Coach Keatts,” Dixon said. “We all have input and can offer our opinions and suggestions, and he makes the final decisions. I’m very involved in recruiting, not on-the-road recruiting, but I’m on the phone a lot. We all watch film and do scouting. Coach (Levi) Watkins and I work with the bigs on practice days.”

Dixon’s star pupil is the fulcrum for the Wolfpack. The 6-foot-9, 275-pound Burns, was MVP of the ACC tournament. The 23-year-old mack truck was phenomenal in the ACC championship game against top-seeded UNC with 28 points and was voted tournament MVP.

“Burns has always been able to score the ball,” Dixon said. “I think we’ve got the best low-post, back-to-the-basket scorer in the country, The difference in Burns in the ACC tournament was his focus. He was locked in.”

“Locked in” didn’t really describe the Wolfpack in Tuesday’s opening round. Playing without Horne, who had a hip issue, N.C. State trailed 15th-seeded Louisville at halftime, before taking care of business.

N.C. State looked much sharper on Wednesday with Horne back in the lineup, handling seventh-seeded Syracuse.

From that point, N.C. State had to beat the top three seeds — No. 2 Duke, No. 3 Virginia and No. 1 UNC — and did so. Adrenaline kept pumping, and legions of N.C. State fans made the drive north and started appearing for the weekend games. Fatigue never really set in. N.C. State appeared to get stronger every day,

Keatts, who began his tradition of treating his teams to ice cream after road wins when he was coaching at UNC Wilmington, made the ice cream business boom in D.C.

“We didn’t talk about being tired or not being tried, and we never used fatigue as an excuse,” Dixon said. “We’ve got mature guys who understood what was needed and they believed in the coaches and in each other. We actually liked our draw going into the tournament. We believed we could win against anyone. The only time I thought we got a little sluggish was in the second half of the semifinal with Virginia.”

That’s the Friday game that required major good fortune to survive. McConnell banked in a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from about 30 feet to get the Wolfpack into overtime, and that miracle shot took everything out of Virginia..

“Then in the Carolina game — and don’t get me wrong, they’ve got a great team that might win it all — they looked more tired than we did,” Dixon said. “We had more pop then they did.”

Duke had won 15 ACC tournaments since the last time N.C. State had last won one 37 years ago. UNC had won eight.

Wolfpack victims Virginia, Syracuse and Louisville all had won national championships in the last 21 years.

There were plenty of long-suffering Wolfpack supporters who wondered if they would live long enough to see another ACC title, but now it’s a reality.

N.C. State players and coaches cut down the nets – a tradition that Everett Case, the legendary N.C. State coach, brought with him from Indiana to North Carolina.

This season marks the 50th anniversary of N.C. State’s first national championship in 1974, the one coached by Stormin’ Norman Sloan and ‘fueled by two North Carolina high school products — Crest’s David Thompson and Avery County’s Tom Burleson.

A statue was unveiled earlier this season to honor Thompson, and Dixon got to talk to the legend.

“David wasn’t too happy with me when I told him where I was from,” Dixon said. “He’s got bad memories of Salisbury. They put him out his senior year of high school.”

That 41-33 game was played at Catawba College and is part of Rowan County basketball lore.

Now Dixon is helping make new history.

Next for the Wolfpack is a trip to Pittsburgh. Seeded 11th in the South Region, N.C. State will play sixth-seeded Texas Tech on Thursday.

“We’re not done yet,” Dixon said. “Coach Keatts told our guys they’d earned the right to sleep in for a day, but they wanted to get up early and keep that same routine they’ve been on. It’s been working for them.”

With all the film study he was doing, Dixon was getting four hours of sleep per night during the tournament, but he got four and a half hours of shuteye on Sunday. Like the rest of the team and coaches, he’s locked in and focused on the task at hand. No one wants to see this season end.

Keatts’ job situation has changed  dramatically. He’s no longer on the hot seat. The ACC Tournament championship was a windfall that triggered a two-year extension in his contract, a $400,000 raise and a $100,000 bonus. That will buy a lot of ice cream.

And security for Keatts also means security for his hard-working staff.

“I’m enjoying it all,” Dixon said. “The fan support we had when we got back to the campus and for the NCAA selection watch show was incredible. It’s a very good time to be at NC State, and it’s wonderful to know that this team will be remembered.”