Players from the North Carolina State University 1974 men’s basketball national championship team are senior citizens now; all are approaching age 70.
Yet, each year, the arrival of the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball season continues to light them up…brighter than their coach’s jazzy, plaid sports jackets.
Coach “Stormin’ Norman” Sloan had an outlandish, flashy wardrobe and a fiery temper, but that was all part of the aura he created.
As a player, Sloan was one of the many “Hoosier Hotshots” recruited from Indiana in 1946 to come to Raleigh to play college basketball at N.C. State under coach Everett Case.
Case had spent 23 years as a high school basketball coach in Indiana before taking the head job in Raleigh.
Sloan played on three Wolfpack teams that won Southern Conference championships (1947-49).
After college, Sloan moved up the college basketball coaching ladder at Presbyterian College, Memphis State University, The Citadel and the University of Florida. He returned to Raleigh as the Wolfpack’s head basketball coach in 1966.
The Indiana pipeline brought Sloan top recruits Monte Towe and Tim Stoddard, who enrolled at N.C. State in 1971 – nearly a half-century ago.
Dick Dickey, a teammate of Sloan’s, had recommended N.C. State give serious consideration to Towe of Converse, Ind. The Wolfpack’s assistant coach Eddie Biedenbach paid a visit. Towe was 5-foot-7 and looked about 14 years old.
Biedenbach told his boss: “Norm, he’s awfully small.” Sloan replied: “Dick Dickey knows what he’s doing.”
Biedenbach also spent a lot of time recruiting in East Chicago, Ind., pursuing a trio of hotshots who led Washington High School to an undefeated season and the state basketball title. The stars of the team were Pete Trgovich, Ulysses “Junior” Bridgeman and Tim Stoddard.
What tipped the 6-foot-7 Stoddard to select N.C. State was his desire to play both basketball and baseball at the college level. Former Chicago White Sox infielder Sammy Esposito, also an East Chicago native, was the head baseball coach at N.C. State as well as a basketball assistant on Sloan’s staff.
Stoddard said: “With Sam Esposito having a part in both sports, it made it an easier decision and an easier transition from the basketball court to the baseball field.” Stoddard became the ace in Esposito’s pitching rotation.
Sports statisticians have determined that there are only two American male athletes to play in the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament and baseball’s World Series.
Both men are graduates of East Chicago’s Washington High. They are Tim Stoddard (Class of 1971) and Kenny Lofton (Class of 1985).
As a collegian, Stoddard was a key contributor on N.C. State’s 1974 championship basketball team, as was Towe. (Some of their teammates were Tommy Burleson, David Thompson, Moe Rivers and Phil Spence.)
Lofton was a reserve guard on the 1988 University of Arizona team that made it to the Final Four but lost to the University of Oklahoma in the semi-finals.
As a professional baseball player, Stoddard was on the roster of the Baltimore Orioles for the World Series in 1979 and again in 1983. The Orioles were victorious in 1983, defeating the Philadelphia Phillies, 4 games to 1.
Timothy Paul Stoddard is
the only person ever to win a championship ring in both the NCAA basketball tournament
and the World Series. (We’re just getting warmed up here.)
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