Trend-setting Terps played Super classic

TERPS,

“Both of them said nobody will come to the game because of the Super Bowl,” Potts recalled recently. “I said, ‘Look, they have plenty of time to come home [after a noon start] and watch the Super Bowl. The thing we’ve got going for us is an unbelievable captive audience. We will blow it off the charts with the ratings,’ which we did.”

An estimated 25 million viewers watched the game played on Jan. 14, 1973 between the second-ranked Terps and third-ranked North Carolina State, won 87-85 on a tip-in right before the buzzer by the Wolfpack’s emerging star, sophomore guard David Thompson, who finished with 37 points.

Maryland has played nine times on Super Bowl Sunday since, with a 5-5 overall record. The last time was in 2010, when “Snowmaggedon” buried the region and mostly students showed up to watch Maryland bury North Carolina, 92-71, in College Park.

Today’s 1 p.m. game against Wisconsin at Xfinity Center certainly will not have the hype, star power nor significance of the first Super Bowl matchup in 1973 or even the rematch between the two teams in Raleigh a year later.

Still, except perhaps in Potts’ mind, there was not any connection that day between the two games.

“I don’t think people thought of it as Super Bowl Sunday,” said Billy Packer, who served as Ray Scott’s color analyst on the broadcast.

Former Maryland All-American Len Elmore, then a junior, said there was not much talk on campus about it being played on Super Bowl Sunday, except by Potts.

“It was his baby,” Elmore said Friday. “He talked it up, and I guess Coach tried to talk it up by saying, ‘The world is going to see you.’ With us, it was just, ‘Who is this David Thompson guy?’ ”

Packer, whose career as a color basketball analyst began the previous season in the Atlantic Coast Conference, was asked by C.D. Chesley, whose North Carolina-based company produced ACC games, if he thought the matchup between the Terps and Wolfpack would have national interest.

Packer, a former Wake Forest guard, thought it might given the players and coaches involved.

“Obviously you had these two teams that became as great a rivalry as the league or any conference has ever had, culminating with what I think is the greatest game I ever saw,” Packer said of the 1974 ACC tournament final between Maryland and N.C. State, won in Greensboro, N.C., by the Wolfpack, 103-100 in overtime.

Chesley worked with the Hughes Sports Network to carry the 1973 Maryland-N.C. State game on 145 stations nationally. It was even more than the 120 stations rival sports promoter Eddie Einhorn signed up for the 1968 prime time matchup between UCLA’s Lew Alcindor and Houston’s Elvin Hayes at the Astrodome.

“It was expanded beyond the regular ACC network, but it wasn’t national television. It was not sold to a network,” Packer said.

Still, in terms of a sporting event, the game would serve as a lead-in to Super Bowl VII between the Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins, who were trying to become the first undefeated in modern NFL history.

“I think they were only interested in [the Super Bowl] in Washington because the Redskins were playing,” Packer said. “I think the game between Maryland and N.C. State really started a golden era of college basketball.”

The Terps, led by juniors Elmore and Tom McMillen, and sophomore John Lucas, were coming off winning the National Invitation Tournament. The Wolfpack were about to introduce Thompson, the 6-foot-4 guard with a 44-inch vertical, to the college basketball world on a team that already included another freakish player in 7-4 center Tom Burleson.

On top of that, the teams were coached by two of the game’s great personalities, Driesell and Norm Sloan.

“It was like a can’t-miss,” Packer said. “Nobody even realized at that time how great David Thompson was. That game [for Thompson] was like Michael Jordan hitting the shot to beat Georgetown [for the NCAA title in 1982]. … Since freshmen had been ineligible, people had not seen Thompson until that Super Bowl Sunday.”

Driesell was familiar with Thompson, having tried to recruit him out of Shelby, N.C. In those days, Driesell and his assistants would scout an opponent such as N.C. State live “a couple of times” in order to get a feel for its players.

“We knew how good he was,” Driesell said Friday.

Elmore was anxious to play against Thompson after seeing him in a couple of freshman games the previous season when Maryland faced N.C. State.

“We wanted to know if he could bring it to the varsity level,” Elmore said of Thompson, who would be the ACC’s Player of the Year in each of his three varsity seasons. “He exceeded expectations.”

It was only one of two ACC games the Terps ever lost at Cole Field House during Elmore and McMillen’s three years on varsity. The other one was the following year, also against the Wolfpack.

“I still believe that if we had won that [1973] game, it would have changed our lives with that team,” Elmore said. “I just think it was a psychological thing. How many close games did we play them? [Nearly] every game was down to one or two possessions, from that game on.”

McMillen, who led the Terps with 29 points but missed the front end of a one-and-one with 2½ minutes left to open the door for Thompson’s tip (dunking was still banned), said that in terms of Maryland basketball history, “It’s one of the great memories of Cole Field House.”

More than four decades removed, Elmore can still see the last few seconds of that game unfold in his mind’s eye.

“I remember Burleson had to throw up a shot because the [game] clock was running down,” Elmore said. “He throws up a long shot and I’m maybe 15 to 20 feet from the basket. When he shot it, I thought we were going to win.”

The last couple of ticks came as if Elmore were was watching a movie that purposely slowed the action.

“I see the ball hit the rim and it’s like slow-motion,” Elmore said. “Here’s Thompson rising above Bodell and once he put it in, it went to regular speed again and I’m thinking, ‘We are going to lose.’ I won’t forget that.”

Elmore will be back to watch today’s game against Wisconsin as a fan.

Undoubtedly, somebody will mention the first college basketball played the same day as the Super Bowl.