news-record.com

ATLANTA — N.C. State returned to the city where it began its most unlikely journey 26 years ago, but history is sometimes elusive in the ACC tournament. There was no magic this time, only the end of a strange season and the beginning of another awkward reckoning for the Wolfpack.

A team of ill-fitting parts that really didn't deserve to be compared with any of the great State teams of the past was flushed from the tournament Thursday night by a school that shares its past with the Wolfpack. Maryland perplexed State with a zone defense and won 74-69 just when looked as if the Wolfpack might extend the first-day upsets into the night.

Hours after hometown upstart Georgia Tech shocked Clemson, the Pack disappeared down the stretch of another game to lose in the first round for the second consecutive season.

State's arrival pushed attendance over 26,000 Thursday night in the cavernous Georgia Dome, and coming on the heels of the Georgia Tech upset, provided the kind of atmosphere this tournament has almost always produced. While first-day attendance at the other conference tournaments across the country dropped to shockingly low levels, State's red-clad masses helped pack the lower bowl of the dome.

When it ended, however, their blue-clad rivals were buying up their seats as the 56^th ACC tournament heads into the second day without the Pack once again. Only two years since Sidney Lowe guided his first State team to the championship game, the Pack now awaits a call from the NIT on Sunday night.

The other three North Carolina schools roll in today with bigger games to follow as the tournament's second run in the Georgia Dome takes on a bigger feel. Top-seeded Carolina will play Virginia Tech in the noon opener, and the news trickling out of Chapel Hill is that point guard Ty Lawson isn't expected to play. Second-seeded Wake Forest will play Maryland at 7 p.m. and third-seeded Duke will play Boston College in the nightcap.

The tournament churned to a start in the early morning Thursday as a smattering of fans fought through downtown traffic for the Miami-Virginia Tech game that opened the first-day brackets. Only a few, it seemed, broke through as Tech shook off Miami while echoes bounced off empty seats.

Miami was on the road home by mid-afternoon, and Clemson made its annual retreat soon afterward. Miami coach Frank Haith, whose team struggled to an 18-12 finish, didn't even lobby for a bid to the NCAA tournament. Even the Canes' NIT hopes are complicated by an event that will keep them from playing any more home games.

In the fifth tournament since their football program crashed the venerable old basketball tournament, the Hurricanes are far from a national program. Clemson has no excuse for what happened Thursday. Once ranked 10^th in the nation with a 16-0 record, the Tigers will likely enter the national tournament unranked and unhinged. Asked what he would do with an extra three days on his hands, Clemson coach Oliver Purnell had no answers.

He said his team might go get a bite to eat. Beyond that, he had nothing.

So the tournament goes on today without Miami, Clemson, State, Virginia and possibly Ty Lawson, a development that further opened the top of the bracket already scrambled by Georgia Tech. A statement from UNC on Thursday said the ACC's player of the year worked on an exercise bike and shot free throws during Carolina's practice.

"We don't think he will play," said Steve Kirschner, the school's sports information director.

The team will evaluate him this morning and make a decision that could affect the tournament for the top-seeded Heels and everyone else. The news served as a backdrop for the first day of the tournament as so many Carolina injuries have for so many years.

There was a time when State was part of the backdrop, too, a time when a State-Maryland game transcended everything else. Some 35 years after they played what many still believe is the best college basketball game ever played (State 103, Maryland 100 in overtime in Greensboro in 1974), history was only a storyline Thursday. Some 26 years after the miracle run to the 1983 national title began in Atlanta, the Pack took another step back.

For a time it looked as if freshman point guard Julius Mays might take his place alongside unsung heroes of the ACC tournament. He scored 18 points after not even playing in the Pack's final six regular-season games. That was somehow fitting for a team currently not close to its in-state rivals in significance. On a day when the other schools didn't even play, State was shadowed by the news out of Chapel Hill and the games that loom this weekend.

That's the way it goes in the tournament. The first day only serves as a compulsory round in a conference of 12, and the losing teams head home before the real games even begin.

State is somehow headed the wrong way again, going up the long road to Raleigh as history gets smaller in the rear-view mirror and the ACC tournament goes national.