Jamie Valvano loving 2024 Wolfpack, comparisons to dad's 1983 championship team
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- NC State's mesmerizing run to the Final Four has stirred echoes of the 1983 national championship march for the Wolfpack men.
The 2024 team has drawn many comparisons to the famous "Cardiac Pack" squad, winning the ACC Tournament and then plugging away game after game, proving the doubters wrong.
At the heart of that 41 years ago was head coach Jim Valvano with his "don't give up" motto that still resonates today.
To this day, people continue to pay tribute to the coach affectionately known as Jimmy V, who later died of cancer. His daughter, Jamie Valvano, still lives in the area and works for the V Foundation. She's an NC State graduate. She said she loves all the comparisons to 1983 and her dad and said she sees the same resilience and heart in this year's team.
"We can be one day looking at our circumstances feeling down and feeling like things aren't going to go the way we think they should be, and then give it a couple weeks and you're cutting down the nets and heading to the Final Four," Jamie Valvano told ABC11. "And when I look at this team, through the eyes of a coach's daughter, I see the heart and the family, and the hard work and humor and the belief in each other that has just grown so much."
She will be watching on Friday and Saturday nights, as NC State plays in both the men's and women's Final Four. But she said she won't be at one of the big parties out and about in Raleigh -- she's just too nervous.
She'll be watching at home, and that stems from a superstition her mom had in 1983.
Jamie was 11 years old during the 1983 championship season, and out in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the Final Four was held, her mother, Pam, would get so nervous during games that she would walk out into the concourse to rub a Wolfpack pin for good luck in the final two minutes of the game.
As luck would have it, Jamie was out in the hallway near the concession stand with her mom when the famous Lorenzo Charles dunk won the title for the Wolfpack against heavily favored Houston.
She said the biggest memory she has is the return to Raleigh.
"There were people waiting for us in the tarmac, there were people hanging off bridges as we were riding, and then when we arrived to Reynolds Coliseum, it was just this sea, the mass of fans," Valvano recalled. "And to see my dad and his players, you know, they were on this stage and talking to the fans.
"I have people who come up to me now and say, 'I failed out of school because I couldn't even go to class,'" she laughed. "It was just life-changing."
