The hero of the day
7 Mar 1997: Guards Justin Gainey and Clint Harrison of the North Carolina State Wolfpack celebrate after a playoff game against the Duke Blue Devils at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. The Wolfpack won the game 66 - 60. | Getty Images The earliest bits of concrete NC State sports memories I have involve Torry Holt and Justin Gainey—1997 felt a little transformative for both sports at the time.
Torry helped the football team pull a huge upset in a (nonconference) game at Syracuse to open the ‘97 season; in March of that year, Gainey played every minute of a surprise run to the ACC tournament championship. The ACC tournament was still a tidy nine-team venture at that point, with the play-in game on Thursday night. This being the deeply depressing post-V era, NC State lived in that game, and man am I glad that’s the extent of what I remember about it.
Like so much from back then, it feels terribly quaint that you’d just sacrifice a major program at the altar of some NCAA bullshit. But that’s what NC State did in the 1990s. Justin Gainey was a pioneer in the school’s initial revival effort—Is winning allowed?
We’re allowed to do this? —and he was an immediate impact player for Herb Sendek’s nascent program. After each State win in that ACC tournament, my dad and his friends cranked “Hero Of The Day” by Metallica, which became a good luck charm, because you can’t change anything as long as it’s working during ACC tournament weekend.
A lot changes over time, but many things don’t. This is still the only Metallica song I can tolerate, for instance. Justin Gainey worked more than one miracle that weekend.