Norm Sloan, 77; Basketball Coach Led North Carolina State to a National Title

Norm Sloan, the coach whose North Carolina State basketball team interrupted UCLA’s record run of national championships in 1974, died Tuesday of pulmonary fibrosis in Durham, N.C. He was 77.

UCLA won 10 titles in 12 seasons under Coach John Wooden and had won seven consecutive championships when North Carolina State upset the Bruins in double overtime in the 1974 NCAA semifinals, coming from seven points behind in the second overtime in a loss that Wooden called the most disappointing of his career.

“I liked Norm a lot, and every time I think of him, I’ll remember that 1974 semifinal game,” Wooden said Tuesday from his home in Encino. “That was the one we kind of let get away from us.”

UCLA, with a team built around center Bill Walton and forwards Jamaal Wilkes and David Meyers, led North Carolina State by 11 points in the second half but lost in the end to a team led by All-American David Thompson.

“It wasn’t like us to do that,” Wooden said. “Our lead-protection game had always been very good. But not that night.”

North Carolina State defeated Marquette University in the title game.

“The Wooden dynasty was a great dynasty, but nothing’s perfect. God allowed us to nick that dynasty a little bit,” said Tom Burleson, the 7-foot-2 center on Sloan’s championship team.

Burleson remembered Sloan as assembling an extraordinarily talented roster led by Thompson, then having the wisdom to step back.

“He was sort of like the jockey on Secretariat. He let the horse run,” Burleson said. “He was always positive, and he didn’t over-coach.”

Thompson scored 28 points in the semifinal game against UCLA and Burleson added 20 to defeat the Bruins.UCLA had beaten North Carolina State earlier the same season, 84-66, in St. Louis, Mo.

But the Wolfpack came back to win, 80-77, when the teams met in the Final Four in Greensboro, N.C. -- about 80 miles from the North Carolina State campus in Raleigh.

“The first time we played UCLA, they really put it to us,” said Thompson, who later became an NBA star and a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. “Coach was one who always wanted to get revenge. He said, ‘We’re as good as anyone,’ and that gave us confidence.”

Sloan’s chief rival in that era wasn’t UCLA or Wooden, but the University of North Carolina and its coach, Dean Smith.

“What a great coach Norm Sloan was,” Smith said. “His teams played as hard as they could possibly play.”

The Wolfpack also might have been a contender for the 1973 title, going 27-0, but North Carolina State was banned from the NCAA tournament because of rules violations.

In addition to coaching at North Carolina State, Sloan had two stints at the University of Florida and also coached at Presbyterian College and The Citadel, both in South Carolina. He had a career record of 627-395 over 37 seasons.

Sloan could be an intense coach -- his personality was sometimes as loud as his famous plaid sport coats in the 1970s -- but he was a captivating recruiter.

“The neatest story I tell on him is, when he was recruiting myself and David, he was very charming with the parents, very nice to the players,” Burleson said.

“Then he called us in, our freshman team, sat us all down and said, ‘The steak dinners and shrimp cocktails have ended. I recruited you to this university; we’ve given you a full scholarship, an opportunity for four years of education, room and board. Now it’s time you start paying us back.’

“He was like a drill sergeant, once you’ve signed your papers and gone in the Army and realized what you’ve done.”

Times staff writer Bill Dwyre contributed to this story.