ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — It’s impossible to walk into The Pit and not feel the 1983 Final Four. Or maybe it’s just me, because I actually was in the building that weekend when March Madness really began.
Twenty-nine years later, it seems everybody was there, witnessing Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State Wolfpack beating the powerful Houston Cougars in one of the most improbable upsets in NCAA tournament history.
Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan was there with his father, Butch Ryan, a Philadelphia coach who was attending the coaches convention annually held at the Final Four. For the Ryans, it was an annual voyage that landed them in Albuquerque.
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Bo Ryan had a rooting interest once Georgia, Houston, Louisville and North Carolina State reached the finals. Nineteen years earlier, Ryan had attended a basketball camp in the Poconos, were Valvano had served as a coach.
“I was rooting for Valvano,” Ryan said this week.
The NCAA tournament returned to The Pit this weekend with Ryan’s Wisconsin team playing Vanderbilt in an East Region game last night, and Colorado facing Baylor in the South Region. The winners advanced to the Sweet 16 in their march to the Final Four in New Orleans.
They play the Final Four in stadiums now. The last time it was played in a gym was in The Pit. The place is still loud. Built into the ground, there’s no place for the sound of 15,000 fans go but in your ears.
“Great basketball facility,” Ryan said. “Had good seats, you know. It wasn’t in one of those big places. It was in a basketball venue, basketball atmosphere. Really, really good atmosphere. That’s what I remember.”
Much of The Pit was rooting against Wisconsin in yesterday’s third-round game. The Commodores’ senior guard, Jeffery Taylor, is from nearby Hobbs, N.M. Four years ago, he won a state championship at The Pit and graduated as the school’s all-time leading scorer. This weekend, he had hundreds of friends and family cheering for him.
“When the pairings were announced, as fate would have it, I was sitting right next to Jeff,” Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said. “He was the most excited guy on the planet that we were coming to New Mexico to play in the NCAA tournament.”
A huge portrait of Lorenzo Charles dunking Dereck Whittenburg’s air ball now hangs in the corridor of The Pit. It’s part of a 1983 salute that includes a picture of Valvano trying to find someone to hug.
Valvano could have hugged me. A college senior at nearby New Mexico State, I was recruited (I begged) by the New Mexico sports information office to help the media. My job was to sit on the baseline under the basket and keep the photographers in their proper slots. I was closer to Charles when he made the winning dunk than Hakeem Olajuwon was.
Everyone remembers N.C. State beating Houston, but the better game was Louisville versus the Cougars in the semifinals. That’s when the Doctors of Dunk met Phi Slama Jama. It was played above the rim — way above the rim.
Olajuwon and Clyde “The Glide” Drexler against Milt Wagner and the McCray brothers, Rodney and Scooter. When Houston won, 94-81, no one gave North Carolina State a chance.
The rest is history, a snapshot of where the Madness really began. Now we wait each March for more upsets, knowing it’s always possible for the underdog to win and send a coach looking for a hug.
george.willis@nypost.com