Cardiac Pack 2.0

I'm forever grateful that the Wolfpack men's basketball team turned it around when it was almost a certainty that a coaching change was inevitable prior to the start of the ACC Tournament in D.C. While I treated the Final Four run as an extremely pleasant surprise, I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a new era of success.

A pattern of the team's three ACC Championships in the multi-bid era (from 1975 on):

Every postseason game that the Original Cardiac Pack played in except the Sweet 16 against 10-seed Utah was a nail-biter.

The previous team to win an ACC title won every game in that tournament by single digits.

Most of this year's ACCT games as well as a couple of NCAAT games were close too.

Meanwhile, notice a glaring difference between the '24 team against the other two championship teams:

Can anyone say unprecedented?

No one gave this year's team much love whereas the '83 team was hampered by Dereck Whittenburg's injury before Cardiac Pack 1.0 went on that Cinderella run once he returned from his injury. The '87 team started the season as an NCAA Tournament caliber team before it fell off in the middle of the season and had to rally in Metro D.C. just to get into the Big Dance.