Wolfpack Flashback: Jules' Redemption

On this date in NC basketball history, the Wolfpack didn't just win an NCAA tournament game against defending national champion UConn. It also earned a measure of personal redemption for star Julius Hodge

The only Madness going on this March is taking place off the court, with the NCAA tournament cancelled in response to the growing coronavirus crisis. With no actual games to report on, SI All Wolfpack is looking back in time to remember some of NC State's best postseason games from the past. Today, it's a 2005 upset of defending national champion UConn that represented a measure of personal redemption for Wolfpack star Julius Hodge.

No one took NC State's second round NCAA tournament loss to UConn in 2002 harder than Julius Hodge.

A star freshman at the time, the future first-round NBA draft pick blamed himself for the three-point setback after he was called for a decisive foul on the Huskies' Caron Butler in the final seconds. After the game, a distraught Hodge vowed that he would be back and that next time, "he would not be denied."

It took three more years for it to happen, but in 2005 he got another shot at UConn. And this time he made good on his word.

With the score tied and time running out, Hodge beat defender Rudy Gay off the dribble, scored at the rim as he was fouled and made the ensuing free throw to help the 10th-seeded Wolfpack upset the defending national champion Huskies 65-62.

The victory didn't just advance State to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1989, it also represented a measure of personal redeption for Hodge, who celebrated by yelling "I told you so! I told you so!" to the State fans in the stands in Worchester, Mass.

"No one believed it could happen," said Hodge, who finished with 17 points. "It feels that much better because no one believed."

Winning games when no one else believed has become something of a Wolfpack postseason tradition -- one that coincidentally enough, added one of its earliest chapters on this date in 1983.

That night in Corvalis, Ore., coach Jim Valvano's eventual national champions survived and advanced with a second round 71-70 come-from-behind win against UNLV. It was a game in which Thurl Bailey outshined Rebels' All-American and former New York high school rival Sidney Green.

Bailey scored a team-high 25 points, capped off with a tip-in over Green with four seconds remaining to give the Wolfpack the close victory -- one of several great escapes during the championship run.

State's first NCAA tournament victory on March 20 came all the way back in 1951 when it beat Villanova 67-62 behind a 27-point, 10-rebound performance from sophomore William Kukoy in an opening round game at Reynolds Coliseum.

Things didn't go as well in the other two games the Wolfpack played on this date. In 2003, it lost 76-74 in overtime to Cal. In 2014, State let a 14-point lead slip away in the final five minutes of regulation in losing an 83-80 decision to St. Louis, also in overtime.