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Carl Tacy Passes Away At 87

I just remember being a kid and liking the mystery of a team playing home games in Greensboro, as a home coliseum. And we had way more students attend, and sit right near the court, not behind the basket, if I recall. It was fun to watch and we had legit athletes.

Piedmont Airlines and I believe Food Town or Food Lion commercials.
 
Best thread ever!

He was the best X’s and O’s Coach we ever had.
Not surprising that Odom had much respect for him.
 
^South Florida in first round 1985 per WSJ. Two good articles on Tacy in there today. I missed his tenure by a year.

Edit - I see you were referencing a prior post about an earlier nit.
 
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Carl's first season was '72-73. That's the year that we took out the Heels in the first round of the ACC tournament. In those days you had to win the tournament to get intp the NCAA tournament. I will never forget watching George Karl cry on the evening news. We were down 2 with one second left in regulation. We through a length of the court pass to Lee Foy who shot and tied the game. In overtime, Flip Perry drove in for a lay up as time ran out, Deacs 54 Heels 52, as I recall. There was a raucous celebration in front of Wait Chapel, complete with a mud slide! There was a huge crowd at the gym when the team bus got back that evening. Coach Tacy spoke, and it was awesome. It is one of my fondest memories of my years at Wake. RIP, Coach.

It may have been after that game that on the following Sunday FBC pastor Randall Lolley announced at the end of the service that it had been decided that he needed to wear a “uniform” of sorts for worship. Instead of a robe, someone brought out a blazer - in my faulty memory it was gold. Randall said, “There’s something embroidered on the pocket. It says, ‘Wake 54, Carolina 52.”

The UNC fans were not amused but we loved it. (The Tacys were faithful members.)
 
It may have been after that game that on the following Sunday FBC pastor Randall Lolley announced at the end of the service that it had been decided that he needed to wear a “uniform” of sorts for worship. Instead of a robe, someone brought out a blazer - in my faulty memory it was gold. Randall said, “There’s something embroidered on the pocket. It says, ‘Wake 54, Carolina 52.”

The UNC fans were not amused but we loved it. (The Tacys were faithful members.)

Walmart light blue was popular in Winston -Salem even back then. Some was from other stores.
 
Another quick story from that 83-84 season about Coach Tacy. Wake had the great shooter, Todd May on that team. He had transferred from Kentucky I believe the season before and of course had to sit out. In the Midnight Madness scrimmage he lit the place up and was showing huge potential for us. Most know the story that he got hurt in pre-season and was sitting out and later transferred out of frustration and almost quit basketball before resurfacing at his nearby Pikeville NAIA team where he was a star. What you all may not know if how much Coach Tacy agonized over watching a fully healthy Todd May in February in those practices I was reffing, seeing how great he was doing on the 2nd team. I know he thought long and hard about pulling that red-shirt because his thinking was he could be the one ingredient that could push us over to the NCAA title. He was that good! Anybody that saw him in that opening scrimmage saw that too.
 
Yeah saw him in that game, he was really good. Kind of a Cameron Johnson type. At least 6.8 with a sweet stroke and good hops.
 
Rod the Bod was an absolute monster. He, Skip, and Jerry. What an incredibly fun team to watch. So much heart. That team would not have been the same without coach Tacy.

And Frankie J and LeRoy McDonald

ETA, didn't see that WFU22 covered that. Great team. In my opinion, the best Wake team from that point forward.
 
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And Frankie J and LeRoy McDonald

Yeah, LeRoy could absolutely jump out of the gym. I think Skip and Frank Johnson only played together one year, but they may have been the best combined back court in WFU history. Coach Tacy and those teams are among my fondest memories of WFU.

ETA: As a student, I would never have dreamed of missing a home bball game. Even if it was in Greensboro. Along with the great memories of Coach Tacy's teams, I am saddened by the contrast between then and now. Being good is so much more fun.
 
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Yeah saw him in that game, he was really good. Kind of a Cameron Johnson type. At least 6.8 with a sweet stroke and good hops.

Yep, I saw that black gold game too. It was not Midnight Madness, and there was no way to pull the redshirt of a transfer like Reff said. But as for the shooting, I don't remember May missing a single shot!
 
I just remember being a kid and liking the mystery of a team playing home games in Greensboro, as a home coliseum. And we had way more students attend, and sit right near the court, not behind the basket, if I recall. It was fun to watch and we had legit athletes.

Piedmont Airlines and I believe Food Town or Food Lion commercials.

And "Valleydale Bacon, Valleydale Sausage …"
 
The 1985-86 team was awful, but it was due to 3 bad breaks: Todd May getting hurt, Kenny Green leaving early & missing on Tom Hammonds. It still had 4 guys scoring in double figures (Rod Watson, Mark Cline, Muggsy Bogues & Charlie Thomas) with center Mike Scott just under double figures. If we could have added May, Green & Hammonds to those five guys...with, hopefully, Tacy deciding to stay as well...we would have been right back in the Top 10 again. Probably even with two of those three.

I realize that's a lot of ifs, but that 8-man rotation would have been better than the 1984 Elite Eight team.
 
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Here's a rare "TheReff is right" comment - at least with respect to Todd May's talent. I posit that May's demise is tightly correlated to Tacy's. A healthy Todd in 85 would make an NCAA team and a reason to be optimistic for 86 even with Green's early departure (which was not the norm at the time).
 
Okay. I understand now. Bad call on Tacy's part then.
 
Yep, I saw that black gold game too. It was not Midnight Madness, and there was no way to pull the redshirt of a transfer like Reff said. But as for the shooting, I don't remember May missing a single shot!

"May transferred to Wake Forest. He sat out the following season in compliance with NCAA rules. He broke his right foot while practicing that year and aggravated the injury during preseason the next autumn. Frustrated, he left Wake Forest and returned home, convinced he never again wanted to play organized basketball."

I stand corrected. Maybe it was Tacy dreaming then of what could have been?
 
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