Dereck
Whittenburg

Dereck Whittenburg owns one of the most replayed moments in the history of college basketball. Tied with heavily favored Houston in the 1983 national championship game, the NC State senior let go a shot from thirty feet that fell short of the rim — and teammate Lorenzo Charles caught it in the air and dunked it home at the buzzer for a 54–52 title. Whittenburg has never called it an airball. “It was a pass,” he still says, “and it's going to be a pass for the rest of my life.”

That moment was no accident of talent. A DeMatha Catholic star and cousin of Wolfpack great David Thompson, Whittenburg wore No. 25 as the captain and lead guard of Jim Valvano's team. He broke his foot midway through his senior year and willed his way back for the postseason, finishing with 1,272 career points and one of the great runs the tournament has ever seen — the survive-and-advance climb that gave the era its name.

When his playing days ended, he built a long life in the game. Whittenburg coached for more than two decades — assistant stops from Georgia Tech to Colorado, then head-coaching runs at Wagner, where he won a Northeast Conference title, Coach of the Year honors, and the school's first NCAA Tournament bid, and at Fordham. He later worked as an ESPN analyst and served as executive producer of the Emmy-winning 30 for 30 film “Survive and Advance,” told largely through his eyes.

Today he gives back to the school that made him. Whittenburg serves as an associate athletic director at NC State, sits on the board of the V Foundation for Cancer Research — appointed by Valvano himself — and, with his wife Jacqueline, runs a family foundation that has awarded more than 200 scholarships. On stage he draws on all of it, speaking about resilience, belief, and the pass that changed his life.