Fayetteville State University recently brought home the CIAA men’s basketball championship, and it has one alumnus reliving one of the best moments of his life! Get the full story from The Fayetteville Observer at Myron B. Pitts at The Fayetteville Observer.
The Rev. Roy “Skip” Birch got to relive a specific kind of joy Saturday night — and it is one 49 years in the making.
Birch played on the Fayetteville State University basketball team that won the CIAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on Feb. 24, 1973. He remembers the team arriving home that long-ago Saturday night to the cheers of their fellow Broncos at the student union.
“Of course it was a joyous occasion. There were a lot of students,” Birch says. “It was unexpected. We felt special.”
It would be from that day until Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022, before another FSU men’s team would return to campus wearing the CIAA tournament crown. The Broncos defeated Virginia Union 65 to 62 in the tournament final in Baltimore that afternoon, powered by balanced scoring from Jalen Seegers, the tournament MVP, Darian Dixon and Cress Worthy.
Fayetteville State students and alumni filed into Capel Arena to greet the players when they arrived around 8 o’clock in the evening.
Birch and his wife, Dorothy, also an FSU alum, were among attendees. Word about the welcome-back event at Capel spread through the alumni community on Saturday.
“We actually waited about two hours,” he says. “The reality of when they were getting back was different than what we were initially told.”
He added the student body had evidently been told the correct time because they started coming in not long before the players, he said.
As for the team’s entrance: “It was exciting,” he says.
The CIAA win earned the Broncos, whose coach is Luke D’Alessio, an automatic berth in the NCAA Division II Tournament. The bracket is scheduled to be revealed Sunday.
Birch, who lives in Fayetteville and is an associate minister at First Baptist Church on Moore Street, says he didn’t think there was any way it would take so long for FSU to win the CIAA tournament again. The Broncos have been to the title game several times and lost a heart-breaker in the 2020 final. COVID-19 canceled the tournament in 2021.
“It’s a combination of breaks, and basketball, and participating in the moment — all of those kinds of things,” Birch says. “I’m not one who believes in luck.”
‘Like family’
It was a different world back then when the 1973 Broncos completed their historic run by upending the Norfolk State Spartans, 94 to 89, in the final held in Greensboro. The Vietnam War was on the front pages of the newspaper, Richard Nixon was still president and the day prior to the CIAA championship, three Apollo 17 astronauts, referred to in a headline as “the last Moonmen,” visited with state legislators and N.C. Gov. Jim Hunt in Raleigh.
In The Fayetteville Observer sports section, the FSU victory, “Broncos claim CIAA Crown” was the lead story on a page that also included stories about a win by then-Methodist College in its conference tournament and a 23-game win-streak by the N.C. State Wolfpack led by David Thompson, one of the all-time great collegiate players.
FSU’s victory in overtime was described as a “heart-rending and emotional comeback” that was a “revenge for a loss to these same Spartans in the finals a year ago.
“The Broncos did whatever it took — gut, pride, desire, hustle.”
The team, coached by Tom Reeves, leaned on the brilliant play of James Tyus, “the Arkansas Flash,” who was named the tournament MVP, as well as Terrance Murchison, the only team’s only senior, the Cogdell brothers, Alton and Larry, and Otis Newkirk.
Birch, who played as a guard and forward, says there was another key element.
“We were like family. We hung out together,” he says. “We chit-chatted together. We bonded.”
Many of the players stay in touch to this day, he says. In this region, the circle includes Birch; Otis Newkirk in Raeford; Robert Wilson and Michael Ross in Raleigh; and Murchison in South Carolina.
Birch can also name the members of the team who have passed away. They include Coach Reeves, who died in his office just a few months after the championship — but whose wife, Evelyn, is 96 and attends Birch’s church. Also deceased are the Cogdell brothers; assistant coach Armstead; Angelo Finch; and Sam Smith, he says.
Birch is looking forward to see how the 2022 edition of the Broncos, the latest CIAA champs, do in the Division II tournament.
He describes the moment on Saturday when the triumphant team came into Capel, having ended the long drought.
“You can say it was a weight lifted, personally for me, but for the school. I was extremely overjoyed,” he said. “And proud.”
