GREENSBORO, N.C. _ Sometimes it does not feel like it has been so long ago, Randolph Childress said. But flecks of gray highlight his short beard and his son is about to graduate from college. He's recovering from shoulder surgery that has him feeling his age.
Now an assistant basketball coach at Wake Forest, where he played from 1991-95, Childress said his arm would be in a sling this week on the Demon Deacons' bench, which reminded him of another shoulder injury he suffered long ago, one that didn't slow him down.
"So that's my 25th anniversary reminder," he said with a smile, looking down at his right arm.
A quarter-century has passed since Childress, 47, gave the greatest individual performance in the history of the ACC tournament: 107 points over three March days when he was not merely one of the conference's best players, but the very best player in the nation for 72 hours that still live on after all these years.
Before, no player in ACC history had ever done what Childress did at the Greensboro Coliseum between March 10 and March 12, 1995. In the 25 years since, no player has done anything similar. His performance began 25 years ago Tuesday, when Wake Forest, then the No. 1 seed in the ACC tournament, found itself on the other side of an emerging blowout against Duke.
The Blue Devils had been uncharacteristically awful. They finished 13-18. Twelve games into the season, Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke head coach, took a leave of absence for back surgery, and to recover from stress-related exhaustion. And yet there the Blue Devils were on quarterfinal Friday, with a 31-13 lead against Wake Forest. About 8 { minutes remained in the first half.
"And they called timeout," Jeff Capel said on Monday. Now he's the head coach at Pittsburgh but, back then, Capel was a sophomore guard at Duke. He and his teammates suddenly had hope, and then it was gone. "Come out of the timeout, and I think Randolph hits a 3, Rusty LaRue hits a 3, and Timmy (Duncan) hits a jump hook or a turnaround jump shot. We call timeout.
"We come out of that and I think Randolph scored, like, 20 straight points."
Capel on Monday leaned against a wall in the Greensboro Coliseum, near the locker rooms, while he recounted the memory. Not much has changed over the years inside of the building. It has the same look and feel as it did back then, and it's easy to walk out onto the court and remember where history has happened over the years.
In his mind, Capel could still see Childress shooting, and not missing. Shooting, and not missing. He could hear the crowd, at first cheering Duke, in its unlikely role as an underdog, turning for Wake while fans slowly realized what might be unfolding. Capel had it right: In the span of about seven minutes, Childress scored 20 points.
"And there was nothing you could do," Capel said, sounding almost resigned 25 years later. "Because he was so good with the ball. He, obviously, was incredibly confident, and he could shoot. And you couldn't touch him. And so it was unbelievable."
Looking back on Monday, Childress described it as something of a blur. He remembered the first timeout that Capel described, the one that Wake Forest called after its sluggish first 12 minutes. During that timeout, Childress said Monday, he'd asked then-Demon Deacons coach Dave Odom to leave him in and "put four guys out there that's going to compete."
"And the next eight minutes," Childress said, "I remember just blocking everything out and competing as hard as I could, and (we) went on a run. And I looked up and (Duke's) 18-point lead was gone, and we had the lead at halftime. And, man _ things just changed a little bit."
Childress finished with 40 points. After trailing by 18, Wake Forest advanced to the semifinals, on Saturday afternoon against Virginia, with an 87-70 victory. The Virginia game, as it turned out, proved to be the least memorable of that three-game run. Childress finished with a mere 30 points in a 77-68 victory. Which set up the championship game against North Carolina.
The craziest thing about what he did in the '95 ACC tournament _ and the thing "that people don't talk about much," Childress said _ is that entering it, he wasn't even sure he was going to be able to play. He did not practice that entire week. He'd been suffering, for days, from the effects of a shoulder subluxation _ a dislocation of the shoulder joint.
A trainer popped it back into place, yet the first time Childress attempted a shot that week, he said Monday, was before the quarterfinal game against Duke. Throughout that weekend, Childress said, "I was in some discomfort." No one would have known.
Before 1995, the most prolific three-game scoring performance in ACC tournament history belonged to Lennie Rosenbluth, who led North Carolina to the 1957 national championship. In the ACC tournament that same year, Rosenbluth scored 106 points over three games. He had 45 points against Clemson. Twenty-three against Wake Forest. Thirty-eight against South Carolina.
Rosenbluth's record stood for 37 years, and no one came close to touching it. In that same 1957 ACC tournament, Grady Wallace, of South Carolina, scored 100 points. He remained in second place on the tournament scoring list. In 1962, Wake Forest's Len Chappell scored 87 points in the ACC tournament. In '75, N.C. State's David Thompson scored 84.
Think of all the players who've come through the ACC and never come close to the kind of tournament scoring performance that Rosenbluth gave in 1957, and that Childress exceeded, by a point, in 1995.
Thompson and Michael Jordan and James Worthy. Ralph Sampson. Len Bias. And on the list goes.
After 25 years, Childress does not have an explanation. There was no particular shot, he said, that set him off. There was no moment, he said, when he realized that perhaps he'd channeled some intangible force that allowed him to make shot after shot. There was no feeling that he'd ascended to some higher plane, or achieved some level of basketball nirvana.
"It was a combination of being in a rhythm, (and) things were just slowing down," Childress said. "And I was a little more fearless about, hey _ it's the last year around, let me give it the best that I have and whatever happens, happens.
"And that's what that was."
If Wake Forest had lost in the semifinals against Virginia _ and the Demon Deacons faced a 36-28 halftime deficit in that game _ then Childress still would have come close to setting a record. His 70 points would've been the second-most over a two-game stretch in tournament history. Instead, Wake Forest advanced to the championship against North Carolina.
The Tar Heels, as is usually the case, did not suffer from a lack of talent that season. Sports Illustrated named Jerry Stackhouse, a sophomore guard, as its national player of the year. Stackhouse's classmate, Rasheed Wallace, was a force inside in a season in which several big men played starring roles in the ACC _ including Wake's Duncan and Maryland's Joe Smith.
Twenty-five years later, the 1995 ACC tournament championship game remains one of the best ever played. UNC led by six with about six minutes remaining. Then the Demon Deacons led by six with 2 { minutes remaining. Stackhouse tied the game in the final seconds, sending it to overtime, where Childress scored all nine of Wake's points _ including the game-winner.
That came on a running floater near the top of the key with about four seconds left. Stackhouse missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer, and Wake celebrated an 82-80 victory, and its first ACC tournament championship since 1962. Afterward, the ESPN cameras caught up with Childress, who seemed composed, and almost calm, after scoring 107 points in three days.
"I told the guys to give me the ball," he said at one point, "and get out of the way. If we lose, blame me."
Duncan, then a sophomore, soon joined the interview. He finished with 16 points and 20 rebounds. The reporter asked him if this had been his final ACC tournament, implying that Duncan might leave school to enter the NBA draft. Duncan responded as if he found the question incredulous _ as if he'd given no thought to leaving early.
His last ACC tournament? "No," Duncan said, shaking his head.
Indeed, Duncan remained in college for four years, just as Childress had, and led Wake Forest to a repeat ACC championship in 1996. Looking back, the four-year dynamic is another reason why the 1995 ACC tournament is remembered, a quarter-century later. Childress had become a star long before those three days in March. Duncan was, by then, becoming a household name among those who followed the sport.
"A different time now," Childress said Monday. "If Randolph Childress was at Wake Forest with the career that I had, I'm not there four years. Tim Duncan isn't there four years. And Rodney (Rogers) was so good, he didn't stay four years even back then.
"So things would have changed. Adjusting to the times, we wouldn't have made it that far."
Over time, the star quality of the tournament has diminished, somewhat. A year ago, Duke's Zion Williamson was an attraction in his lone college season, as was North Carolina's Coby White. Their teams played one another in 2019's electric semifinal, which ended with a one-point Duke victory.
Even so, soon the rosters for both teams turned over. The best players don't stick around long enough to develop rivalries, or deeper histories, with players from other teams. Such a dynamic created one of the more enduring moments of Childress' run through the '95 tournament _ the moment he sent Jeff McInnis, the UNC point guard, to the floor with a cross-over dribble.
More recently, the highlight has made the rounds on social media, which has brought it back to life. On YouTube, the video clip has been viewed more than 640,000 times. It is titled, simply, "Randolph Childress Crossover." Press play and all of a sudden it's 1995 again. Childress has the ball, his back to the basket. He spins around, and then uses the cross-over to create space.
The move sends McInnis tumbling, unable to find his footing. He loses his balance and falls into a seated position. Childress continues to his left, dribbles twice, and motions for McInnis to get up and try to defend him. Before he can, Childress releases a 3-point attempt that softly falls through the net. During a replay on the TV broadcast, Clark Kellog, the analyst, says:
"If you were on the playground, that's what you call 'breaking a guy's ankles.' "
Over the years, Childress has seen that highlight a time or two.
"I just remember _ I tell people this all the time," Childress said, smiling. "I remember Coach (Dean) Smith yelling, 'That's taunting _ you can't do that!' That's what I remember most about that particular shot. I don't remember the move. You know, Jeff and I had quite a bit of battles."
A while back, Childress' son, Brandon, who's now a senior guard at Wake Forest, attended a basketball camp. McInnis, the younger Childress said, was one of the instructors, and he had Brandon Childress doing drills _ "like, crossover drills," he said.
"And he said, man, you gonna cross me over like your daddy did?" Brandon Childress said. "You know, kind of like making a joke. So he was pretty cool."
Growing up, it took a while before Brandon understood his father's legacy. He began to realize it, he said, when he attended a Wake Forest basketball game at Lawrence Joel Coliseum, looked up and saw his dad's name and number hanging in the rafters, alongside Tim Duncan's. The younger Childress thought about that Monday, during Wake's shootaround at the Greensboro Coliseum.
"Every day, I can walk in this building and know that my father had a hero moment (here)," he said.
Brandon said he has never watched replays of his father's games in the 1995 ACC tournament. He has seen the crossover of McInnis, but not the three games in their entirety. Randolph Childress made 23 3-pointers over those three games _ another record that still stands, and one that hasn't come close to being broken.
Amid the 25th anniversary this week, Childress said that someone asked him if he'd watched any of those games over again. He said he hadn't. He lived them, and the memories are still vivid enough. Still, the conversation made him realize that he didn't even own copies of the broadcasts.
He figured he should remedy that soon. Maybe he'll want to relive those three days again someday. Maybe he'll want to show others. He thought it'd be good to preserve the history, "so I can remind people when I get a little older that it did happen."
