Four Corners: How UNC, N. C. State, Duke, and Wake Forest Made North Carolina the Center of the Basketball Universe

Amazon.com
If you want to major in Carolina basketball, this is certainly the primary text. Breezily written, well researched, and rich with anecdotes, Four Corners solidly surveys a remarkable sporting phenomenon: the concentrated quartet of hoop dreamers--UNC, NC State, Duke, and Wake Forest--that dominates the ACC, and, for that matter, the NCAA tournament. Menzer, a sportswriter for the Winston-Salem Journal, tips off in the pre-ACC era of Coach Everett Case at State, and then looks at the teams and programs molded over time by such outsized presences as Frank McGuire, Dean Smith, Jim Valvano, Bones McKinney, and Mike Krzyzewski. "People can talk all they want about the Big Ten," says Duke's charismatic Coach K. "About Michigan and Ohio State and Indiana and Kentucky or whatever, but there's no way that compares. They're in different states. Here, we share the same dry cleaners." Four Corners carefully examines what comes out in the wash and, in the process, airs some pretty good dirty laundry. --Jeff Silverman

From Publishers Weekly
People in North Carolina have long been convinced that nothing else in sports even approaches the excitement of college hoops in their state. In this methodical account of the storied basketball history of the Big Four schools listed in the subtitle, Menzer, a sportswriter for the Winston-Salem Journal, details more than 50 years of coaches, competitors and roundball culture. He looks at modern legends such as recently retired UNC coach Dean Smith, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and Michael Jordan, whose high school principal encouraged him to attend the Air Force Academy instead of North Carolina so he would have a job after college. But tales of the schools' early histories provide the greatest rewards. Everett Case, the innovative N.C. State coach of the 1950s, was nicknamed the Old Gray Fox and was the first to make a spectacle of pregame introductions and to install an applause meter at his home court. His rival was the dapper UNC coach Frank McGuire, whose "underground railroad" of top recruits from his hometown of New York culminated in an undefeated national championship season in 1957. But as the programs grew, so did the pressure. Bones McKinney, a lanky Wake Forest coach who brought his team to the NCAA Final Four in 1962, gulped a case of Pepsi and, eventually, a handful of barbiturates daily just to try to endure the pressure. For all Menzer's exhaustive reporting, however, the book lacks the powerful writing needed to let the reader feel what is being described. Much like the stalling offense devised by Dean Smith from which the book takes its name, Four Corners is effective but less than thrilling. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
North Carolina is a college basketball powerhouse?home of the Duke Blue Devils, the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, North Carolina State's Wolfpack, and Wake Forest's Demon Deacons. This is an account of how these programs evolved, starting with the turbulent changes in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when college basketball became a big money sport attracting the attention of gamblers and the infant television industry. Sportswriter Menzer (The Carolina Panthers, Macmillan, 1996) uses extensive interviews to paint a colorful picture of the personalities of the coaches and players behind the history. A good choice for any library collecting team histories or where John Feinstein's A March to Madness: The View from the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference (LJ 1/98) has been in demand.?Terry Jo Madden, Boise State Univ. Lib., IDCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The four-cornered college-basketball rivalry between Wake Forest, Duke, North Carolina State, and North Carolina is particularly intense due to the schools' proximity. To paraphrase Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, most rivalries involve teams in nearby states, but these four Atlantic Coast Conference schools share the same dry cleaner. Veteran sports journalist Menzer begins his history of the rivalry in the mid-1950s, when legendary Wake Forest coach Bones McKinney and North Carolina State's Everett Case set the tone for the four-cornered rivalry. Michael Jordan, David Thompson, and Charlie Scott all were participants in the rivalry over the years, but college hoops is a coach's canvas, and among the brilliant artists Menzer analyzes are Krzyzewski at Duke, Dean Smith at North Carolina, and N.C. State's Norm Sloan and Jim Valvano. This is a wonderful reading experience for anyone who enjoys college basketball. It will spark exciting memories in longtime fans and provide younger ones with a context in which to understand one of sports' most impassioned rivalries. Wes Lukowsky

From Kirkus Reviews
Menzer covers college basketball for the Winston-Salem Journal, so he should be the right guy to explain all the fascinations of the Atlantic Coast Conferences legendary Tobacco Road connection. The heart of the ACC, generally considered the most consistently competitive conference in men's college hoops, is the four schools located within a small stretch of North Carolinathe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, Wake Forest, and North Carolina State. Until 1956, when Wake moved to Winston-Salem, 110 miles away from the Raleigh-Durham area, the four schools lay within 30 miles of one another. As Duke's superb coach Mike Krzyzewski observes wryly, ``Here we share the same dry cleaners.'' The result is a series of rivalries without equal in the sport. It doesn't hurt that until very recently, when Charlotte became a banking center, there were no major-league pro teams in the vicinity. Carolina college basketball was the entire sporting universeand local talent tended to stay at home. Ironically, as Menzer relates, all four of these outstanding programs were built by outsiders. The great names of Carolina college coaching (Everett Case, Frank McGuire, Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jimmy Valvano) came from Indiana, New York City, Kansas, Chicago, and New York City, respectively. Whatever their provenance, these guys created dominant teams; 17 of the first 18, and 31 of the first 35, ACC titles were held by one of them. And they produced national champions, too. Menzers tale includes such colorful characters as the Pepsi-guzzling Case, part-time minister Bones McKinney, and the wildly flamboyant Valvano; and mostly, Menzer narrates with gusto. But when he gets to the era of the great Smith-Valvano-Krzyzewski duels of the 1980s and '90sthe period he himself reportedthe book, oddly, seems to run out of gas. Not a brilliant piece of reporting or writing, but good fun for the fans. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


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