Who Is Jim Valvano?

Jim Valvano was just some Italian kid from Queens New York who played college basketball for Rutgers University as a point guard from 1964-1967. In 1967 Valvano was able to lead his team to a third place finish in the NIT tournament, this is where Valvano’s leadership skills came to surface. Valvano then started his coaching career as the freshman head coach and an assistant coach on the varsity team. From there he became the head coach at John Hopkins University for 1 season, Arguably his greatest coaching stint was at North Carolina State University where he took over for Norm Sloan in 1980. Valvano led the Wolfpack to a National Championship in 1983 against Houston University. Although this was a huge milestone in his career, possibly his
The first time Valvano ever addressed his first ever team, he had been trying to figure out what to say to them. He had read legendary football coach Vince Lombardi’s book where he described how he addressed his team. Valvano said he was going to do the same thing but instead of saying Green Bay Packers he would say Rutgers basketball, but Valvano slipped up and said Green Bay Packers instead of Rutgers. Valvano was able to connect to each and everyone of his players and develope a father-son relationship. Valvano always wanted to make the best of the world and leave it a better place. With basketball of course he wanted to win a national championship but he also just wanted to mold his players into incredible young members of society. After his coaching career with the founding of the Jimmy V foundation he wanted to bring awareness to a disease that was overshadowed by the AIDS research and funding that at the time was receiving 10 times more donations than cancer
However his personality was big enough for him to take care of it. Valvano seemed to always have this weird calm uneasiness presence on the sideline. When they played UNLV who were the defending national champs in the round of 32, Valvano and the wolfpack were able to knock them off by one. In the final minutes of the game Valvano just told his guys that this game is theirs and just all we have to do is survive and advance. He was extremely passionate, but would never give up on his guys and that is part of the reason they were able to advance against the powerhouses of the NCAA. Valvano used the words he told his men in the huddle time and time again when it came to battling his