Thurl Bailey / Dave Rose interview transcript

Thurl Bailey and Dave Rose first crossed paths as members of opposing teams in the 1983 NCAA Basketball Championship Game in Albuquerque. Bailey was a senior forward and starter for the tournament Cinderella team, the North Carolina State Wolfpack; Rose was co-captain and a fifth-year senior shooting guard coming off the bench for the top-ranked Houston Cougars.

And when the two teams met at The Pit on April 4, 1983, N.C. State carved its place in hoops history with a 54-52 upset over heavily favored Houston, as Lorenzo Charles grabbed a Dereck Whittenburg airball for a last-second, game-winning dunk.

In the two decades since, Bailey and Rose have become mainstays in Utah — Bailey first as a longtime member of the NBA's Utah Jazz and more recently on KJZZ as a color analyst for University of Utah basketball broadcasts and commentator during Jazz home telecasts. In his sixth season as the associate head basketball coach at Brigham Young University, Rose previously coached at St. George's Dixie College and at Millard and Pine View high schools.

While basketball and their professions have allowed the two to maintain contact, Bailey and Rose have never sat down and visited with each other about the 1983 championship game — until the two were invited recently by Deseret News sports writer Scott Taylor for lunch and an interview. Following is a near-complete transcript of their conversation about their historic game 20 years ago:

DESERET NEWS: First, tell me about each of your teams that season — going into the tournament, into the Final Four.

BAILEY: We were just happy to be there, man. We had done some incredible things. We wouldn't have even been in the NCAA Tournament if we wouldn't have won the ACC Tournament — we had 10 losses that year. There were some really incredible things on the court — pulling out games at the last second, fouling guys and capitalizing on missed free throws. So it was really a magical season for us. If it had ended any time during that run, we would have been disappointed, but we would have been happy with what we had accomplished as a team. So, we walked into The Pit, man — I can't remember the exact feeling of everybody, but I knew that it was incredible for us to be able to be there.

DESERET NEWS: Dave, Houston was ranked No. 1 going into the tournament — and it wasn't a 64-team tournament yet, was it? You had a first-round bye.