N.C. VS. N.C. STATE: FORGET THE RECORDS

North Carolina vs. North Carolina State, the Tar Heels vs. the Wolfpack, No. 1 vs. No. 20. Any way you list it, this has to be a crucial Atlantic Coast Conference basketball game, especially since UNC was upset Thursday night by Maryland, 77-72, in overtime. NBC covers it Sunday at noon over Channels 4, 36 and 39.

UNC has been in first place in the polls since early December, with a record of 25-2 (through Feb. 21); the Staters are 20th with a 17-8 record. But when rivals meet, you can toss out season statistics.

Wolfpack rooters fondly recall another time when they were the underdog--as they are Sunday--and upset the Tar Heels to go on and win the NCAA title. That was in 1983 when they won 70-63.

In their first meeting this season, UNC beat State 90-79, but that was on their home court. Sunday’s game is being played in Wolfpack country, Reynolds Coliseum, before a hostile crowd of 12,400. Dick Enberg will be dipping into his “Oh! My!” reaction bag quite often, and Al McGuire’s super analysis may, for the first time, hardly be audible.

All right, Lakers. You’ve got a second chance to do a little face-saving on network TV Sunday to make up for that Celtic collapse you went into last Sunday. You’re in the Spectrum Sunday to meet the 76ers (in a 9 a.m. telecast on Channels 2 and 8).

And this, would you believe, is the tie-breaker. Since “Dr. J” & Co. moved to Philadelphia, the Lakers and 76ers are dead even, 58-58.

In town this week to hype ABC’s upcoming 25th anniversary of “Wide World of Sports,” Jim McKay, the first sports commentator to win an Emmy (1968), got to reminiscing about the 1,315 telecasts and the 3,247 segments they’ve produced and, in particular, the people they’ve met:

” . . . Back then (early ‘60s) we were legitimate in the sense that we always searched for sports that existed, that were not made for TV, and in which, perhaps, a small group of people were so intensely interested that it was the most important things in their lives.

“There were lumberjack championships that existed long before we came along, and those guys really cared about it. Believe it or not, a lot of people care about the Demolition Derby too. I remember a guy from Virginia won it two years in a row. And it was kind of chastening to me when I interviewed him. With tongue-in-cheek I said, half kidding, ‘You won the World Championship twice in a row. It seems to be impossible, the odds so high. How do you account for it?’

“He didn’t think it was funny. He answered, ‘I go to church a lot.’ ”