CHARLOTTE - With all due reverence to the 1983 N.C. State team, it has been said that Clemson will win an ACC basketball tournament championship when elephants fly, a dude riding a bicycle wins the Indianapolis 500 or Duke and North Carolina withdraw from the league.

So maybe it's time for coyotes to purr and cats to bark at the mailman.

Against the kind of odds you could usually only get on Clemson fans being completely happy with any football coach not named Danny Ford, the Tigers have a chance to win a first-ever league tournament this afternoon, by doing it the hard way -- back-to-back wins over the Blue Devils and Tar Heels.

"We're just keeping on dreaming that dream," said Clemson standout James Mays, the kid from Garner who grew up inside the long, sometimes suffocating shadow of North Carolina's basketball Big Four.

The Tigers, seeded third in the ACC, advanced with a dramatic 78-74 win over Duke on Saturday. About two or three hours earlier, Carolina reached the championship game by escaping against Virginia Tech, 68-66, on Tyler Hansbrough's winning shot with about a second remaining.

By day's end and in a steady rain, the happiest folks anywhere near Charlotte Bobcats Arena were the ticket scalpers. Had the Hokies pulled off the long-shot upset in the first game, tickets for an ACC Tournament title game could have slipped into pocket-change territory.

But in a strange sort of way, Clemson's march to the brink of the improbable quest goes to the lineage of the ACC Tournament. Way back when most of the nation didn't even understand the conference tournament concept -- much less the rationale of determining a championship during one three- (now four-) day stand -- the 1962 Tigers came close to reaching the NCAA Tournament field. That team, which finished 4-10 in conference regular-season play and 12-15 overall, started the ACC Tournament as the No. 6 seed, upset No. 3 N.C. State in Reynolds Coliseum, then beat No. 2 Duke and faced No. 1 Wake Forest for the title.

It went poorly for coach Press Maravich's Tigers that Saturday in Raleigh. Wake had a big, muscular, broad-shouldered center who wore No. 50. His name was Len Chappell. By night's end, he had 31 points. Billy Packer added 21, and Clemson went away quietly, never to return -- until today.

The modern Len Chappell is another No. 50 -- Hansbrough, who is made from virtually the same physical mold and mental mind-set. When the ACC honored some of its basketball legends on Saturday, Chappell represented the Deacons. Slowed by medical problems, he struggled to make the walk from the sidelines to center court, where he joined Dean Smith, Lefty Driesell, Lorenzo Charles, Charlie Ward and others in a stirring observance to the conference's rich basketball history.

Hansbrough then came out of the locker room and put on a second-half performance that no one other than Chappell and Smith could have appreciated more. In addition to 26 points, he contributed nine rebounds and the winning bucket.

"We've got to find a way to deal with him," said Clemson's Cliff Hammonds, a team leader.

And if Clemson cannot, it's 1962 and beyond all over again.