Back in March of 2001, I put together a detailed page that focused on “Just The Facts” for the old Statefans.com (now PackPride.com). The page provided a detailed look at the on-the-court results of the NC State Basketball Program in the Herb Sendek era.
Of course, at the time that I was focused on “Just the Facts”, I had no reason to believe that the Athletics Director at a Research One University would publicly and privately proclaim that he would (or, worse yet, mentally could) ignore five years of actual history and make his decision on a personal opinion that “we have a great recuriting class coming in and no program that has recruited like we have can be in that much trouble”. (A quote that was personally shared with me in a meeting with Fowler).
Since actual results only seem to matter to some fans in self-selected, particular seasons that the results are good enough to support their pre-conceived bias, I really haven’t had much motivation to keep the detailed statistics current on an ongoing basis.
Despite my lack of motivation, I have compiled a quick summary of statistics that I have used occassionally on the PackPride Message Boards over the last few months. Since I began sharing those summary stats, I have received multiple requests to post this information the Blog. I hesitate to share these summary stats in their current form because I was hoping to build a much more detailed statistical analysis, but last night a friend mentioned this to me and suggested again that I post it on the blog. Here goes…
In the 8 years prior to this season (currently 13-7 and 3-4), Herb Sendek has achieved the following as the Head Coach of NC State’s basketball program:
* 128-91 regular season record
* 58.4% regular season winning percentage
* a 55-73 record in the ACC
* 43% winning percentage in the ACC
* 11-8 ACC Tournament record
* 0-3 in ACC Finals
* 0 ACC Championships
* 0 Final Fours
* 0 Elite Eights
* 0 Sweet 16s
* a Top 25 ranking in approximately 5% of the weeks that he has coached
* 12-22 record against weak OOC opponents away from home
* 3 NCAA Tournament appearances
* 2 NCAA Tournament victories
* 2-3 NCAA Tournament record
* 0 1st place ACC Finishes
* 1 #2 seeds in the ACC Tourney
* 0 #3 seeds in the ACC Tourney
* 2 #4 seeds in the ACC Tourney
* 1 #5 seeds in the ACC Tourney
* 1 #6 seeds in the ACC Tourney
* 1 #7 seeds in the ACC Tourney
* 2 #8 seeds in the ACC Tourney
* 31-76 overall record against NCAA Tournament teams
* 29.0% winning percentage against NCAA Tournament teams
* only 1 RPI ranking better than #32 in the country
* only 2 RPI finishes in the Top 50 in the country
* 26-76 record against Top 50 RPI
* 25.5% winning percentage against Top 50 RPI
* three best RPI finishes of: #18, #53, #32
* RPI finishes (in chronololgical order) of: 62, 55, 56, 81, 91, 32, 53, 18, (currently) 119
* 57% of Sendek’s regular season wins have come against teams ranked worse than 100 in the RPI