SFN has been on fire the last couple of days so I encourage you to please spend some time surfing through the recent entries on the blog.
When I worked on this piece with some of the other authors yesterday I couldn’t get over my joy of reading what Andy Katz wrote in his INsider entry on ESPN. He gave more compliments to Coach Lowe than just the teaser that SFN ran:
But nothing Michigan did matched the hustle and intensity of NC State. For those who weren’t sure how Lowe would coach, you should know this: His players absolutely love him and would run through a brick wall for him.
In fact, (other than Jimmy Dykes) it seems that most of the media is jumping on the Sidney Lowe bandwagon quicker than we can find all of their recent quotes and criticism of NC State’s program and hiring of Lowe.
I was listening to Mark Packer’s show in Charlotte yesterday and was very pleased to hear the compliments that he was laying on Lowe on NC State. Packer also astutely mentioned some of Lowe’s early recruiting success that seemed to slip the mind of ESPN’s crew the other night. (I almost get the feeling that Packer has been pulling for State to become relevant again for years. I hope that we can oblige in the next couple of years)
Most interestingly, Packer noticed what everyone in the RBC knew (and many were verbalizing) – Wolfpackers looked and sounded like they were having a BLAST!!! and that he hasn’t seen this kind of excitement in a long time.
He couldn’t be more correct. I haven’t spoken with a friend or fan who hasn’t made some kind of comment about how much ‘fun’ they have watching this team. I met a friend for a beer after the game on Monday night and the first thing that he innocently said was, “That was a lot of fun tonight!” Gee. Fun. How dare us all want to enjoy ourselves for the thousands of dollars we shell out in lifetime rights, Wolfpack Club dues, and season tickets!!!
Check out some of the other finds today:
* Whomever Ken Medlin is…he says that he is Sold on Sidney Lowe.
If I’d told any of you that Engin Atsur would miss nearly the entire game against Michigan, and the Pack would still win… would you have believed it? Lowe has his team motivated. They believe in the “team concept,” but they don’t believe their team depth is too thin. Beating a quality team — without Atsur — is proof positive.
And how about Lowe’s in-game coaching? He’s animated. He’s intense. And his first-half timeouts — which are becoming a game-by-game event — always seem to spark his team at the right time.
* From 850TheBuzz, “you’ve got to give Sidney Lowe and company high marks for their first significant test of the season.”
A little more
I saw a quote on an NC State message board that was related to this very topic on which I wanted to take the opportunity to comment.
Most of the annoying media comments are the result of talking points generated by the herd mentality of lazy sportswriters who aren’t even particularly interested in NC State
I don’t disagree with the comments. But, I have to sincerely ask – who is responsible for leading the media herd to their conclusions and sparking all of this criticism in recent years? As we know…it isn’t like the media can really think for themselves. If they could there would be no jobs for public relations professionals and ‘Spin Doctors”.
If Lee Fowler wouldn’t have spent his last five years launching a one-man crusade to prove to the world that Herb Sendek was the best basketball coach since John Wooden (and therefore Fowler made a wonderful decision by keeping Sendek after the dreadful 5th year) then perhaps the media wouldn’t have many of these thoughts or feel so entitled to say be so negative about NC State.
Arizona State just fired a football coach who has gone to 3 or 4 consecutive bowls (including this year). You can run down a list of hundreds of football and basketball coaches who get removed after generating SIGNIFICANTLY more success than NC State’s coaches. Do you think that you are going to see and hear hundreds of criticisms of all of these programs for months to come?
Of course not!! ecause other Athletics Directors don’t spend half a decade publicly degrading large portions of their fan base with labels like “crazy” and “lunatic fringe”.
Other ADs issue statements (and TRULY BELIEVE) like this classic statement from Nebraska and or like this one from Arizona State’s AD earlier this week:
“The next person that I will be hiring won’t be shy about this,” Love said. “They’ll clearly understand the goals. The winner of the Pac-10 Conference plays in the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl is the goal for Sun Devil football. No one should approach me about this job if they don’t understand that and they don’t understand what’s going on at Arizona State University, because it’s pretty powerful stuff.”
