Get It Back

General NCS Basketball Tradition114

SFN Note: We wanted to thank ‘Spin Wolf’ for submitting this fantastic entry to our email at [email protected]. This entry perfectly crystallizes what Wolfpackers over the age of 35 who grew up in the area have been trying to convey to younger generations for years and the feeling that we all share about the future of NC State Basketball now that Sidney Lowe has come home.

“This is what N.C. State does. Throughout history, we’re a basketball school that pulls off big upsets.”

– Brandon Costner, Saturday, February 3, 2007

To many, Saturday, February 3rd 2007 will signify the Wolfpack’s first win over the hated Tarholes in many, many tries. It will be the date that Coach Sidney Lowe bested Coach Roy Williams in their first match-up. It will simply be the date we beat Carolina.

To me, this day is much more. It is the day when I got my beloved Wolfpack basketball team back. Fans whose memories may not go back as far as mine may be puzzled by this comment. Let me explain.

I grew up in the 1970’s and 80’s. In those days, State-Carolina was THE rivalry and Duke was merely an afterthought. We’d watch the ACC Tournament in school on Friday and then almost get into fistfights over whose team was better. Dean Smith was well on his way to earning his status as a legend of college basketball, but there was certainly no great divide between the two programs.

And most true Carolina fans knew that. It was accepted that when State and Carolina faced off, you’d better bring your best game, no matter who was favored, because it was going to be a war. While Dean Smith kept Carolina in perennial Top 10 status and went to numerous Final Fours, NC State was able to keep the pace with both ACC and NCAA championships.

Younger State fans and current students should chew on this: As of 1990, State and Carolina were TIED in the number of national championships won at two each. In ACC championships, Carolina had a whopping one title more than State for virtual parity.

How did State coaches Sloan and Valvano manage to keep Dean Smith feeling the wolves’ breath on his back? Save for the legendary teams of 1972-1975, State never had as many blue chip players. But both coaches had the ability to coach Wolfpack hoopsters into playing beyond themselves. This ability to accomplish more with less (as opposed to less with more..cough..cough..) is the legacy of NC State basketball. At the time of Coach Valvano’s resignation, NC State HAD TO be included in any discussion of great college basketball programs.

And yet for most of the last 17 years, NC State had let that legacy crumble. We had a program that played to the level of talent we had, sometimes less than that, but rarely more. And as a lifelong Wolfpacker, I felt like the program I grew up cheering, loving, and yes – fighting for, had died. We didn’t have the ability to get hot and pull off a run in the tournament. If we beat Carolina, it was because CC Harrison turned into Kobe Bryant for two hours or because Matt Doherty couldn’t coach.

Saturday, Coach Sidney Lowe changed all that.

Lowe coached our extremely thin team to give 110 percent for 40 minutes and match a bench full of McDonald’s All-Americans shot for shot. Coach Lowe knows the legacy of NC State basketball and is instilling it into our players daily. The red jacket, bringing back prominent players of the past, switching up non-conventional defenses are all signs that Coach Lowe knows how to emulate his predecessors and accomplish more with less.

Carolina is still an odds-on favorite to go to another Final Four this year. I’ve still got State penciled into the NIT. But on February 3, 2007, I saw a program that played with tenacity and emotion to overcome tremendous odds and beat our arch-rival. I saw a program ready to embrace our storied history. This day will always be the day that I got my Wolfpack basketball team back.

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General NCS Basketball Tradition

114 Responses to Get It Back

  1. ShootingGuard 02/05/2007 at 1:19 PM #

    “This day will always be the day that I got my Wolfpack basketball team back.”

    Man that hits home.

    I took the only UNC fan who will ever sit in my LTR’s to the game Saturday, my dad. He was at UNC for med school in 1957 and talked about that team every day of my childhood, so, naturally, being the antagonist I am, I started rooting for that red team on tv with the #44 guy who was incredible. Competitive father and son were back arguing over State-UNC on Saturday like we hadn’t done for almost 2 decades. Fans around were looking at us like we were nuts, but a couple of those no calls on Hansborough and my screaming profanity took me back to when Dudley Bradley stole the ball from Clyde the Glide and I threw my basketball into the wall (making a huge hole) in my parents’ living room as Monte Towe shot birds at the cameramen who were chasing him down the tunnel at the end of that game. It was good to feel alive about State basketball and the Uncivil War rivalry again.

    Despite losing, my dad had a great time. He’s an antagonist too and enjoyed being able to get pissed off at State again. Other UNC fans I talked to on the way out were the same way. It’s like they miss the old days and are tired of watching the State-UNC game with the same muted interest that we all have to watch the Olympics with now that the USSR has crumbled and there is no USA-USSR bloodmatch anymore.

    Who knows what the future holds, but leading a severely undermanned team to victory in your first matchup against a hall of fame coach with a bench full of all-americans certainly lends itself to some optimism about the future…

  2. GAWolf 02/05/2007 at 1:23 PM #

    Not hearing much out of the media about the Terrible-State-Fans-Chasing-off Herb-issue today…

    I figured SOMEONE would have the stones to pen a piece apologizing to us by now… that is someone outside of the folks who write for blogs and sites such as this one.

    I almost hate that it was Super Bowl weekend. I think had it not have been, we would be getting tons more coverage for this obviously emerging feel-good-story.

  3. Red_Terrors 02/05/2007 at 1:30 PM #

    Its also too back stuart scott was doing Super Bowl coverage in Miami. I would have given anything to watch him have to do the recap of the game!!!

  4. tractor57 02/05/2007 at 1:31 PM #

    “The stones” – I don’t think so. The wimps

  5. redfred2 02/05/2007 at 1:31 PM #

    There is a mix between outward persona/passion, and overall knowledge of the game. But no one can succeed in coaching with just one of those attributes.

    Tony Dungee and Bobby Knight, for examples of successful, but exact opposite personalities. It may be coming from opposite directions with those two, but there is total conviction in what both are trying to do. Their players sense it, and they follow.

    Sidney Lowe had that same quality as a player, and he still does today.

  6. choppack1 02/05/2007 at 1:34 PM #

    If you think Les was a good coach, you probably didn’t watch our team a great deal once he’d had time to put his “stamp” on the program.

    Les did have a decent eye for talent. Unfortunately, he was not good in preparing a gameplan or the basic day to day administrative ability of running a big-time program.

    I’ll give you one name – and for me, it speaks volumes about Les’ abilities and inabilities – Jason Sasser. If you didn’t follow recruiting back then or college b’ball on the national scene, you won’t understand the meaning of that name and how it came to symbolize for me everything that was wrong w/ Les Robinson, but if you did, you’ll know exactly where I’m coming from.

  7. GAWolf 02/05/2007 at 1:34 PM #

    When are the students going to come up with a decent shirt to sell? “Sid gets it.” “Thanks for giving me my Pack back, Sid.”

    I’m no t-shirt salesman, but there’s got to be a hot seller in this somewhere.

    Loved the Tyler Hansbrough “No Calls” poster, by the way…

  8. ShootingGuard 02/05/2007 at 1:40 PM #

    “Wearing the red jacket on Saturday took a lot of guts.”

    “getting blown out by UNC on our homecourt in the RED jacket would have given people more ammunition to take shots at Sidney.”

    “But instead of being afraid, he wore the jacket anyways.”

    I think Mr O has hit on some MAJOR points here. Wearing the BRIGHT red jacket at first just seemed kind of cool, but, if we had been blown out, Sidney would have been made to look like a clown (just ask Chuck Amato).

    As Mr O has pointed out, for Sidney, this game, this moment, everything went much deeper than that.

    Everyone expected us to lose by 40, so Sidney COULD have just gone conservative with his pinstripes and taken the beating everyone predicted with little personal damage (hell, Herb got beat by 24 in year 10 with a bunch of seniors by a much worse UNC team out, and the media didn’t think he needed changing).

    But, no, this guy lays it ALL on the line. This guy says, yep, this game means more than any other. This guy says, yep, I’m wearing the BRIGHT red jacket, and you can put all the spotlight on me, good or bad, I can take the hits and keep on fighting.

    This should not come as a surprise to any of us, of course. We saw him carry himself the same way as a player. When the whole media was trashing our program, he jumped right back into school and charged back to Raleigh despite all of the personal attacks on him (hmmm, not running away from personal attacks? Refreshing…). When he hit the recruiting trail late, he similarly laid it on the line in going after some big names…And, on Saturday, instead of downplaying the game or trying to hide in the background of what all expected to be a boring blowout, Sid Lowe raises the gauntlet for himself and comes out like Mel Gibson in Braveheart with face paint on before pulling up his red blazer mooning Jimmy Dykes…(That didn’t happen? Hmmm. Would have been pretty cool…although I guess just the red blazer will do for now…)

    I don’t what the Lowe era holds for us all in the future, but I do know that Sidney Lowe has IT. Character, confidence, guts, balls, whatever you want to call it. And that’s a real change and a real start…

  9. redfred2 02/05/2007 at 1:40 PM #

    We may not ever hear it, but it I’ll bet somebody out in the dryer western continental United States of America is thinking it about right now though.

  10. beowolf 02/05/2007 at 1:53 PM #

    “Sid Lowe raises the gauntlet for himself and comes out like Mel Gibson in Braveheart with face paint on

    LMAO.

    Ye canna take … OUR TRADITION!

  11. noah 02/05/2007 at 2:13 PM #

    I don’t think Lowe would have looked like a clown. He’s wearing his school colors. I remember when Dean regularly wore a light-blue blazer, Cliff Ellis and Terry Holland both wore orange blazers, and Lefty would occassionally break out a red blazer as well.

    It’s not like he’s wearing Norm Sloan’s PLAID blazers, for gosh sakes.

    And yes, Les Robinson was THAT bad. He had far more talent than Sendek did. You have to be a “rock star” of coaching to succeed in the NBA. There are a lot of musicians who can scrape together a living playing music. There are a lot of coaches who scrape together a living coaching.

    To do well in the ACC, you have to be great. Just like you have to be a great athlete (or be great at the individual skills) to play basketball in the ACC.

    There’s no shame in NOT being a great coach. Robinson chose to behave the way he did and he deserves credit for those things. Not being blessed with exceptional coaching talent is not something one should be ashamed of.

  12. ktpritch 02/05/2007 at 2:19 PM #

    We’re Andy Katz’s team of the week on ESPN:

    http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2754787&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1

  13. redfred2 02/05/2007 at 2:25 PM #

    Noah,

    I’m taking it that the Robinson clothing comment was pointed at me. I was just pointing out that he looked very uncomfortable being in the limelight of coaching in the ACC. I did not say, and never have said, that he was a bad coach. He has been good for NC State.

    As far as the…”He had far more talent than Sendek did.”

    No rebuttle required.

  14. BJD95 02/05/2007 at 2:29 PM #

    Noah – I really like how you frame Les – as a ‘mensch.’ Really, that’s perfect. the other formulations didn’t quite capture everything.

    I don’t want everyone worrying so much that Degand in going to be another Ferguson (and he could still be a useful role player down the road). The people with access to our practices have had MUCH more positive things to say about Degand than Ferguson. No, he’s not going to be all-conference, certainly not right away. But it is a fair expectation for Degand to be a “league average” PG, which is all we need both Degand and Johnson to be next year.

    My only worry is whether they will develop the requisite meantal toughness to direct this team next March. There’s no real way to gauge that. And FWIW, there were indications that Chris Wright was DEFINITELY missing that component.

  15. noah 02/05/2007 at 2:49 PM #

    Les Robinson did what he could…he cleaned up the program and put an emphasis on academics, but I refuse to believe that an adequate search for V’s replacement couldn’t have found someone to both coach competently and do the same things for academics.

    I’ve said this before, so forgive me if you’ve heard it…but the University did so many things wrong. They should have:

    1) Hired a crisis communications team the MINUTE they got the book jacket. They had a bunch of engineers who had no idea how to handle the press. If you’ve got a corn on one foot and the other is fine, you put your best foot forward. You don’t run away and hide.

    2) Someone needed to tell Valvano that they LOVED “Jim Valvano,” but they couldn’t stand this “JTV” guy. If Valvano wanted to stay on as head basketball coach at NC State, that was fine, but that meant that “JTV” had to go. The motivational speeches and corporate functions would have to be limited to the offseason and the head coach of NC State would actually need to be in Raleigh overseeing the program during the regular season.

    3) They should have quantified for V what they wanted in terms of academics and then given him the opportunity to clean up after himself. Write it out…we will accept this many academic exceptions per year. Players in the program must be making adequate progress towards graduation, etc.

    HAD they done that, they could have turned Golenback into a punchline by the time the book got published. Bruce Poulton himself could have come out and said, “This joke…I mean ‘book’…is absurd. The day 25,000 people go to a basketball game at Reynolds is the day we actually find Liliputia. We’ve gone over our basketball program with a fine-tooth comb and we still can’t find this slush fund with a $1 million in it and we’re pretty eager to find it as we’d like to start renovations at Carter-Finley soon. However, we have been forced to take a look at ourselves in the mirror as far as academics are concerned. While we’ve had any number of ourstanding student athletes in our program, we feel we can do better. So we’ve announced the following changes….”

    Then you go on and talk about putting the shoe money into a scholarship fund and talk about modernizing and updating the academic support program and how athletes will have to obey certain rules concerning study halls, classes and graduation.

    You can take a hard swipe at Carolina and Dook (there were plenty of people who were uneasy with the money Nike was giving Carolina at that time) and you end up looking like the good guy.

    Instead, we let someone else control the story and then we over-reacted.

  16. choppack1 02/05/2007 at 2:52 PM #

    BJD – That’s encouraging on Degand. My big question is about his quickness – is he fast? It sounds like Marques is not fast – and we know Atsur isn’t a speed demon. I like the idea of quickness at the 1 spot. We haven’t had that since Cliff Crawford. (FWIW, I don’t think it’s coincidence that we enjoyed some success vs. Duke when he was at the helm. Duke’s classic PG’s have always had trouble w/ strong athletic ones.)

    As for next year, at one point, that was all I was worrying about. Now, I’ve got to fret this year, because, guess what, we’re relevant again.

  17. tractor57 02/05/2007 at 2:53 PM #

    One word – Poulton

  18. Gene 02/05/2007 at 3:00 PM #

    next year.

    Interesting thing about next year is who will be the leader on this team. Grant’s the lone senior, but I don’t think he’s going to be the leader, like Atsur is this year. I think McCauley will fill that role, as a junior.

  19. MrPlywood 02/05/2007 at 3:00 PM #

    For those of you (like me) looking for more about the impact Saturday’s game has had outside the Triangle, check out this nice piece on ESPN.com:

    http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2754787&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1

    The post-mortem on games like this are almost as fun as the games themselves! 🙂 Nice dunk compilation too. Really drives home the balance that (I think) Sid is trying to achieve – a system that the team can rely on that also allows for explosiveness and creativity when the time is right.

  20. noah 02/05/2007 at 3:05 PM #

    BTW, I think Lowe looks sharp in that red blazer. He’s got a nice tie on and cufflinks. I’d unbutton the blazer, but it looks good on him.

    As long as he stays away from Michael Irvin’s closet, he won’t look like a clown. Someone needs to tell The Playmaker that when your windsor knot is bigger than your head, you’ve got a fashion-problem.

    Merrill Hoge is the only thing that makes Irvin look “well dressed.”

    Kudos to Katz for admitting he’s wrong.

  21. RickJ 02/05/2007 at 3:07 PM #

    Choppack1 – It is my understanding that Degand is ultra fast. He redshirted a year at Iowa State because they had two terrific senior guards, he was very thin and is almost a full year younger than his class. We’ll see.

  22. Rick 02/05/2007 at 3:10 PM #

    “That’s encouraging on Degand. My big question is about his quickness – is he fast? ”

    Lowe himself describes him as very quick. I like hearing that.

  23. HungryLikeTheWolf 02/05/2007 at 3:12 PM #

    I haven’t had a chance to read everyone’s comments, yet, so if this is a repeated thought, I apologize.

    One thing that excites me most about our program right now is that the kids (young men) actually in the program are genuinely excited about it, too. On the news last night, Gavin Grant was talking about how he believes that recruiting was going to take off huge in the next couple of years.

    Also, on the Sidney Lowe show last night, Courtney Fells was talking about how much the players truly enjoyed playing for Sidney.

    Along with Brandon Costner’s quote above and others we’ve all heard from Ben and Engin, it’s obvious that the kids are really excited about the future of NC State Basketball and that’s exactly the kind of environment we want, need, and deserve.

  24. beowolf 02/05/2007 at 3:17 PM #

    I heard that, too, Hungry. I loved it.

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