Anyone interested in setting up a meeting with Lee Fowler and Rob Malason? Would be nice for Mr. I Know Basketball to stop talking for once and maybe listen to someone who could explain some reasons why the late, great Jim Valvano pulled the plug on the NC State-ECU series and vowed never to renew it. Then again, Rob Malason’s friendship can’t gain Fowler the kind of national network that bending over every time that Terry Holland calls can provide.
Enough of that.
Dave Glenn says that Coach Tom O’Brien is stuck in Groundhog Day. This analogy will get no argument from us; especially after we learned this week that one of the Wolfpack’s best offensive lineman, Julian Williams, will miss his first football game of the season today with yet ANOTHER injury to a key NC State contributor.
In fact, NC State will enter today game with East Carolina with only 65 (of a maximum of 85) scholarship players available to take the field.
The gory details in the Wolfpack’s ugly start — the Pack is the only BCS-conference team in America without a Division I-A victory — included an ineffective running game (106th nationally), porous run defense (114th) and a horrendous turnover margin (119th). Those are some of the same categories in which Boston College typically fared well under O’Brien, and those are some of the things the NCSU staff re-examined over the past two weeks.
850TheBuzz says that these two teams need to play for something in their blog entry that includes interviews with Tom O’Brien and Skip Holtz.
* Sidebar #1: Speaking of Holtzs, this entry is worth a peek.
* Sidebar #2: Speaking of Skip Holtz – I will go on record as saying that if Chuck Amato had left NC State after the 2007 or 2008 seasons instead of 2006, then I think Skip Holtz would have been given more consideration for the NC State job. The Wolfpack may live to regret overlooking our former coach’s son, as I believe that Skip would be a perfect fit at Clemson if the Tigers finally move on Tommy Bowden at the end of this year.
I guess we can look on this game as a potential elimination game for the “2007 State Championship of North Carolina”. As much as the App State fans will want to whine about it, the Mountaineers lost to Wofford who represents NC State’s only win of the season. Sorry, App State…you’re out.
ECU pulled out a doozy over UNC, therefore propelling the Pirates into the early lead for the race to the title.With all of this said, NC State still controls our own destiny with remaining games against ECU, UNC-CH and Wake Forest. Hopefully, this gives you something to watch as you wait for basketball season to get going.
We leave you with this entry from just three years ago to remind you just how quickly things can change. Since I wrote that entry I have lived under five different roofs, held three different jobs, moved across the country and enjoyed the birth of my first child. Wow.
