ACC Coaches on the Hotseat? Debated (Updated 2:10pm)

One has to wonder what the brain trust at the News and Observer knows that we don’t:

“With at least four ACC basketball coaches in some degree of trouble — Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton, Maryland’s Gary Williams, N.C. State’s Sidney Lowe and Virginia’s Dave Leaito” — Caulton Tudor, in “Finding The Next Coach”

This list is is a case of extreme subjectivity that Tudor typically does a better job of qualifying. To use Tudor’s words, I don’t argue that Coach Lowe is close to experiencing ‘some degree of trouble’…but what the hell does that mean? ‘Some degree’ of trouble is a long way from being a large enough degree to be publicly addressed in an article.

I think that Hamilton, Williams and Leaito are all clearly a step closer to the fire than Sidney Lowe – who is in the middle of just his third year and has been responsible for only a single recruiting class while at NC State. Additionally, Paul Hewitt – regardless of Derrick Favors – also must be included in any list of ‘Coaches on the Hotseat’ that would go as far down the list as Coach Lowe.

Tudor should have either (1) included Hewitt on his list or (2) excluded Coach Lowe to comprise a list whose members were held to consistent standards. All else being equal, Coach Lowe is probably 5th on a list of “Coaches in Trouble” in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

It would be major news if Sidney Lowe were in any real trouble at the moment. Sure, there’s grousing about the play of the team on the Internet; but the reality of the situation is that no real sign of Lowe being in any trouble has leaked out of the NC State camp. 

Fans can yack all the like on message boards, in comment sections of blogs and at the water-cooler, but that doesn’t make much of a difference where the rubber meets the road: in the ‘minds’ of the folks that run NC State’s ‘esteemed’ Athletics Department.  

Tudor, it seems, forgets that Wolfpack Athletic Director Lee Fowler doesn’t ever seem to think a coach has done a poor enough job to warrant dismissal — with the most recent debacle evidenced by Fowler’s preference to give Chuck Amato another year just two weeks before the Board of Trustees told Fowler to make a choice between his job or Amato’s.

In exactly twelve months from now, if the Wolfpack Basketball Program is in the exact same position as today then the time will have arrived for a different kind of conversation. But, Coach Lowe has not had a enough time to complete even half of a friggin recruiting cycle. Barring any misconduct, its likely he won’t – nor should he – be replaced until ample opportunity has flushed through the program in which he is in charge.