As we celebrate 100 years of NC State basketball tradition, it can be interesting to take a look back at our heritage and make comparisons with the current program. Over the last century, there have been 18 head basketball coaches, 13 of which coached in either the Southern Conference or the ACC. Currently Sidney Lowe has the 2nd worst conference winning percentage of any coach in NC State basketball history and the worst since the inception of the Southern Conference in the early 1920s.
Harry Hartsell coached the first 2 seasons in which NC State was a member of the Southern Conference from 1922-1923 and had a conference record of 2-7 (.222).
After the Virginia Tech loss on Wednesday, Sidney Lowe fell below Les Robinson and has the 2nd worst conference winning percentage in school history with an ACC record of 17-41 (.293).
Below is a table of the conference winning percentages of the 13 NC State coaches that coached in the Southern Conference and/or the ACC.
The argument has been made time and time again that it takes 4 years for a coach to get his own players in the program and shouldn’t be judged until after that time (although coaches like Tony Bennett and Bob Huggins would certainly disagree with that theory). So let’s look at how the other former State coaches did under similar circumstances. Nine of the 13 coaches listed above were on the job for at least 4 seasons. If you look at conference winning percentage for their first 4 years, Sidney Lowe has the worst record of any coach in the history of NC State basketball.
An interesting observation, since Norm Sloan finished at .500 in ACC play in his first 4 years, the winning percentage for each following coach gets a little bit worse. At this rate, Lowe’s successor will only win a couple of ACC games in his first 4 years.
Sloan – .500
Valvano – .411
Robinson – .339
Sendek – .328
Lowe – .293
If you look at the situations recent coaches inherited, Robinson took over a program on probation that was coming off a scandal and had increased academic standards (but did inherit Monroe, Corchiani and Gugliotta). Lowe inherited a program that had been to 5 straight NCAA tournaments (and inherited Atsur, Costner, Fells and McCauley). Lowe also coached in an ACC watered down by expansion and, in my opinion, an ACC with a lower talent level across the league than in the early to mid 90s. Even Herb Sendek, who is certainly not the most popular coach here at SFN, took over a program from Robinson that hadn’t been to the postseason in 5 years (inheriting Benjamin, Harrison, Hyatt and Strong) and still had a better ACC record than Lowe in their first 4 years.
Sidney Lowe also has the worst conference winning percentage of any of the 12 ACC coaches in their first 4 years at the school. The only ACC coach to not win at least 7 conference games in their 4th year on the job was Gary Williams. We would have to win 5 out of our 6 remaining ACC games for Lowe to reach 7 wins in his 4th season.
And since I’m piling on Lowe’s coaching record, with a record of 79-228 (.257) for the Timberwolves and Grizzlies he also has the lowest winning percentage in the history of the NBA of anyone who coached at least 300 games. The only other 2 coaches that coached 300 games and have a winning percentage below .300 are Tim Floyd (post-Jordan/Phil Jackson Chicago Bulls) and Ron Rothstein (expansion Miami Heat).
While comparisons across eras are not always appropriate or accurate, Sidney Lowe has the 2nd worst career conference record of any coach that has coached at NC State (and the worst record since the inception of the Southern Conference in the early 1920s). Lowe also has the lowest conference winning percentage in his first 4 years of any coach in the ACC and in the 100 year history of NC State basketball. And right now, history is all we have to brag about.
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