100 Years of NC State Basketball by the Numbers: Sidney Lowe

ACC Coaches College Basketball Rankings & Lists Sidney Lowe Stat of the Day81

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.
sid table 1

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.

sid table 2

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.

sid table 3

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.

About WV Wolf

Graduated from NCSU in 1996 with a degree in statistics. Born and inbred in West "By God" Virginia and now live in Raleigh where I spend my time watching the Wolfpack, the Mountaineers and the Carolina Hurricanes as well as making bar graphs for SFN. I'm @wvncsu on the Twitter machine.

ACC Coaches College Basketball Rankings & Lists Sidney Lowe Stat of the Day

81 Responses to 100 Years of NC State Basketball by the Numbers: Sidney Lowe

  1. Thinkpack17 02/12/2010 at 11:55 AM #

    “Cothron reference being 205 was not meant that he is a butterball just the opposite he is of slight build.”

    Luke is not a small kid…by any means. I am 5-11 185 and he is much bigger than me. I have chicken legs. 205 sounds a bit light. Even if that is right his frame will hold more weight with little problem. He looks pretty sturdy with wide shoulders.

  2. mwcric 02/12/2010 at 11:57 AM #

    Clarksa, some of that “improvement” can also simply be credited to more playing time.

    There is one area in which I cut Lowe some slack – It would be nice to visit an alternative universe and see what could have been if Simmons, Brackman and Hickson had exhausted their eligibility (though if Simmons and Brackman had Hickson may not have come), and it would be interesting to see if anything would’ve been any different had it not been for the bizarre string of injuries that sidelined or slowed down a good deal of our players for significant amounts of time.

    Okay, I’ll give him a little leeway for his lousy personal life over the last three years too, what with his son’s incarceration and his mom’s poor health. I’m sure that can be a distraction.

    I also keep thinking about Sendek’s fifth year, I think it was, when the incremental progress gave way to a February collapse and a losing record. I was certain he was gone after that point, but instead he got the vote of confidence (surprise, surprise) and made a significant staff change by bringing in Larry Hunter and revamping his philosophy. Now, the following five years still weren’t the most successful and exciting in history, but looking back four years later it’s clear they were the high-water mark of the past two decades. Not coincidentally, I believe, the quality of recruiting commitments picked up as well.

    I think we all know Lowe isn’t going anywhere this season, unless he voluntarily steps down. So maybe we can hope for him to take a lesson from his predecessor. I’m sure I’ll be ridiculed for saying so, but I for one wouldn’t mind him doing some work with his old teammate Whittenburg. True, he had a horrible last two seasons at Fordham (check out their athletic department if you want to feel good about ours though), but he did well at tiny Wagner and showed some promise initially at Fordham. I’d say he’s had more college coaching success, assistant and head, than anyone on our bench right now. Hey, Vinny will probably be available at season’s end too – maybe he can come in and consult. Something needs to happen.

  3. ncsu05mit10 02/12/2010 at 12:02 PM #

    I think players do improve under Lowe– some of that happens with any player maturing and growing, a lot is due to coaching and conditioning.

    I think the situation is polar opposite from Sendek. Sendek ran a highly prescriptive system, and the system would beat you, not the players. Hence, teams full of role players and players never fully reaching their potentials, but teams that were consistently above average.

    Lowe’s players improve, but his system does not. I just don’t think Lowe can manage the game and get the best performances out of these guys. Since talent is lacking and a system isn’t employed to win, you end up with 2 conference wins.

    Clearly, NCSU needs more talent. But I think the talent deficiency is greatest at the head of the bench.

  4. ncsu05mit10 02/12/2010 at 12:12 PM #

    ^^mwcric, I have a good friend that played at Fordham and thinks Whitt was a very good coach. He credits, like you’re saying, a terrible AD and athletic department and playing in a totally over-matched conference. It’d be like ECU trying to compete in the ACC.

    Hiring alumni (or promoting internally) usually isn’t the best situation (see UNC, NCSU’s football program; also see Oblinger), unless you’re already with a winning successful program.

    We’re not. We need to look elsewhere for improvement.

  5. Clarksa 02/12/2010 at 12:39 PM #

    “Clarksa, some of that “improvement” can also simply be credited to more playing time.”

    We seem to have a lot of engineer types or people who use “numbers” in their everyday work and can analyze the hell out of some stats. I am a “Political Scientist” by degree from NC State and I can spin any number you give me to make a point because the stats don’t always tell the whole story.

    The stats I produced proves that they have all improved, but yet each one of them have cost us games this year and are for the most part head cases.

    The stats provided in the original article do not show that Coach Lowe took over a team with 6 scholarship players, that he had to learn the job on the fly, and that he missed or just screwed up on some recruits (specifically PG, and even the great Roy Williams is having his troubles with that position this year).

    However, after all of that, I do recognize that ultimately the W-L record is really all that matters and that damn well better improve next year with supposedly two great guards coming. If it doesn’t,Coach Lowe will be sitting next to Flip Saunders in the 2011-2012 NBA season.

  6. whitefang 02/12/2010 at 1:32 PM #

    You can talk about players developing or not, recruiting adequately or not, but in order to evaluate the head coach you have to consider the whole body of work. How anybody could argue that the whole body of work that coach Lowe has produced is anything but terrible is beyond me.

  7. fernandopacker 02/12/2010 at 1:33 PM #

    Those stats don’t tell the story. You have to go by how many more minutes each play now. More minutes= more points not improvement. I am afraid Sid’s players do not pass the eye test for improvement.

  8. Clarksa 02/12/2010 at 1:47 PM #

    Those stats I chose, and what I wrote about those stats, tell the story I want it to tell…

  9. packfan03 02/12/2010 at 1:53 PM #

    “I am afraid Sid’s players do not pass the eye test for improvement.”

    I’ll stick with the stats on this one, although I’m sure you have great vision. 🙂

  10. Rochester 02/12/2010 at 1:56 PM #

    I’m puzzled by the roles assigned to Mays and Degand. If you’re going to move one of them to the 2 guard, I would have moved Mays. He doesn’t do anything a good point guard does, but he’s a decent shooter. Degand, on the other hand, often looks to me like our best PG. Why move him to the 2? (Although it is nice sometimes to have two ballhandlers in at the same time.)

    I’m also perplexed at the roles of some of the other players. CJ Williams was a starter earlier in the year; now he never gets off the bench. I’m not arguing he should start, but either Sid totally overrated him before, or he’s buried him for no reason now. Vandenberg gave us some nice minutes earlier in the year, playing decent defense for a freshman. He doesn’t even sniff the court any more. To me he wasn’t so bad that he should never play. I understand tightening the rotation, but ours seems to fluctuate without really getting tighter.

  11. VaWolf82 02/12/2010 at 2:00 PM #

    It doesn’t matter if the current players have improved or not. Even if they have improved, they still aren’t good enough to move State out of the bottom three in the conference.

  12. Rick 02/12/2010 at 2:20 PM #

    “I’m convinced that the NBA and NCAA Basketball are such totally different beasts that the records of one have zero reflection of how that coach would do in the other.”

    I am starting to think so too. You can not spend your whole life around basketball and not know it better than what it appears right now.

  13. Rick 02/12/2010 at 2:21 PM #

    “I also think Cothron could EASILY beat out Howell (if he doesn’t get in better shape), where we could start 4 freshmen.”

    I would be shocked. I have not been impressed with Cothron.

  14. Ed89 02/12/2010 at 2:40 PM #

    ^I would be shocked. I have not been impressed with Cothron.

    Rick,
    Have you seen him play in person, or just video highlight clips? I think he’s a pretty good shooter, but I doubt he can rebound like Howell.

  15. Rick 02/12/2010 at 2:45 PM #

    I saw him play in person.
    He looked like he had gimpy knees. He did not try to block shots he would swat at them down low which made me believe he does not have the athletic ability to go up after them. He played soft and like to shoot from the outside. I would compare him to Costner.

  16. choppack1 02/12/2010 at 2:55 PM #

    “Those stats I chose, and what I wrote about those stats, tell the story I want it to tell…”

    Well, there’s that. Of course, there are better measurements available for a players effectiveness than their averages.

    Kenpom – (yes, this is awesome) – has a player ranking that is based on their contribution per minute played.

    When you look at these #s, you can draw the following conclusions:

    *No Dennis Horner hasn’t really significnatly improved his game since his freshman year. Statistically, his best year was junior year. His next best year was junior year. However, aside from his sophomore year, he’s been a relatively effective player.

    *Javi Gonzalez has improved since his freshman year – but not enough because he set the bar very low. He has a better overall offensive rating (last year IS higher than this year). He’s slightly better w/ the ball – hes’ definitely passing it better.

    *Julius Mays – has offensive rating is slightly better 101.4 to 100.6 (and both years it is higher than Javi’s.). His TO % is better better, but his assist % is worse. It’s hard to make the argument that he’s improved.

    *Farnold Degand – he’s definitely improved – albeit slightly.

    *CJ Williams – He’s gotten worse – much worse.

    These are hard #s – not just an average from a game, so I’d say that they are truer than a seasonal per game average.

    As far as what Sidney inherited. No, he wasn’t given a rose garden. However, he wasn’t given crap either. An effective may have struggled his first year, but would have had much better 2nd and 3rd years.

    The only reason to consider keeping him is that we’ve got Harrow and Brown coming in and they likely would either leave or wouldn’t come if Sid left this year.

    It is indeed a very similar situation to Hodge with the notable exception that unlike Sidney, HWSBN accomplished more his first year, than the person he replaced did in his last year – and continued a very, slow ambling road of improvement until year 5. Of course, people forget that w/ Sendek’s tenuous job status Justin Gray and Eric Williams ended up at Wake Forest. These 2 would go on to play significant roles in 3 NCAA tourney trips for the Deacs. And who knows what kind of coach we missed out on?

    We did get lucky though – we got 5 consecutive tourney trips and a Sweet 16…but this was after shaking up the coaching staff and totally changing the way NC State played ball. And this from a coach who actually demonstrated some minor improvement (and sent an apology note after his 5th year.)

    With Harrow and Brown – will we suddenly start playing good defense? Will our “bigs” suddenly start boxing out?

    I imagine we’ll get to see. I just hope (probably against hope) that we don’t 7-9 and sign a McD AA so we can have the same people making the “don’t make a change” argument say, “we’re improving and we just need to get this player in” next year too.

  17. Ed89 02/12/2010 at 2:59 PM #

    Three words I would suggest for our recruiting.

    1. We
    2. need
    3. athletes

    If you looked at the game vs. VT, that is what jumped out at me. I know Brown is very athletic, as is Harrow, Leslie would really be a great addition, but I can’t get my hopes up too high.

  18. Wulfpack 02/12/2010 at 4:47 PM #

    “However, if one of them does turn out to be a disappointment, regardless of this not being a trend germane to NCSU, people will claim it is still solely due to Lowe’s faults.”

    Class, there seems to be a lot of discussion/debate here centering on who’s at “fault” for the situation. Here’s how it works at other schools who value winning: If you lose, and you lose consistently, you’re replaced.

    My point is, I don’t care who is really at “fault”. What I care about is results.

    And quite honestly, if you cannot get the job done in 4 or 5 years, a coach has no one to fault but himself. He will have also cashed in upwards of $5 million dollars — so I’m really not all too sympathetic. He’ll be ok. Plenty of NBA assistant coaching jobs to be had if he doesn’t plan on playing golf for the rest of his life.

  19. bradleyb123 02/12/2010 at 5:14 PM #

    Great work, WV Wolf! This really puts things into perspective.

    I used to defend Sidney. Well, I never said he was a great coach, but I felt like he deserved this year and next since he has some pretty good players coming in, and what I think is a pretty good foundation of players right now.

    But a few losses back, I stopped defending him. After the VA Tech game, I changed my neutral position on Sidney to “he’s got to go!” I no longer want to keep him around just to get his recruits.

    BUT…… only if we replace Fowler first. AND…… only if we promise to bring in a proven winner. If we’re going to bring in another experiment, I’d rather give the Sidney experiment one more year to see what he can do with Harrow, Brown and Cothron (and CJ Leslie?)

    Basically, I like our chances of improvement next year with Sidney and his incoming players better than I like our chances with some other unproven bozo WITHOUT these good incoming recruits.

    If we will bring in a winner, let’s unload Sidney right after this season and do it. Otherwise, let’s sit tight and see what happens when we finally have a great point guard running the show.

  20. bradleyb123 02/12/2010 at 5:19 PM #

    Does anyone here know of anything going on with replacing Fowler?

    Does anyone “in the know” think Sidney is in danger of losing his job after this year?

    I’m curious to know what is the most likely scenario for Sidney. Not what we think SHOULD happen, but what we think WILL happen (if anything).

  21. Wolfy__79 02/12/2010 at 5:40 PM #

    those that haven’t improved enough are: horner 1st & foremost, mays, degand, thomas, cj williams.

    horner probably has reached his ceiling as far as what he tries to do. now if he were to actually try to be a pf, he could improve tremendously. the worst part about him is he hasn’t taken advantage of his lowpost counterparts! well, that, and he makes terrible mistakes on the court i.e. missing wide open layups. i like the guys, and the fact that he hasn’t bailed on his coach. but IMO he can do better. this team is screaming for a leader, he could help a little in that dept.

    cj is just simply not fitting in? i don’t know what his deal is.

    mays, is still young and is expected to make mistakes.. i just have higher hopes for him

    thomas and degand, yes their injuries set them back. i still would like to see them on the court more, mainly thomas. he looked fine to me during the central game. i wish these two would grow some balls and earn more time!

    there has got to be someone on this team that can get on the floor and bring it all together?

  22. Primewolf 02/12/2010 at 8:54 PM #

    We have a huge BB IQ deficit on all but 1 chair on the NCSU sideline and I would say that chair belongs to Scott Wood. Those chairs include coaches and players.

    It is hard to imagine a more lost looking bunch of people when we play a well coached team that has the obvious strategy to beat us.

    I hate to say it, but I have given up on going to the games with 2nd row LTR seats. It is too painful. I am not renewing next year and won’t go back until we have a product that is worth the effort.

    It is amazing my attitude change about NCSU athletics in the past 5 years. I have given more than $100k in that time and now it is like too painful to watch BB. I hope we can get something going in FB.

    Heck if we had one sport that was nationally competitive, I would go and cheer them on (cross country excepted).

    Our university and athletic leaders don’t really realize how many alums they have lost over the past 2 decades. It is hard to be identified with a loser for that long a period. Not only a loser but just sheer dumbness with the way things are run and the general ineptitude of the whole organizations.

  23. 61Packer 02/12/2010 at 11:58 PM #

    The numbers prove that we’ve reached our Lowest point ever in 100 years of NC State basketball.

    We waited 100 years for THIS?

    Undoubtedly our once-proud basketball program is in need of long-term repair, but more importantly, it needs an immediate overhaul. Not next year, NOW.

    We should try to hire Bob Knight. His sideline presence would give us sellout crowds every night with ESPN again instead of thousands of empty seats and ESPNU. We’d have a non-nonsense proven college winner who would not tolerate the issues we’ve seen with player personality problems the past 4 years. We’d have a coach who could develop players to be the best they could be, regardless of talent. We’d have a defensive-minded coach who’d set the table in about 3 years for a Gregg Marshall or Mark Turgeon who’d take over for the long-term. And most important, we’d be competitive again.

    Augie, er, I mean Jed, let’s do this……..

  24. Wolfy__79 02/13/2010 at 2:01 AM #

    bob knight at coach would not do all that well for us right now. he didn’t accomplish much at tech, other than getting his son a head coaching gig. i don’t really recall any super players coming from that school while he was there. at the time of sid’s hire, i thought knight would be interesting. i’ve had plenty of time to mull that over.

    if we do end up with a new coach, i think it is critical to get a younger coach.. one that could better relate with players. its okay to be a dictator, but not as a young coach. k can get away with it all day.

  25. Wolfpack_1995 02/13/2010 at 7:26 AM #

    Good Stuff WV_Wolf.

    The DATA should be sent to the new chancellor!

    The numbers and charts speak for themselves. IMO Sid defenders will try to explain anything away. But Wins & Losses are the BOTTOM LINE.

    I just wish this experiment would be over. How much longer do we have to suffer?

    I hope those with big ties behind the scenes are gathering up a TREASURE CHEST full of money to have ready for the next coach. And hopefully we will not be turned down!

    Can it get any worse? Bob Wade perhaps?

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