Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
40ydline: I made this decision years ago. First I got down to 1 game a year, and then moving far out of the area made it zero.
I do think that one game is about right, particularly if that game is a Thursday night one (don’t blow a weekend day).Now that you’ve done this step, don’t be afraid to try watching the games on “tape delay.” Just tune out on game day and have a normal Saturday. Saturday evening watch the game in about 2 hours blowing through the commercials. Want to see a play again?
Just back up. It’s a blow out and you’re done watching, just turn it off. Beautiful. This approach is the ONLY thing that made the last 3-4 years of Gottball tolerable.chop: Kind of how I see it as well. I’d rather lose cleanly (or at least as cleanly as we can given the realities of big time college sports) than win dirty. Certain types of actions just cannot be excused.
I’m ready for some football! Like Charlie Brown, I think this is the year we’re really going to kick the football. Well, if 8-4 is kicking the football….
The question marks?
– Secondary
– FG/PAT kicking
– In game decision making
.
.
.
.
– QB play –> only because we’ve not really done well in my lifetime without good QB play. Note, good does not necessarily mean future NFL player, but good means in the top 3rd of the league.The NCAA could have wrapped this up long ago and dropped the hammer on UNC. They haven’t because they don’t want to. They’ve let UNC extend this multiple times because they don’t really want to deal with it. It’s classic “kicking the can down the road” behavior.
I’ve long since accepted that nothing will happen to UNC beyond a wrist slap. It’s part of my drastically reduced interest in NCAA sports. By doing nothing to UNC (yet hammering little schools), the NCAA is slowly killing the goose that laid the golden egg. I don’t personally know any 35+ year old (prime giving and advertising targets) that are more interested in college sports than they were 10-15 years ago. Maybe that’s the natural cycle, but I tend to doubt it.
Having said that, Bilas has been an insufferable goon for a long time. This behavior hasn’t changed that, or my opinion of him, at all.
The site’s not dead, as there are still active posts on the forums. It’s the off-season so front page posts are rather sparse now anyways.
Now, let’s say your theory is correct and the site is dead. Given the timing, it would almost be the fitting end to it and the perfect last post. NC State has tried to do things the right way and have not won anything of meaning since about 1989. The neighbors down the road who are our rivals lie, cheat, cover up, fraud, lawyer up, waste tax payer money, etc. and are rewarded with a championship because the NCAA has failed to act on what’s arguably the longest running scandal (both violations and investigation) in my lifetime. They are rotten to the core, deep within the institutional level.
The “adults” that are North Carolina’s elected officials care more about whether the scandal will “impact recruiting” than anything else. At the same time, they’ve pushed NC State down directly and indirectly since Valvano.
As a result, the good guys decide that the game is rigged and close up shop. I’ve long argued that NC State should forfeit every athletic contest with UNC until the NCAA takes action. This would be a small token gesture of something similar.
97: I hear you and have noticed that as well. I’m hoping they come back when they see the product in the court. If it is what I expect/hope the. Some of the basketball minds will recognize how well it fits our program and fan base and hopefully start posting again. I personally think Keatts is off to a very solid start.
I think given the circumstances, anyone not named Archie Miller was going to sting. It seems like we were finally lining it up to kick the football only to have it yanked out from us again. I’ll be the first to admit that I whined a bit for 15 minutes (Paki can attest). I was on board after that 15 minutes (I was so happy it wasn’t Will Wade), but recognize it may take others longer.
97: I’m one who wants the Jay Wright style and think it’d be perfect for NC State and the types of players that a program like ours could naturally recruit. It’s much easier to find 8-9 guards and SFs that can play and pair them with a couple of athletic power forwards than to try to fight the blue bloods for the handful of legitimate quality centers that there are every year. Give me a Richard Howell under the basket with at least 3 good shooters and a minimum of two good ball handlers any day.
I honestly hope it’s what we see, yet paired with more aggressive, full court pressing defense. If so, I have a feeling that I will be very happy with the results. If nothing else, it is going to be entertaining, which is what this whole thing is really about.
Cowdog: I hear you on the 8 years, though it seems like we still may need to pick up some exploded grey matter. Here’s to hoping some posters come back.
I’m personally fine with Keatts, and I’d have been fine with Holtmann. I prefer either to Gott (both the day Gott was hired and the day Gott was fired).
Holtmann was my 2 line candidate after Archie as #1. He had impressive results at Butler and had done very well against the P5 and Big East while at Butler. I had Keatts and Wade on the 3 line, and preferred Keatts.
It was unclear to me whether we ever reached out to him or not. One has to think we did and there were some tweets from media types suggesting that this was a candidate we should be going after. I have a hard time believing we went after Keatts without exhausting our chances with Archie (and likely Holtmann).
Honestly, Holtmann is a better “get” than Ohio State deserved. I was hoping karma would bite them, but it looks like being the only job open in town made it more attractive. Shrugs.
I will say this — the BIG got a lot more interesting this offseason. Archie at IU and Holtmann at Ohio State are going to make for some interesting games over the next few years. I might actually have to watch some BIG games.
paki: I’m not worried about the bigs. We’ll get some. I think in this system they’re not as important as the last 3 that we’ve run at State. We need some horses who are big, strong, can rebound and run. Guys like Abu. They don’t have to be the most skilled offensively, which means they don’t have to be the highest ranked.
rthomas44: That’s the last assistant hire. We now have the NCAA allotted/allowed number of assistants that can recruit on the road. We also seemingly have our S&C and Director of Basketball Operations on board.
Now if your point was about the number of suits running around the bench from the Gott era, then I guess it remains to be seen.
If this is the mindset of Kestts then we will be okay. For years I’ve argued that defense is more important basketball than many other sports because points do come relatively easy (for comparison I contend no really soccer team is defense first because it is already tough to score) and because of the instant transition of defense to offense that can lead to very easy, uncontested scores.
Team A has the ball, turns it over at the top of the key to team B who races the floor for an easy layup. That’s a four point swing, and may be 5 if the guy shooting the layup gets fouled and makes the free throw. That’s equivalent to a great offensive team needing two scores and needing the 50% chance that the other team comes up empty.
I’m not advocating sitting in a shell Virginia style. A team has to be balanced. Another assistant (Johnson) was scoring first and Wilmington scored a lot, so I’m not worried.
I don’t think it’s a matter of being committed to baseball or not but more of a matter of football and basketball being priorities.
It all has to be budgeted.
Yep. That’s exactly my point. We’ve got bigger fish to fry in many ways.
Football and men’s basketball are the engine for college athletics, and what open the wallets of the donors for other projects like baseball. We have to get those healthy first — football because it is the cash cow and basketball because we’s so under-performed for so long against the program’s inputs.
If I were AD, I would look at the baseball program and think:
– Bottom third to quarter in the league investment level
– Top third to quarter in the league results
– Stable coach, not going anywhere
– Consistently getting me points in the AD’s cup
– Seemingly no off the field issues
– Supposedly good with the fans at the Wolfpack club eventsCheck, time to move on………. Well, unless anyone has a large donation they’d like to make to better our facilities.
TOB’s train was about to completely run off the track. He had three good things going in recruiting — RBs, DL and QBs. Kitchings was retained for a reason and the DL coach was snatched up by Clemson for a reason. The rest was bad and our steady decline in the rankings reflected it. I actually think we had a graduate assistant promoted to recruiting coordinator.
With the QBs, Bible’s had a track record of putting QBs in the NFL, so it could overcome some of our limitations (like you had to come to campus and throw to get an offer). I think his health issues had killed that QB pipeline. We were prepared to go into the season with Pete Thomas as QB and put him in the shotgun, fully conceding the run. No offense to Pete, but that was going to be an absolute disaster.
Revisionist history seems to forget that we had Archer coaching the defense. We were Swiss cheese and leaving 10 yard cushions on all receivers in our zone. The offense had carried TOB and it was about to come to a screeching halt.
That year was going to be a mess regardless of who coached it. I suspect we’d have gone 4-8 or 5-7 with a couple of wins after a bye week. The question was how far down that really needed to go before the cupboard was completely bare, that this was a total rebuild job, and it was that much tougher to get someone good in here. I applauded Yow for being proactive and dealing with that before it got worse. It was one her best moves as AD at NC State. I’ve never once wished for TOB back.
Now having said that, it took a special kind of awful to go 0-8 in the ACC during DD’s first year. We had serious talent gaps, but the staff didn’t play their cards well at all. DD also called out the fans and right out of the gate. I completely understand why many were quickly turned off and are highly reluctant to turn back on.
In life, people don’t get mulligans. They get second chances. Second chances are much harder than the first go around.
44rules: I am guessing that was the reason. There was rumor at the time that Avent might go as well. I think that Avent and that pitching coach went way back.
I know this — when that pitching coach left Texas, they fell off the cliff. They have a program with that level of spending, facilities and history (best all time in college baseball) and they didn’t even make the tournament. He was good and we miss him.
If we lost him due to not matching salary, then we kind of got what we deserve. That’s also what I’m talking about. Are we really committed to winning baseball? It doesn’t feel that way. If so, Avent’s fine with me.
Grey: I think we both see that DD badly needs some media relations training. He may or may not throw others under the bus in private or in front of the team, but it sure doesn’t come across that way in the post game press conferences. That might be the place where his microphone most needs muting.
I have thought since day one that DD and Hux were a team on the defense. That’s why when many wanted Hux’s head, I questioned them. Do we really think this is solely Hux’s defense or even that he is primarily responsible? As you say, he’s never been a 4-2-5 guy. The good news is that we improved last year, and will have a stout DL this year (which means we should again be solid).
I think with Agent we were at the same spot we were at the end of the last two years. We have bottom level of the conference facilities and budgets yet get middle to middle upper level results. It seems like he “punches above his weight” to me.
Unless we’re going to get serious about baseball (example being the Taj Mahal Kentucky is building), I don’t see why we’d make a change. If we’re going to run it on the cheap, then I like these results.
I do think we need to find a better pitching coach. That’s fallen off a bit since our last one went to Auburn.
I would like to see the coordinators given the responsibility and authority to run the offense, defense and special teams as they see fit to accomplish goals agreed upon by the HC and coordinators.
I like this idea. We should do is put in a indicator light up on the scoreboard that turns red when Dave’s microphone is muted. The crowd can look at it and boo when that microphone is green. We can also use the old Reynolds noise meter approach where the light is fake, and controlled out of the announcer’s booth.
DD would love it. He’d get to pass the buck. He’s thrown fans and players on the bus. He’d be more easily able to blame the assistants. “I was muted!”
In all seriousness, DD’s input is part of the reason I’ve had a far different opinion of Hux than most. I don’t really think that this is Hux’s defense, though he may call 80% of the plays during the game. I believed before last season that we’d tank and then Hux would be unfairly fired as the sacrificial lamb. Fortunately the defense improved, and that didn’t happen, but I absolutely thought DD would fire Hux to buy himself another year. Credit goes to DD and Hux for working together to improve the defense. If we push into the top 25 this year in overall (and more importantly scoring defense) then we’ll at least be solid.
I watched most of the regional for NC State. We basically ran out of gas from the pitching and the bats got cold at an inopportune time.
I don’t place this one on the catcher at all. He made some great catches in other games and we generally managed the pitching quite well.
I thought for how little we got out of the starters, we did pretty well. We were into the pen early and often, and eventually that catches up. I sort of felt like if we were going to win it, it needed to be Sunday night. I was pleasantly surprised when we got up early last night, and then again 5-4, but the outcome didn’t surprise me.
This is speculation season for every college or pro-football fan base. Every team is 0-0. It could be the year!!! Heck it will be (well, right up until it is not for 99% of them). Might as well be happy about it now. 🙂
It’s part of why for most teams in most seasons, the average single game ticket prices are highest now……..
I don’t know what people said about Sendek’s teams
I do. The media fed us a steady diet of the fact that HWSNBN was fantastic, State should be thankful to have him, and why do we possibly think we could ever compete with UNC or Duke? We just needed to be patient, continue chopping wood, and ignore the fact that we laid an egg at every critical, program defining juncture.
When UNC’s job came open, I didn’t see a single one of those media members suggesting that HWSNBN should be hired. I didn’t see a single article suggesting that Wake, Clemson, VT, etc. should hire him. I didn’t see a single one of those media members calling for HWSNBN at their alma maters.
I’m not saying DD is HWSNBN, but let’s not pretend for a second that the media doesn’t have bias. Even if it is not organizationally driven (e.g. drastically different spin on different networks of the same event), those reporting are human and thus have a lens.
The sports media is rarely critical of head coaches. To do so risks losing access, alienating readers and viewers, losing advertising, etc.. It’s almost always positive spin, with WTNY and hope sprinkled in. Everyone is 0-0 right now and this “could be the year!”
NC State’s basketball and football programs have almost reached the level of the Chicago Cubs in baseball. We’re not quite that bad, but it is a similar mindset — every year is “the year” right up until it is painfully obvious that it is not. My goodness our fanbase is Charlie Brown trying to kick that football or Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin. I keep holding out hope though that we are like the Cubs, and eventually one year it actually WILL be our year.
Ahem, let’s acknowledge that management put the pieces there. ? We like to say that Doeren is incompetent but like Hale said, but for a decent kicker State could have been 10-2 in 2016. That’s not what I call bad management.
This analogy is about comparing a program to an undervalued stock. Do you buy low because you think it might rise? If things were all in place, then that stock would already be performing and not undervalued. Some things are missing.
Our football program is the potentially undervalued stock in this analogy. We have some of the pieces there that looks like we could be on the rise. We don’t have everything though because we’d already be flying high.
The pieces are there from the perspective of the lines. That is the most important thing, and I have given credit to DD and staff many times on their focus on these areas. It’s part of what is clearly being done correctly. There are subsets of things (like S&C), RBs and the commitment to the run (up until last year) that seemingly are being done well, and these are the reasons why we want to see DD ultimately break through.
It is concerning that the architect of the DL is no longer here. It’s great for him that he’s in the NFL now, but will be the next DL coach be able to maintain the same level of talent and depth? One of the issues that has undermined our program in the past is the good assistants perform well and then move along (some up, and some lateral). So will the DL continue to be a long term strength, or are we going to ride a wave of a really good year this year and then fall off? It remains to be seen.
The third piece of that equation is QB. I don’t know where we stand really. I don’t think that NC State needs a NFL starter to have a good season, but we have to get more out of a QB than we have in any year under DD. We were clearly in a bad spot coming into last season, and Drink did what he could to fill it. Will we see a spike this year, or is help 2 years away (and in the form of a freshman)? Time will tell.
We weren’t necessarily a kicker away from 10 wins last year. I’m sorry, but that does not account for what happens after the kick is made. A good team (like national title winning Clemson) can take the ball and go the length of the field rapidly. We clearly have a weakness at kicking and it hurt us, but I can’t say 10-2 if we make a couple of kicks.
If we were merely a kicker away, one would think we would have an incredibly attractive scholarship to offer to a kicker. We are heading into next season with a grad transfer who put up modest numbers and the same practice superstar. If that’s what we thought and were selling, we seemingly didn’t have any buyers. Is the kicking issue addressed? I guess we’ll know by about 3-4 games in, but if Bambgard is back out there for FGs, I can tell you that answer is no.
So to Grey’s point about the management, yes credit has to be given to what is being done well. That doesn’t mean that it’s all there, or the stock wouldn’t be undervalued (and we wouldn’t be coming off 7-6).
I was also trying to be kind because part of the big, glaring issue is just how poor we are on game day, within the games. There’s a reason that on some of these lists the head man is down near the bottom of P5 coaches. I don’t agree with that assessment because I do see some very important things (OL, DL, RBs, S&C) being done well so it’s not all bad. I personally think that the head man costs us 5-7 points a game.
If we were a kicker away from 10 wins, what were we away without DD spotting the other team 5-7 points? Are BC, ECU, Clemson and FSU all wins if DD’s headset were on mute? Those straw men arguments can be built many ways. There are just too many variables to make statements like the kicker.
Chop: I agree with your stock analogy. All the pieces are there. The management needs to put it together.
Thanks for linking it. I honestly hadn’t seen it. The lines are the most encouraging part and that’s two out of the 3 most important positions in football (with QB being the third). As I’ve said before, there’s lots to like. We just need to see improved QB play (that third part).
Great win last night after we got down, used the pen, picked some base runners off and eeked one out.
That IU game was tougher than the Kentucky one. Yes Kentucky was the home team, higher seed and theoretically had better hitters, but I thought they played a bit tight.
It is good to stay in the winner’s bracket because we don’t have the arms left to have won two tomorrow. We seemingly have to get a quality start tomorrow night.
