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Think: Hmm… Let me see..
– Painter: ODU went to the tournament in 2011. I had my years off there. Getting a little fuzzy. He started, averaged 13/8 and was definitely missed by NC State.
– Harrow: Georgia State, correct. Mental lapse. I always get those two mixed up. He ended up playing 2 guard on the team with the coach who sat in the chair. I think he averaged around 21 a game.
– Harris played at Providence and they went to the tournament. Auburn is his third stop. He’s been about an 11/5 kind of guy. If nothing else, he would have provided bench depth at the forward position and possibly some scoring. They were in the tournament both years he was at Providence.
– Purvis: Starter at UConn. Stats about the same as they were at NC State, but definitely a legit ACC starter and would have been better than anyone we had at the wing this year.
– Lewis: Felt like he was overrated from the start. The worst thing that ever happened to his college game was being a high school AA. The expectations don’t line up with his game and physical attributes. Given Cat/Lewis, Cat was the correct pick and I was vocal of that at the time as well. Hurt this year but was also on the bench when Butler was playing its best ball.
– Raymond: I saw him in the MTSU / MSU upset game. He started 29 games last year and 8 this year.

So, I missed on Painter and Harrow’s second transfer school. Apologies.

The point remains that these guys weren’t all scrubs. We definitely could have used them.

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I have no issue with the moderation of this site. We’ve got some personalities and that’s part of the fun. The discussion is typically pretty good and I’d imagine most of us would really enjoy sitting down and watching a game over a beer together. Maybe some day if we were ever in one place.

As for the topic, I fully expected Cat to be gone after this year and thought Abu was 50/50 (played his way into 50/50 in the ACC). History suggested 1 other departure, but I didn’t expect it to be the twins (just because package deals are harder to “move”). I suspect Abu to be gone if any one NBA GM gives him even a suggestion that they might take him. He’s seemingly consistently reported a 2 year plan.

We’ve got a replacement for Cat in DSJ. I think realistically it’s a lateral replacement at the best, and that’s if Smith is as good as billed and fully recovered. With respect to the twins, we have Dorn, Henderson and Mav, so we’re probably okay at the wings (for starters).

We’ve got no replacement for Abu. We’ve got no depth at all. If Freeman cannot recover (and if I were him I’d think long and hard about my long term plan), we have Anya in the middle with lightly used Kirk and that is it. I know we’re after some recruits, but they’re late scramble type gets.

I just don’t see a pipeline. We’ve been rebooting every year, and the defenders said this season was an aberration. It looks to me like a trend.

I read where some are hoping assistants fix this. We know we have one opening, and I fully expect a second. My response to that is that if the hope to fix basketball is by replacing assistants, then we know what needs to be done.

The best thing that probably happened in all of this was Arch getting an extension. He’s seemingly out of play this year. I can only dream that that extension gives him some sort of lowered buyout to come to State.

Yow and Gott are seemingly a package deal and have been for a while. Given how their contracts line up, we’ve seemingly got one more year (at least) of each. Fun times.

But hey, we have two Sweet 16s……….

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Raymond, Painter, Harris, Lewis and Purvis were all on teams that made the NCAA tournament. Raymond and Lewis contributed lightly but the rest were starters.

Harrow never played for Gott and left when Sid was fired. He had the stint at Kentucky, then went to Georgia Southern and had a nice run. Ended up in the tournament there playing 2 guard.

TDT was right when he left — a recruiter and not a coach. People didn’t want to listen then, but I think people are starting to see the things that were obvious in year two…….

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Well, there’s the two more so we can hit our obligatory 3 early departures.

I expect we’ll fill two coaching positions as well. One is announced. One is pure speculation.

All is well. We’ve made two Sweet 16s.

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Mista: I agree with your scenario with respect to timing. The time is now to get the person here who you think is well positioned to break through with all of that transition. Don’t wait 3-5 years flogging a dead horse and then get behind the cycle again.

UVA is well positioned. VT made a great hire in Bzzz. By letting Dixon go to TCU, Pitt obviously feels like they’re doing the same positioning.

Is NC State smart enough or proactive enough to do this? I kind of doubt it. We’re going to be thankful for the “relevency” of a couple of Sweet 16s, stay the course, and get lapped again.

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No surprise here at all. The rumor is that Cat’s got an agent as well, so he won’t be coming back. That’s seemingly been the case every since we signed DSJ.

Congrats to Cat. This was a contract year and I think he did everything he could have given our personnel, system and coaching to make himself as marketable as possible.

I thank him for his time playing for NC State and wish him lots of success in whatever comes next. I hope for him and us that is the NBA.

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tau: I think if one is happy with .616 overall, .500 in the league, floating around the bubble most years and maybe winning a couple in the NCAAs, then Gott’s performance is perfectly fine. He’s got 16 years of major conference coaching that suggest that is the coach he is.

If the camp is happy with that, is the camp that views last year as a slip up, and they’re still happy, and that’s a “third” camp, then so be it. I tend to think the two camps are “happy with more time” and “have seen enough.”

Compared to Lowe, yes that is great. Lowe was also an AWFUL hire and was easily identified as such when Jed made it. When the bar is set at the floor (Lowe or Les when he was on probation), then mediocre can look quite good. That’s okay.

My problem with the Gott hire was exactly this. He was the worst type of coach that risk and change averse NC State could hire because he was going to put us in limbo. The day he was hired, it was pretty much assured limbo, unless he catastrophically flamed out. And, here we are, five years in, with some bubbles, a couple of good first weekends, some good players (including an ACC POY) and nothing more to show for it.

You ask about teams that have held their programs to higher standards, and I think it’d be pretty easy to find. Texas (who “doesn’t care about basketball”) fired Barnes last year. His in conference winning percentage was better than Gott’s overall winning percentage. Heck, Gott got fired from his alma mater for the exact same winning percentages that he’s put up here (and he took them to #1 and an Elite 8). Again that’s another school that “doesn’t care about basketball.” That’s two that I can think of in < 2 minutes.

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Alpha: I think it’s all about the $$$$, particularly if he feels Pitt is home. This one worries me more that Lousiville actually.

Tau87: I like your list. Lots of overlap with mine.

I would argue some things are different though:
– Post HWSNBN search: The AD was Jed and he was cheap. I doubt we were offering top money and I’m sure he didn’t come across as a boss you’d have high confidence in. HWSNBN had also had recruited so much to system that the roster was in a bit of a mess.

– Post Lowe search: Lots of recent tournament misses suggested to the causal observer a weak roster. Tough boss to work for. Still paying at the bottom of the conference.

Now we’re paying near the top of the conference for mediocre results. It’s obvious that the pay will be good. We also have the #1 PG in America enrolled already, and he’s not going to sit out a year. I think it’s the perfect time to make a change.

Granted, as I said earlier, my opinions are possibly tainted because of my thoughts on the hiring process, Gott and my view of year 2. I’d make the move. But, I’m also someone who would rather have a chance at something great and risk something worse than muddle along in the middle.

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rye what built in advantage? Maybe a couple decades ago but time marches on.

Tractor57: We’re in about the top 25 in almost every metric in basketball OTHER than on the court results:
– Valuation: Forbes does this yearly and we’re typically 20-25. Here’s an aggregate since 2000 from Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dominant-mens-college-basketball-programs-2016-3)
– Coaching salary
– McDonalds AAs landed
– Recruiting aggregate rankings in general
– Attendance: Fowler’s smartest move was LTRs
– Facilities
– We also have Adidas funneling their big time AAU recruits in our direction. Clearly for Adidas we’re in the top three with UCLA and Louisville. Nike funnels to UNC/Duke and Oregon which is why (to me) it makes no strategic sense to sign with Nike.

So, everything a coach needs to be successful is there and has been since the ESA opened. They’ll also be paid handsomely to try.

The thing we’ve consistently lacked is coaching. Sorry, but I don’t think we’ve got it now either.

And it comes back to expectations. Mine aren’t to win a national title. To your point, that ship may have sailed forever.

I would expect us to consistently leverage those resources and turn them into a steady top 25 team all year — not win a couple of games in the tournament and sneak into the last ranking. A consistent top 25 team would give us a good chance at a top 4 ACC regular season finish, which would give us the double bye. I’m convinced in the Big East tournament format, that is required to have any real shot at an ACC tournament title.

Do both and you are setting up for a high seed. I ran some math recently on the likelihood of advancing if you are a 6 seed vs an 8 seed based on stats pulled from mcubed.net/ncaab/seeds.shtml:
If you are a 1-6 seed the winning percentage is over 50%. Anything below a 6 and the winning percentages fall off very quickly.

A #1 versus an 8/9 wins about 85% of the time. A #1 against a #3/#4 seed still wins about 2/3rds of the time.

Here’s the difference in the path for a #6 versus a #8:
– Game #1 for a #6 is versus a #11, which the #6 wins 2/3rds of the time.
– Game #1 for a #8 is against a #9, which the #8 wins 53% of the time.

Let’s say they both advance.
– Game #2 for a #6 is against a #3 83% of the time, which the #6 can win 45% of the time. If there’s an upset (17% chance) the #6 gets to play a #14, which it can win 86% of the time.
– Game #2 for a #8 is against a #1 (because a 1 has never lost to a 16), which it can win 19% of the time.

So, the chances of making the Sweet 16 are:
– 6 seed: .66 * (.83*.45 + .17*.86) = .340 = 34%
– 8 seed: .53 * .19 = .10 = 10%
That means the #6 seed is 3.5 times as likely to advance to the Sweet 16 as the number 8. Take it out to the Elite 8 and the odds get even longer for the 8 versus the 6.

I’ve not even gone in and looked at the data since the NCAA has started switching to the “pods” where the high seeds effectively get home games. I’d bet those numbers are even tougher for the lower seeds.

Why did I pick #6 and #8? A six seed typically represents a team that has been in the top 25 most of the year and is a high major — what most of us feel is the next reasonable step for NC State basketball if we’re actually progressing. It’s why we focus on the regular season, being ranked, etc.. A #8 is the middling bubble high major who wins a couple and gets in. The odds get even longer for those last 4 in type teams.

So yes, seeds matter and they matter a lot. The regular season matters and it matters a lot. Until NC State improves in the regular season, we don’t really have much hope of doing more than we’ve done in the last 20 years (3 Sweet 16s).

Be ranked in the top 25 all year helps with recruiting far more than a flash in the pan Sweet 16 run at the end of the year. By then, most of the big recruits are committed so that Sweet 16 only gets you in with the late recruits. By being in the top 25 all year, the program is relevant all year, which is key for recruiting. If we’re going to get the recruits in here needed to push over the hump, then this is pretty much the next step.

So, long story short, I don’t think we’re performing up to reasonable expectations given the inputs. I also don’t think that this staff will ever do it. Finally, if we piddle around with this staff and Arch ends up at Pitt, then I will be done with NC State basketball until Yow is gone.

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I think there are three ways that I probably differ from the more “reasonable” posters:
1) My view of the initial hire: Of the fish seemingly in play, we were kind of in the middle on what we got (and maybe at the bottom if you factor in our built in advantages). The letter is one of the worst PR moves I’ve seen at that level, and didn’t inspire confidence in a hire made ~ 24 hours later. Also, I followed Gott a bit during his Alabama stint and had a position on him already formulated.

2) I don’t view this year as the blip. I viewed the blip as year #2. This year was strike 2 for me and I don’t see us getting better. I see us getting worse.

3) I have seen enough for Arch to know that we need to get him now so we don’t have a Marshall / Witchita State situation happen. Imagine the difference in trajectory for NC State basketball had we hired Greg Marshall as opposed to Sid or Gott?

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chop: I tend to agree with you about what makes a successful college coach. It is seemingly either:
– Great recruiter: Calipari / Sean Miller / Self mold
– System guy who develops players in their system and then retains them: Bennett / Wisconsin / Beiline / Syracuse / Roy (vomit) approach
– Motivator who can can get the most out of the cards they are dealt: K and Izzo get great cards, but their teams are typically mentally tougher than their opponents. Greg Marshall, Smart and Few are guys who do this with lesser talent.

My question though is whether this is really any different than it has ever been?

As for our coach, he’s seemingly in the recruiter bucket. On the surface it appears to be a good match because of our built in advantages in recruiting. I actually think it’s a poor pairing though unless we can somehow get lucky and get over the hump into elite level classes. NC State (other than during the Les restrictions) has always been able to recruit at a top 20 level due to many of those intangibles. Gott’s not bringing something to the table that we don’t already have there (outside of year #1).

I tend to think we’re better off with a system guy. Ironically HWSNBN was the right style of coach. It was just his style of play and weak mental game that held him back. If NC State had Tony Bennett or the coach at TAMU (there’s doing iterative building with virtually zero brand), then look out.

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bill: I was thinking along the lines of your polishing when you look at see 6 ACC teams in the Sweet 16. Granted, 1/2 of those were Big East teams, but I digress on that point. I couldn’t tell if the teams really were improving in conference play or they were insulated playing one another with a pretty mediocre body of work outside the conference (resulting in a weak conference RPI). VT’s late push really, really made me suspicious that it was the latter. Looks like it was the former.

HeelH8r: Arch’s squad had as many or more injuries than we did this year. They lost another guy with about 3-5 games left in the regular season (sort of like Freeman for us) and that was where they kind of ran out of gas. They still won their conference and had to win their last two including beating VCU the last game of the regular season to do it. That was clutch.

Why I felt that Syracuse was a bad match up for them wasn’t about the injuries, coaching, etc.. It’s more about how smaller teams that don’t shoot well have historically done against Syracuse, their length and the zone. I would argue few coaches in America recruit to system better than Jim B.. I don’t particularly like him, but he doesn’t get 5 star talent and a ton of McDonalds AAs. He gets a bunch of long kids that fit that zone and tries to generate just enough offense to win while taking the air out of the ball.

Small teams can upset Syracuse, but they have to be the type that shoots well. With respect to Dayton, they’ve not shot the 3 ball well this year. They were winning on defense, grinding and turning turnovers into points. That is a tough way to beat Syracuse, particularly in the tournament when teams take the air out of the ball reducing possessions (which is exactly what offensively challenged Syracuse wants) AND the whistle disappears (which really hurts the smaller team).

This is the same Syracuse team that just rolled over MTSU (who beat MSU). Clearly they were decent. Sweating it out leading up to the tournament seemingly motivated them. Dayton looked a bit worn out to me, particularly down the stretch. The season had kind of caught up to them.

Call them excuses. Call them double standards. Maybe those are fair statements.

If they are, then it’s perfectly fair to call out the two teams faced similar adversity and relative to their peers Dayton finished first in their league while NC State finished 13th. It’s also fair to call out in year 5, the regular season finishes for Dayton have ticked fairly consistently, steadily and in an iterative fashion upward against their peers. For NC State, they’ve gone steadily down. The more Arch implements his program with his kids, the consistently better they are. Can the same be said for Gott?

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Surprisingly good showing by the ACC. Equally surprising flame outs by the Big 10 and mixed results by the Big 12. I knew no one was good in college basketball this year, so I should have picked way more upsets in my brackets.

Tough first round for the Millers. I thought Dayton had a bad match up there.

One loss doesn’t change my opinion of Arch though. I still think he’s the one for State. Doesn’t matter though because our administration isn’t doing anything until Yow is gone.

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Going through the evaluation to get as much information as possible is a very wise move. It gives one true pro feedback and leaves the doors open. It’s the right decision to make at this point.

I tend to think that Cat’s gone regardless of his draft position. I would love to be pleasantly surprised.

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The right time to make a move if we have a good candidate like Arch locked up is now. They’ll get 3 full seasons where the AD and the Chancellor aren’t going anywhere. That’s an eternity in college sports.

Many of these guys aren’t thinking more than a year or so out anyways because change is so constant. There was some recent stat that a ridiculous percent of D1 basketball players that stay 4 years won’t end up playing for the coach that they signed with. Why should they? All they really need as a head man is that one big contract ($2M over 4-5 years) and they’re set for life.

What needs to be done is painfully obvious. I don’t think NC State has the intestinal fortitude to do it. I also think that Yow’s a Gott fan and won’t make that move for personal reasons.

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Funny pictures. Quite entertaining. Levity is a good thing.

Happy for the team that they got a win at home on Senior (Cat) night. It was nice that they got to celebrate together in what has been a very frustrating season (and I’m sure for them more than any fan).

As for the game itself, we needed a last second miracle, broken play (at least according to Mav himself he didn’t do what the play was, and it was for Barber), to beat the worst team in the last 30 years of the ACC at home. I think that sums it up.

The question is whether people think that game and this season are representative of the program. I think the whole thing boils down to record and our finishes in the ACC have gone 4th, 4th, 7th and now 13th. Looks like a trend to me.

That is a debate that will continue to rage on in the offseason with both camps making their case. It won’t matter as NC State is too risk averse to proactively manage this.

I think Yow “hate” is a combination of:
– Lack of progress in the revenue sports
– Predictable improvement in the non-revenue sports, which fans don’t really care about.
– The Reynolds project
– Gott’a raise / extension as well as the ones the football coordinators got after the “magical” 3 game winning streak
– Natural reflection after 5 years about where we stand
– the fact she’s been on the job 5 years. Almost all high profile leaders will have doubters at that point.
Makes sense to me.

I don’t believe that good coaches “won’t work for her.” Any coach making 500k would jump at the chance to triple or quadruple that, regardless of boss. They all by nature pretty much have the ego and confidence to think they can handle an AD change. Let’s also be honest. If you make 3/4 times more than your boss, you’ve got way more juice than they do and you both know it.

As for the letter that was one of the biggest PR gaffes that I have seen at this level and profile in some time. It was so bad that I checked the email headers verifying its authenticity. It was awful and only signaled that things were terribly of the tracks. It tells me that Gott wasn’t a candidate at that time, that Yow probably feels like he bailed her out, and that those two or linked for the duration of her time here.

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BJD: Not sure I follow. We’re 2-8 against the “old” ACC. Add Matlyand to that group and we’d at least have one more loss there, so 2-9. Granted double round robin might give us a chance to get one against GT or FSU and maybe another against Clemson, but it’s also mean another thrashing by UVA, and realistically two losses to this year’s Maryland team. We’d be bad.

The league itself would be top heavy with UNC, UVA, Maryland and Duke. The rest would rack up the losses against that group.

The ACC’s RPI is mostly established in the non-conference. With 5 teams sitting at 72 or higher, it wouldn’t have been good.

Now maybe your point is that the Big East teams would be broken out separately, but I don’t really see those as what is “holding the league down.” They’re kind of stratified like the ACC teams.

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I went back and looked and there were several years that the ACC (with Maryland) only put 4 teams in. I guess this isn’t a historically bad year for the league. It’s not a good one though, and it’s pretty disappointing to merge the ACC and the Big East and STILL only have the RPI #3 league.

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Hmm…The combined ACC and Big East is still the 3rd ranked conference in RPI. The traditional ACC part of that (plus FSU minus Maryland) has 3 RPI top 15 teams, but the rest are currently 72 or lower. Put another way, the real ACC is going to put 3 teams in this year (and 4 if you count Maryland). That’s about as weak as it’s been since the tournament went to 64.

Now let’s look at our record against those ACC teams:
Duke: 0-2
UNC: 0-2
UVA: 0-1
GT: 0-1
WF: 1-1
Clemson: 1-0
FSU: 0-1

That’s a killer 2-8 against “our” conference brethren. Of that group, only 3 are tournament bound.

So yeah, I think the Pack has been awful in a historically bad ACC.

But yeah, I’m with BJD. We’d better beat BC.

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Making the tournament has become so “scientific” that you can kind of tell how it is shaping up before the conference slate even starts. After the non-conference slate, this looked like a 6-7 bid conference. It still looks like a 6-7 bid conference (though Louisville’s DQ is part of that).

I’m ready for this season to be over. The Pack has been awful in a historically bad ACC.

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13Ot: you are at where I am at. I’d suggest taking it a step further and leaving the Wolfpack club and giving up your basketball tickets. The only thing that changes this is money. It will either take a massive influx from someone unhappy with Yow and Gott, or it is the bleeding out from fans canceling out that even she can’t ignore.

The problem with Pack fans is that we’re too good. We keep buying tickets despite lack of performance. We’re sort of like a battered spouse.

In that model, why would anything ever change? The university doesn’t care about butts in seats. They care about gate sales. Some sketchy attendance reporting this year can show you that.

I hate to say it, but as long as the money keeps flowing in, one is edfectively supporting the status quo.

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I tuned in for a while but when the inevitable started happening I cut it off. When we had about 28 and 18 of those were from Cat, it was pretty obvious what was going to happen.

We have two ACC caliber starters. The rest are guys that should be coming off the bench. I can’t tell whether the offense or defense is worse schematically. That’s not a combination for winning.

This season is anything but average. It will be the first time in a long time (back to the HWSNBN) that I’ll be glad when the season is mercifully over. I feel like we’re as trapped as with HWSNBN’s second 5 years.

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The D has been consistently weak under Gott. There are too many seasons with too many different players and one constant in the staff. It’s with the staff, as are all the same things we see year in and out. I’ve pretty much given up hope on any of the systemic issues getting corrected.

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That’s pretty awesome! Great win on the road.

Great hire by Yow as well. This one looked great from the beginning.

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Good win in what was one of the few left on the schedule where we’ll be favored. It seems like Clemson is playing its way off of any chance they had at being on the bubble.

I don’t have high hopes for Wednesday, or against Louisville. I figure we’re 50/50 against Syracuse and would really like to keep BC winless in conference. Beat the Cuse and BC and we’d be on the “over” of my over/under on regular season conference wins (5). From a 1-7 start, if we could go 5-5 down the stretch, that would be a considerable improvement.

The women’s game was a thing of beauty. I wish our men’s team moved the ball that well. Can Wes act as OC for Gott?

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