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chop: That’s kind of how I see it. I’ve got no “dog” in this fight. I will say that I do not think this is as attractive a job as the men’s basketball position, or even the football one. Maybe the NC talent pool that whiteshoes mentions helps, but we seem to have some disadvantages against other NC suitors for that talent.
whiteshoes: Thanks for your input. It’s good coming from someone who is coaching the sport (and I’m not talking Little League).
I could see Yow going either way with this. I could see how either path could be the correct one. I’d also lay even odds that a successor wouldn’t do any better, unless there’s a significant increase in commitment to baseball.
chop: I don’t follow baseball as closely as football and basketball. Like you I kind of have to defer to others who do with respect to in game strategy, or overall strategy decisions. For years though with Avent, I’ve seen those who know more (not just here) question a lot of the in game and pitching decisions. I don’t know much, but even I questioned that Rodon/Florida move referenced earlier in the thread.
With respect to getting talent in here, facing an uphill battle against dirty play right down the road, and getting results relative to our facilities, I think Avent has done a commendable job. It just seems like a bonehead move here or there always holds him/us back.
I do think he’s punching above his weight. I suspect this is a tough decision, if there’s actually a decision to be made. I’m not convinced there is due to the contract, but at a certain point things get stale after 19 years.
cowdog: I said earlier that I didn’t see it. We made a double switch in that situation and put a pitcher into a hitting position with the wheels falling off?
I guess I look at it differently, and in part because I didn’t watch the collapse. This team was dead in the water through about the halfway point of the ACC season. They rallied strong just to get here.
I’m not one for moral victories, but this team did more than last year’s team did, and they did it with less talent. This team came much closer to recognizing its full potential. Last year’s team was the one that was really disappointing to me.
I wasn’t so surprised about the collapse last night. I was pleasantly surprised that we were up when I went to bed. This team really hasn’t been able to break through this year away from home, and has blown some winnable games in key spots.
Whether that is coaching or the players is ultimately up to Yow and the big baseball donors to decide. At what point is it systemic because it is across multiple years?
I wasn’t a fan of the extension / raise signed a couple of years ago. Because of it, I suspect Avent’s back either way next year. Frankly I’d be fine either way. Could someone else do more? Maybe. Baseball recruiting is very local and there are better facilities at UNC, ECU, Virginia and possibly WF. We may find that Avent is punching well above his weight.
PackofMac: that’s kind of how I see it. We were dead in the water ~6 weeks ago and now have a ton of momentum heading into the big tournament. That’s a huge turn around!
Go Pack! Make some noise!
The last two years my eyes have told me that we didn’t have a lot of NFL talent. When the kicker is MVP (two years ago), then you’re in big trouble. The NFL draft this year just validated it.
All the “TOB find the 2 stars and coaches ’em up” garbage was just that. Now, maybe he did develop talent better than this year’s staff, and maybe this year’s juniors and seniors were suffering from 2 years under this staff. You could probably argue that either direction.
My eyes said talent. We just didn’t have that much of it. This past year, outside of BC (and possibly UNC/UCF), I felt like we played much won and lost based on our talent level and the opposition.
Nice thread title in good fun.
The front page thread got locked, but I did have some further research on the topic that should possibly go in it. I was about to post the following right as it got locked. I include it here not to continue the argument, but to give more data on the evaluations and to correct a mistake that Tau and I both made with respect to attendance:
Tau: The attendance #s are from the NCAA reports. I pulled them up quickly today. It appears they’ve not reported on this past year yet. I say this because the 2014 report is referencing the Finals being played in North Texas (Arlington) which is when UConn won. So move that spike in NC State’s attendance back a year. It wasn’t TJW that moved the needle. It was the hype from being preseason #6 generating season ticket sales. And people say that those silly rankings and preseason expectations don’t mean anything…..
The Forbes evaluations come out right after the NCAA tournament. So ones for 2015 talk about the 2014-2015 season.
Here’s how we’ve done recently:
-> Gott years:
– 2015: Not in the top 20. Not in the last 5 left out. Attendance not out yet.
– 2014: 12th in attendance — “NC State has nailed down a new multimedia rights deal (10 years, $49 million), agreed to a more valuable Adidas apparel agreement (four years, $7 million) and surpassed $1 million in licensing revenue for the first time in school history.” We were 25th in attendance.
– 2013: 20th in Forbes. 12th in attendance with 16,299 on average.
– 2012: Not in the top 20. No almost there list. 19th in attendance.-> Sid years:
– 2011: Quick search doesn’t include full stats, but we were 25th in revenue. We were 24th in attendance.
– 2010: Not top 20, no almost there list. We were 21rst in attendance.
– 2009: 18th in Forbes, 16th in attendance.But hey, when we hired Gott, our brand was awful and no one wanted this job. That was the narrative right? At that point, we were two years off of 18th in value and were still coming off of 2 straight years of top 25 attendance.
As for the whole “more ticket sales” argument, he year we fired Sid we had 13,184 in attendance on average. The first year of Gott, we had 13,779 on average. Let’s say we got $40 a pop for those tickets, with 16 home games that year it was ~$384k through the gate extra. Maybe we were more marketable elsewhere and thus generated more reveneue. Maybe with a new coach we had to do less discounting to get the fans in the seats. I haven’t looked at some of the other data recently (and am too tired now to go look it up) to tell. Regardless, I’ve never bought that future revenues from ticket sales argument when playing the college sports arms race. The only way revenues from ticket sales really go up is if the average price that a fan pays goes up.
The points I’m trying to make out of this are:
1) This is a good job no matter who is in it. Due to PSLs or the ESA, we’re going to pull in a lot of butts in seats. Due to the ACC revenue share, etc. we’re going to bring in a lot of media money.
2) The ESA is the single biggest thing that has impacted our attendance. The year we opened it we were #7 in attendance (under HWSNBN). We’d not been in the top 25 at Reynolds since V prior. Since about 1993 all the top 25 averaged more seats than we had capacity, which meant the bigger arenas were generating more draw.
3) Hiring Gott didn’t really move the needle up.
4) Year two really hurt Gott and the program. It’s not just some pessimistic internet people or the media who aren’t bought in. Our attendance is back down.
5) We may have slid back more this year.
6) There are more bigger picture stats than just the ones you mentioned.
7) You can look at these stats and draw a lot of different conclusions.Tau837:
My point isn’t that Lowe was a good coach. I don’t think he should be the coach here. That’s not the point. It’s that you could produce some stats that would make him look good. I promise you if you go and look at those, you’ll find some that he was actually good at that were core to the job.
As for your value question, go look at the Forbes basketball evaluation for this year. We dropped out of the top 20. We’d spiked up in Gott’s first year.
For attendance, we were 25th this year, with an average of 12k fans. In 2013 we were 12th with an average of 16k fans. We were 20th in 2012 with 13.5k. In 2011, we were 19th with 13.7k. I suspect that 2013 was probably the TJW effect.
Part of the promise was that ticket sales and revenues were going to go up and that season ticket sales would be on the rise which are more full cost tickets. We’ve been dumping tickets every year and still not filling the arena. I don’t have the revenue numbers right here, but have seen them. We do make some serious cash as a program and are in the black. I don’t remember how that is trending.
OutWestWolf: I’m not going to spend the time to do it because I don’t really care, but here’s where I’d start just off the top of my head:
– Certain streaks at certain parts of the year
– ACC tournament record: This was pretty good.
– Non-conference record: Lowe could pad some wins with cupcakes that would make the overall number appear to look decent.
– W/L record against teams with RPI of 100+ (surprisingly few losses against 100+ RPI if I recall correctly)
– Players put in the pros
– Recruiting rankings of incoming classes
– APR: I think Lowe was the highest we’ve had since that metric startedAs you mention, we know Lowe didn’t get it done. For all of these, you could find 2 that show why he didn’t. I appreciate all he has done for NC State both as a player and as a coach. He seemingly tried, transformed us from a system team with massive roster holes and left us with a balanced roster stocked with talent. He did some good things. You can find stats to support those things.
The bigger point I’m making is that when people trot out some stats and then say that based on the stats they’ve shown, they can’t see how you’d draw any other conclusion, well………………
Tau: I addressed the start of my post to you and ancsu because you’d specifically both asked me questions.
The stats part is in response to you because you followed your stats with this statement:
I really don’t understand the basis for people to be in the Gott opposers camp.Frankly, I’m taking the high road because I can see both sides. I know where you stand and understand why. I could gin together that made SL look like a competent coach just as easily as I could put some together that make this one look bad. It can be done. People will do it.
I would argue that there are some important metrics other than just wins and losses and graduation rates. This is big business and it is an entertainment business. Ticket sales, attendance, gate revenue, brand evalution (which we dipped hard in this year), games on TV, TV ratings, apparel sales, etc. are all important and are measures of fan interest. The fans are the customers. These metrics better reflect the state of the fan base than any of the ones you mention.
The point that I’m trying to make, is when I see this stuff come out, that means we’re in the Clone Wars time. There’s a certain percentage of people who think all is rosy within the fan base. That’s just not true.
That’s the ONLY point I am trying to make. The ONLY other positions I’m going to defend are the ones that run down our program or past coaches. I’ve decided to let everything else go related to the basketball program until the team laces it up again.
Good news for State and I think for Kirk as well. I think he can come in and challenge for serious minutes in year 1. A player that can shoot the three, goes hard to the rim and hustles is pretty valuable at the SF position.
ancsu and Tau: I’ve called out the V references and the metrics as examinations of behavior that we saw during the HWSNBN days and what are signs of the start of the Clone Wars.
With respect to V, the ACC regular season in the 1980s and at 2015 are an entirely different thing. As soon as double round robin left us and unbalanced schedules became the norm, .500 in the league means something entirely different. Also, V gets a pass about the regular season because he was so incredibly good during the post season. The man delivered us one of our only 2 titles virtually right off the bat with a magical late season run. After that he was going to get an awful lot of slack about regular season runs because you knew once he got to the tournament, he could make some noise. V also had NC State as a top level brand on the national scene. I wasn’t living in NC during V (actually was firmly in Big East country in the height of the Big East), but I knew all about NC State basketball.
When Gott wins a national (or even ACC) title, then I think you’ll see people similarly put the same level of emphasis on his team’s regular seasons. Until then, it’s going to be important because we need the seed to carry us.
When Gott does anything remotely as significant as V, then we can compare them. Until then, any comparison to me just cheapen’s V’s legacy. We saw people running down V, Case, Sloan, etc. to prop up HWSNBN and it just made me sick. It’s the sign of the wars, and people lowering expectations about the future by attempting to rewrite the past.
With respect to the stats, my issue is the contention that these are the only metrics by which to measure the program that matter. First, those stats tend to leave out how the team performed related to expectations, talent, the state of other teams, tournament draws, etc.. Second, I can go in and pick out any set of stats and back up any argument that I want to make. I won’t do it, because I’m not really interested at this point.
Again, when I see that happening, it’s a sign of the camps. Each camp will trot theirs out as defense of their position.
My “opinion” is that SFN has been fairly neutral about Gott in the way it has been moderated. This might be the first remotely critical thing I’ve seen. It raised my eyebrows slightly, but way too much is being made about a title.
If you can’t see the HWSNBN wars, just read this page:
– Camps
– I can’t understand how the other side doesn’t think…….
– A comparison to K. We just need one about Beamer to make that complete…
– The numbers at the ready to defend the stated position. I’m sure these will get updated. They’re always quite selectively picked to show the opinion of the presenter…….
– Reduction of expectations. Those with higher expectations have incorrect expectations….
– A reference to a failed former coach to prove we should be thankful for whatever we’re getting now….
– Arguments about word smithing of titles…
– How the message boards and forums are what is blocking our program. If only we controlled those better and manipulated the outward message it’d be all rosy……I think we’ll call this round the Clone Wars:
Victory? Victory you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory. The shroud of the dark side has fallen. Begun the Clone War has.The machine is rolling at Duke. It really started years ago with those degrees that could be earned in 3 years for basketball players out of the school of business. If they could graduate kids in 3 years while playing a D1 sport with all of that travel, they can certainly keep them eligible for a year.
I have found it interesting that K has started accepting 1 and dones. I think the talent getting stacked up at Kentucky and UNC was too much to ignore. If you can’t beat them, join them.
No one at the NCAA is ever going to ask questions about Duke and K. K is untouchable and now has the weight of USA Basketball and the US Olympic Foundation behind him.
Our only hope is that he eventually gets bored and retires. My gut says he’ll be coaching well past his prime because his ego won’t let him do anything else.
ancsu87: We’re in the early stage of the “wars” over Gottfried. They actually started in the middle of this past season.
When you see people fighting over a post title, calling those in the opposing “camp” miserable people, running down former HOF coaches (seen particularly around V to justify some of our poor regular season play), people focusing on the poster as much as the post because that poster is a in a “group” that they know they don’t agree with, people arguing to blindly trust in the coach and some discounting the overall value of our program against clearly identified 3rd party metrics that state otherwise, then those are the signs. Most of those are right here in this thread. If you can’t see them here, stop by the Lacey transferring thread and you’ll see them all.
This isn’t a direct comparison because HWSNBN because we’ve not had 5 years of utter failure. Things didn’t become divided with HWSNBN though during that period of failure. They became divided when we had “success” and the spin started to justify it being better than it was.
The division is more about the directional trajectory of the program, and what’s really good enough for NC State. We know when it’s clearly not acceptable (Lowe, first five years of HWSNBN), but what should we reasonably expect? Those were the HWSNBN wars, and I contend they’ve started around Gott.
I was hoping the Sweet 16 would have at least pushed them down to smoldering, but the Lacey departure and recruiting misses over the past few weeks have shown them flaring up again. If they weren’t there, you wouldn’t see the tone of the posts over the events of the past three weeks.
But hey, I could be wrong. I really hope that I am. The second 5 years of HWSNBN were my low point as a NC State fan.
Quick thoughts:
– Title: Probably a bit leading. Even “The last 24 hours haven’t been kind to MG” would be a little more balanced. I’m not going to criticize because other fan bases would and do say worse, but I do understand how some would get their feathers ruffled.– Kirk’s coach obviously wants to open a Kentucky pipeline. Who wouldn’t? All the coaches want to move up in the ranks. Heck, a coach like HWSNBN might even hire him if they thought he could deliver multiple players.
– I’ve read Kirk’s recruiting has blown up recently since he reclassified. NC State got the commit because we were the biggest fish. Of the local programs, I think WF may have been on him earlier.
– No need to knock the grades issue. He’ll get into Kentucky regardless. He may get into NC State regardless. The whole student athlete thing is a joke anyways.
– As for the whole thing, we loved Amato when he pulled something similar and it was “life in the fast lane.”
– The reality is that there are very few “bigger fish” than NC State, so we’re not used to this. Imagine how every small major or mid-major feels on virtually any local recruit that they identify early that suddenly blows up and ends up at a high major? We’ve just happened to run up against a lot of bigger fish this year, and we don’t have immediate PT to offer as a key enticement.
– If you don’t have the stomach for 17 year olds constantly changing their minds, don’t follow recruiting. I don’t follow football recruiting and probably will stop following basketball recruiting. Wake me up 3 weeks before the season when we know who is actually going to lace them up.
– Arch: I’m not one opining for him. If the stars align, great. If not, then so be it. Having said that, I don’t think he has a “new job.” The last I read he’d signed an extension at Dayton.
– GoWolves and others: Please don’t define all those who question the direction of the program as miserable humans and bad fans. We saw far too much of this during the HWSNBN years. Just because people don’t agree with your view, doesn’t make them miserable people. They want good things for the program just as much as you do. They just don’t agree with you on what’s best for the program.
– When I see stuff like this, I know we’re in the HWSNBN wars, but part 2. It has clearly started. The camps are forming. The wagons are circling.
44: I think you might be confused. There’s complaining and there’s disappointment. These are two different things. I’m in the latter department. Maybe that’s not coming across in my point.
Where I AM complaining is when people run down the job to support their argument. I saw it earlier in this thread, and I don’t like it. We saw that when HWSNBN was here as well.
This is a great job. The coaches are well paid to do it. We as a fan base should expect results in line with the resources and potential of this job.
We’re seemingly not getting Ingram. Duke got a PG yesterday that Ingram supposedly wants to play with.
My strategy at this point is to just ignore basketball recruiting. We’ll have who we have at the start of the year. It beats wasting time trying to understand the whims of 17-18 year olds and reading into all those trying to influence them.
I’m trying to move to a zen like place with respect to NC State basketball, Gott, etc.. The fact that we may probably never again win anything significant in my lifetime is something that I’m just going to try and accept. I must accept that which I cannot change because I certainly have no ability here to change what I cannot accept.
I will take point at one thing that I’d not responded to earlier. This is a top 20 basketball program / job. It has been for a long time. You can look at almost any metric by which these things are judged and you’ll see us in the top 20 — championships, recruit rankings, revenues, coaching salary, facilities, market evaluations, brand evaluation, attendance, etc.. The only thing you won’t see us consistently there with is the actual on the court results.
That’s why I’ve got high expectations for our basketball coaches. Until we’re consistently in the top 20 all regular season and solidly in the tournament, we’re not living up to the inherent advantages of our program. We’re going to need to be solidly in the tournament before we’re going to get a path that will unfold to let us realistically break through.
We missed a golden opportunity this year. Once we beat Nova, we effectively inherited the path of the #1 seed. Then we promptly lost. All excuses about Cat’s health, etc. aside, it was right in front of us for the taking and we seemingly choked it away. That’s a tough pill to swallow given we’ve been wandering lost in the desert for so long.
Rodon’s the most impressive pitching prospect that I’ve personally seen come through NC State. I hope he’s an All Star in MLB.
I agree with chop. I also agree it it time to move on. If it set in motion the series of events that led us to where we are today, then all parties got what they deserved.
I missed all of that other stuff. Sounds like it was a good thing because it wasn’t constructive.
I will say that I agree with CD that we don’t at this point who will be on the roster by fall. We will wait and see. I think the staff is good at scrambling around at the end so we’ll probably be okay.
I just wish that one day we’d be better than okay. It’s been a long time since 1989. I’ve gone from a child to a man with grey hair and children of my own in that time. We have had 3 Sweet 16s, just blew our best chance to parlay that into more, and have watched any solace from that disappear with Lacey. It is increasingly hard to be patient.
I’m with Foose on this one. There are some other things in that timeline seemingly omitted.
In hindsight TOB was done with RW when he sent him out on Senior day. I was in the stands and couldn’t understand it. It made perfect since a few months later.
Keep in mind here that RW didn’t ask to be guaranteed to come back to be the starter. He asked to be allowed to come back and compete. I think he knew he’d beat anyone else out, that TOB knew it which is why he wouldn’t let him, that MG knew it, which is why he told the coaches he had to transfer if RW were back, and that the rest of the team knew it, which is why they were a fractured squad that never met expectations.
TOB was done the day he made that decision. Had it really been in the best interest of the program, he’d probably still be here. The second that was done, the expectations started getting raised (because I expect that’s what he promised to justify that decision) and in a very public way. It was sink or swim time for TOB and we know what happened.
As for the parties, it was a darn shame for Wilson’s NC State legacy. It was a good thing for Glennon. If it ridded us of TOB, then I am thankful. He was a terrible hire from day one.
More than anything I am glad that Yow/those in control timed things as they did. DD has things pointed in the right direction and seems to be a better overall fit. If that is the end result of all of this, even if unforeseen and in no way imagined, then we came out way ahead.
Thoughts:
– Tau: My point about keeping kids away wasn’t about transfers out. The transfers out mainly were because the kids couldn’t play at this level. Only 1 (Purvis) went to high level ball. You can say that’s PT. I can say that there wasn’t PT because there wasn’t the necessary skills. Doesn’t really matter.
My point about keeping kids away was the lack of recruiting an incoming class. I don’t buy the lack PT angle. It doesn’t impact the other top 20 type programs. Outside of Lacey, there wasn’t a slot on this team that a good freshman wouldn’t think he could take minutes from. A big clearly could look at our front court and see minutes there for the taking. All of our bigs (outside of maybe Abu) are severely limited in certain ways. On the wing, the Martins are solid, but they’re not scaring anyone away either. Even with Cat, there is obviously back up minutes at PG, and then the potential to be the starter after this season. So, there are minutes out there to get.
– CowDog: I suspect I’m one lumped into the group you can guess what they’re saying. Unfortunately, I am not alone there. Go to some other sites and you’ll see a large chunk of the fan base that is raising some similar questions. I think Gott’s here for a while, but these type of things and a zero man recruiting class are the types of things that will keep him from breaking through. I see HWSNBN v2 playing out, and I don’t like it. It’s the early phases, but it is there.
– BJD: Valid points about the incoming transfers. Without them, we’d be dead. My point was more that I don’t think that this is how you plan to build a team. I don’t think a top level program like ours in a tough league can bank on finding enough good transfers to make it work. For every Turner (thank god for him) and Lacey, you’re going to get a Harrow or Harris, who will surely transfer again. That’s a two year investment with waiting a year before it even plays out. Transfers are life preservers and thus far we’ve been very lucky. If this is our strategy is to swing for the fences and then take transfers, we’re in trouble.
I don’t contend you have to go 3 star across the board. The 1 McD AA, 2 top 80s and 1 top 150 model can work. About 1/2 the years we won’t get that McD AA.
I don’t think that system is a four letter word. We hear system and think of HWSNBN. All really successful coaches and college programs have a system. They have an identity and a style of play. Love them or hate them, Roy (run and gun), K (3s, hand checking and flopping), Izzo (football), Wisconsin (stall ball and swing offense), Bennett (packed line), Smart (Havoc), etc. immediately have something they can clearly point to that they’re trying to do.
Guess what, we do as well — UCLA offense (got abandoned this year), looking to break, and good rebounding. That’s what I like about Gott. After our last coach, I can at least what we’re trying to do.
I’ve argued for years (since our sentencing to basketball purgatory) that the ideal recruiting model for NC State is to try for 1 MCD AA, 2 top 80 type players and one top 150 player. We should target two guards and two forwards.
Some years you’d miss on the McD AA or there might have an early defection to the NBA. Most years that 150 kid won’t develop or someone will transfer. You’ll always have 10-12 players though who are grizzled and you may get enough top line talent to occasionally be a threat to break through.
I understand this isn’t video game basketball. You may have a recruiting model and may not have the kids bite. I just haven’t seen this be the approach. Sid was kind of throwing stuff against a wall. Gott is only going after top line talent. Ironically HWSNBN was the closest to actually implementing this model. His offensive system just held him back such that he wasn’t recruiting across the positions properly.
And I also think taking transfers (outside of the graduate transfer) is a huge risk. They’ve already “quit” one place, which to me is a red flag. Most transfers do better by moving down the ladder a few rungs. Unless they’re coming from one of the blues, where are we pulling from where getting PT at NC State is that much easier? The ACC opponents we play are likely tougher than most of the opponents that the kids have faced. We’ve been lucky because Lacey and Turner worked out, so the staff found some good ones. It’s just not a strategy I’d like to use often.
