NC State’s embarrassing performance against (10-9) Florida State last week may have sealed the fate of NC State’s under-whelming regular basketball season. Now that the Wolfpack sits at a 3-4 in the conference (with a series of games against superior competition ahead) the opportunity for a regular season remotely consistent with pre-season expectations seems to have passed.
For embattled NC State Head Basketball Coach Herb Sendek and his dwindling supporters, Florida State’s defeat of the Wolfpack may represent more than just another loss in ACC play…the loss also represents the ultimate betrayal from one of Sendek’s staunchest supporters – the Florida State University Basketball Program. (please cue the melo-dramatic, ominous, “du-du-duuunnnnggg” music)
For years, the Seminoles have joined State’s Athletics Director Lee Fowler as Herb Sendek’s two most effective supporters – Fowler by fighting hard for Sendek, and FSU by not fighting very hard against him.
Entering his 9th season at NC State, Herb Sendek had compiled a 12-4 regular season record against Florida State en route to compiling an overall record of 55-73 in Atlantic Coast Conference play. That means that prior to this season:
* 22% of all of Sendek’s ACC regular season wins have come from only one team – Florida State
* Sendek has won 75% of his regular season games against FSU while winning only 43% of his games against the ACC
* Herb Sendek is 43-69 in ACC games against teams not named Florida State.
* Herb Sendek has a 39% winning percentage in ACC games against teams not named Florida State.
The “V-Adjusted Record”
Florida State’s recent betrayal of Coach Sendek not only added another “L” to the coach’s already substandard record, it also served to betray one of the favorite ‘positions’ of a faction of Wolfpackers (affectionately referred to as HSSSers) in the current “Great Debate at State”.
While succeeding to degrade NC State’s rich basketball tradition in attempts to rationalize heir guy’s long-term failures, many HSSSers often recall that Jim Valvano often shared publicly that he believed that an ACC team only needed to achieve .500 record in the ACC to earn an NCAA berth. “In fact,” state many HSSSers, “V’s ACC regular season record was only 71-69 in ten years at State. See! That proves that we really don’t have that much of a tradition and that anyone who expects Sendek to be better than .500 doesn’t have realistic expectations.” (as if Herb Sendek is within smelling distance of anything remotely close to a .500 record in ACC play?)
More than a little ironic is that the HSSSers always omit the beginning of Valvano’s statement that went something like – “if an ACC team schedules and performs well out of the conference….then achieving a .500 record should be enough to get them into the NCAA Tournament.” But alas, I could dissect the nuances and inconsistencies with this position for days as the sheer number of problems created by evoking Coach Valvano’s name in this manner are far too many to tackle today. (If you would like to weigh in on the topic, please click on the hotlink for Comments below this entry and leave your thoughts).
Ultimately, one cannot mathematically adjust for all of the intangible differences between competing in the ACC in its greatest decade of the 1980s. Nor can one rationally attempt to figure out what the “point” is when you consider that:
* Valvano won the 3rd most amount of games of any school in the ACC in the 1980s while Sendek has managed to win the 6th most amount of ACC games since his arrival
* Valvano won more ACC Championships in the 80s than all but one school while Sendek is still searching for his first title after eight years. (Valvano had won 2 by now)
But, one CAN mathematically adjust for one of the most glaring differences between the Sendek and Valvano eras – Florida State University.
In their desperation to identify ANYTHING that they feel can connect Coach Sendek with the more successful coaches of the last 60 years of NC State Basketball (since Everett Case arrived at NC State 59 years ago, every every coach in Wolfpack history has achieved more success than Herb Sendek except Les Robinson), the HSSSers conveniently ignore the magnitude of the positive benefit that Florida State has provided the modern day ACC.
So, the next time some idiot fan blasphemes NC State by uttering the name Herb Sendek and Jim Valvano in the same paragraph as a justification for Sendek’s weak ACC record, feel free to refer/link them to the following normalization exercise so that they won’t hurt themselves thinking through it:
| V-Adjusted Record | Win | Loss | % |
| Sendek ACC Record | 55 | 73 | 43% |
| (-) minus FSU | (12) | (4) | 75% |
| V-Adj Sendek Record | 43 | 69 | 38% |
Or, you can choose to look at it from the opposite way
| Sendek-Adjusted V Record | Win | Loss | % |
| V ACC Record | 71 | 69 | 51% |
| (+) minus FSU* | 15* | 5* | 75% |
| Sendek-Adj V Record | 86 | 74 | 54% |
* Assumption- Jim Valvano was 71-69 in ten years of ACC competition against teams who were not FSU; Herb Sendek is 43-69 in ACC games against teams not named FSU. It would be justified to apply an assumed winning percentage to V’s record to account for FSU that is far greater than Sendek’s achieved record. Despite this, Sendek’s actual 75% winning percentage was used to generate the most conservative adjustment possible.
Imagine the inconsistency in comparing records from different eras now that perennial patsies Miami and Virginia Tech have joined the conference? In another couple of decades of trying, Sendek might FINALLY be inching towards that “magical” .500 winning percentage that some Wolfpackers sadistically crave all because a legendary coach, who competed in a completely different era, against a completely different conference, and who employed a completely different out of conference scheduling philosophy mentioned it over 20 years ago.
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