Late pushes fall flat for Pack; Baseball represents last hope

After failed attempts to garner some kind of notable success by a couple of NC State’s non-revenue sports fell flat this week (men’s golf and women’s softball), NC State’s Baseball team remains as the last primary opportunity for Lee Fowler’s athletics department to do something special and win a “major” ACC Championship.

It is something that hasn’t happened at NC State in a LONG time. And, as you will see from the statistics below it is something that hasn’t happened at NC State in far too long when compared to other programs throughout the country.

The following is a quick picture of the last ACC Championships won by NC State in the four major sports:

Football – last title in 1979; 7 total ACC championships
Men’s Basketball – last title in 1987; 10 total ACC Championships
Women’s Basketball – last title in 1991; 4 total ACC Championships
Baseball – last title in 1992; 5 total ACC Championships

With this said, we are desperately rooting for Coach Eliott Avent to win his first ACC Title in over 12 years of coaching the Wolfpack. If Avent were able to get the proverbial monkey off his back he would do the NC State Athletics Department a huge favor. (I don’t think that you can be prepared for the statistics that you are getting ready to see)

Did you know that there are only 5 progams in BCS conferences to fail to win at least one conference championship in Football, Men’s Basketball, Women’s Basketball and/or Baseball during Lee Fowler’s tenure at NC State? Those schools are as follows:

    • NC State
    • Virginia
    • Arkansas
    • Missouri
    • Texas Tech

Did you know that there are only 2 progams to fail to win at least one conference championship in Football, Men’s Basketball, Women’s Basketball and/or Baseball since 1992-1993? Those schools are:

    • NC State
    • Missouri

(SFN tries to strive to provide you a lot of different experiences. One of the things we are most proud of is the unique statistical analysis and research that we are blessed to receive from the entire community and particularly VAWOLF and WVWOLF. A special thanks to WVWOLF for the aforementioned stats)

Come on baseball!! Help soothe our wounds after…

* Men’s golf was one of 82 programs invited to participate in NCAA regionals. The Wolfpack finished 14th in their regional and will not advance to the NCAA Championships. Locally, Wake Forest and UNC-Charlotte both advanced.

* Women’s golf team finished 11th in their regional, missing the championships by 1 stroke.

* The Wolfpack Women’s Softball season also ended early and is reviewed in this piece by Tim Peeler. State finished 5th of 8 schools in the ACC and failed to earn one of the conferences four NCAA bids (Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, UNC-CH and FSU), but the Wolfpack women made a little push in the ACC Tournament before losing 2-0 to defending-champion Virginia Tech.

Even though these performances were far short of noteworthy – standard fare for the Lee Fowler era at NC State – they may still serve to help NC State improve upon our embarassing rankings in the all-sports Director’s Cup where the Wolfpack is currently tied with Cornell at #66.

NC State is currently #66 in the Director’s Cup, behind such athletic powerhouses – many of which don’t have very many sports or even athletics scholarships like:

#46 Boston College
#47 Wake Forest
#48 Maryland
#49 Harvard
#50 Clemson
#51 Hawaii
#53 Denver
#54 Princeton (N.J.)
#55 Utah
#56 Georgetown
#58 California Poly San Louis Obispo
#58 Kansas State
#60 Texas Christian Uuniversity
#61 Navy
#62 Northern Iowa
#63 Miami (Fla.)
#64 Southern Methodist
#65 Texas Tech
#66 Cornell (N.Y.)

I guess that Lee Fowler and Bobby Purcell would be mad at us for sharing these factual realities and would therefore label us “negative” for sharing with you what a free-thinking human would call ‘neutral’ factual statistics. I don’t quite understand their thinking or why they would spend their energy getting mad at the people who discuss the facts as opposed to spending their energy attempting to change these facts (which make NC State people sad).

So, in an attempt to be ‘positive’, let’s not focus on the 65 programs ahead of us; and, instead positively focus on those that we are currently beating in the Director’s Cup. (Thank goodness that we have built so many great facilities and have a Top 5 Booster Club or who knows what other programs would be ahead of us?)

#68 Boise State
#69 Old Dominion
#70 Oregon State
#71 Baylor
#72 Memphis
#73 San Diego
#74 UC Santa Barbara
#75 Texas El Paso
#76 Massachusetts
#77 Miami (Ohio)
#78 Pennsylvania
#79 Portland
#80 New Mexico

..and others like New Hampshire, Northern Arizona, Boston University, Rutgers, Vanderbilt (who doesn’t have an Athletics Director), Delaware, St. Johns (N.Y.), Southern Illinois, Georgia Tech (who just hired a new AD), Appalachian State, Tulsa, James Madison, Liberty (Va.), Nevada, Army, Dartmouth (N.H.), South Carolina, Western Kentucky, Xavier, Oakland (Mich.), Vermont, Villanova, Washington State, South Florida, Santa Clara (Calif.) William and Mary, Sacremento State and Air Force

Take that you negative people!!! NC State is better than all of those schools in Athletics. WOOO HOOOO!!! And, we are not last place in the ACC. WOOO HOOOO!!!!

(positive, cheering) Way to go, Wolfpack!!! (positive, cheering)

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27 Responses to Late pushes fall flat for Pack; Baseball represents last hope

  1. Dr. BadgerPack 05/20/2008 at 1:14 PM #

    The 10am game tomorrow against GT is about as close to a must win as you can get if we want to host a regional as this will be our one and only meeting against them this season and we are neck-and-neck in the RPI. Lose that one and we probably have to beat both Miami and Clemson.

    I’ve already decided I’ll take tomorrow morning off and post some game updates– an attempt to restore the mojo we had going in game 1 versus FSU. (Feel free to blame me for the game 2 and 3 losses).

  2. packfan4ever 05/20/2008 at 2:01 PM #

    Tomorrow’s game is HUGE. Winner probably gets to host. GO PACK!!!

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