Get It Back

General NCS Basketball Tradition114

SFN Note: We wanted to thank ‘Spin Wolf’ for submitting this fantastic entry to our email at [email protected]. This entry perfectly crystallizes what Wolfpackers over the age of 35 who grew up in the area have been trying to convey to younger generations for years and the feeling that we all share about the future of NC State Basketball now that Sidney Lowe has come home.

“This is what N.C. State does. Throughout history, we’re a basketball school that pulls off big upsets.”

– Brandon Costner, Saturday, February 3, 2007

To many, Saturday, February 3rd 2007 will signify the Wolfpack’s first win over the hated Tarholes in many, many tries. It will be the date that Coach Sidney Lowe bested Coach Roy Williams in their first match-up. It will simply be the date we beat Carolina.

To me, this day is much more. It is the day when I got my beloved Wolfpack basketball team back. Fans whose memories may not go back as far as mine may be puzzled by this comment. Let me explain.

I grew up in the 1970’s and 80’s. In those days, State-Carolina was THE rivalry and Duke was merely an afterthought. We’d watch the ACC Tournament in school on Friday and then almost get into fistfights over whose team was better. Dean Smith was well on his way to earning his status as a legend of college basketball, but there was certainly no great divide between the two programs.

And most true Carolina fans knew that. It was accepted that when State and Carolina faced off, you’d better bring your best game, no matter who was favored, because it was going to be a war. While Dean Smith kept Carolina in perennial Top 10 status and went to numerous Final Fours, NC State was able to keep the pace with both ACC and NCAA championships.

Younger State fans and current students should chew on this: As of 1990, State and Carolina were TIED in the number of national championships won at two each. In ACC championships, Carolina had a whopping one title more than State for virtual parity.

How did State coaches Sloan and Valvano manage to keep Dean Smith feeling the wolves’ breath on his back? Save for the legendary teams of 1972-1975, State never had as many blue chip players. But both coaches had the ability to coach Wolfpack hoopsters into playing beyond themselves. This ability to accomplish more with less (as opposed to less with more..cough..cough..) is the legacy of NC State basketball. At the time of Coach Valvano’s resignation, NC State HAD TO be included in any discussion of great college basketball programs.

And yet for most of the last 17 years, NC State had let that legacy crumble. We had a program that played to the level of talent we had, sometimes less than that, but rarely more. And as a lifelong Wolfpacker, I felt like the program I grew up cheering, loving, and yes – fighting for, had died. We didn’t have the ability to get hot and pull off a run in the tournament. If we beat Carolina, it was because CC Harrison turned into Kobe Bryant for two hours or because Matt Doherty couldn’t coach.

Saturday, Coach Sidney Lowe changed all that.

Lowe coached our extremely thin team to give 110 percent for 40 minutes and match a bench full of McDonald’s All-Americans shot for shot. Coach Lowe knows the legacy of NC State basketball and is instilling it into our players daily. The red jacket, bringing back prominent players of the past, switching up non-conventional defenses are all signs that Coach Lowe knows how to emulate his predecessors and accomplish more with less.

Carolina is still an odds-on favorite to go to another Final Four this year. I’ve still got State penciled into the NIT. But on February 3, 2007, I saw a program that played with tenacity and emotion to overcome tremendous odds and beat our arch-rival. I saw a program ready to embrace our storied history. This day will always be the day that I got my Wolfpack basketball team back.

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General NCS Basketball Tradition

114 Responses to Get It Back

  1. Rick 02/05/2007 at 8:35 AM #

    Great peice.
    I agree in that the Pack is coming back. I do not want to get ahead of myself and get over excited but I think Sid can do alot in the future.

  2. StateFans 02/05/2007 at 8:51 AM #

    I agree with you. But, when you look at what we have coming in the next two years then you can’t help but get really excited.

    It is going to be important that we get a real stud down low (Walker? Baicu?) with that last scholarship in next year’s class to insulate from the probable premature departure of JJ Hickson and the future graduations of McCauley and Costner. If that happens, then I think we are really rolling nicely.

  3. legacyman 02/05/2007 at 8:52 AM #

    Sidney “gets it” and that’s what counts. He won as a player and knows what it means to love NC State and want the best for his school. We old folks have the same knowledge as opposed to the youth who had never known much but losing to our two neighbors(ugly stepsisters). Get used to it younguns for it is going to start happening more often now that a new sheriff is in town.

  4. Pack92 02/05/2007 at 8:54 AM #

    I sat my daughter on my lap last night and watched the Valvano video. I asked her later when we were talking to my wife what the man in the video said. She said “you have dreams at NC State”. I could have cried.

    Thrilled with the result Saturday does not EVEN begin to cover it. More important is the unease you hear now when speaking with those who cover themselves with pansy blue. They know they have talent and a great coach but they NOW know it might not be enough. There is a rising beginning in Raleigh and we might not be the ones pulling off “upsets” for long. We could be favored alot in the near future with the level of talent Coach Lowe is bringing in. Congratulations to a team who played with a fire that has been missing from Wolfpack basketball for so long. More importantly, however, welcome home Sid!

  5. BoKnowsNCS71 02/05/2007 at 9:01 AM #

    I attended NC State from 67 to 71 and saw the competition and intensity. I marched with all the students to the Bell Tower and down to the Capitol whenever we beat the Heels.

    I learned to hate Dean Smith for inventing and running the “Four Corners” — where, with no shot clock, any time they got a lead, they sat on the ball and ran time off the clock until they could get a back door. It was a legitimate strategy — played within the rules but it was boring. And it just seemed — nasty. But it won.

    I watched when the nation watched Duke and UNC play in the ACCT as the top teams in the nation — and Dean pulled out the Four Corners and the rest of the world got to see what we had to put up with for so many years. And then the very next season — the NCAA implemented the clock. I have to believe they did that because of Dean and that game. And I was happy.

    I sat out in the middle of Hillsboro and Oberlin when we beat UCLA in 74 and the students owned that street for hours on end. I went to bonfires and more when the “Cardiac Pack” (known for winning and scaring the hell out you while doing it) went through its unbelievable run in 83.

    And then – we committed ritual Seppuku (aka Hari Kiri). Disemboweling ourselves. Throwing our souls into a purgatory of mediocricy. They guys who played the games had the heart and at times pulled one out but — as a contender — a generation started seeing us a a “second tier” team.

    And that’s why or how the young new writers raised to importance in a wired media world saw us as non-competitors. They knew nothing of the history. They knew nothing of the ebbs and flows of teams.

    So Saturday. I was happy for the Sidney, the players, the fans. And I sit here happy that the wind is back in our sails. I’ve just got this big old smile like a Cheshire Cat sitting fat and smug and I am so content. The world is back in sync.

  6. tractor57 02/05/2007 at 9:04 AM #

    I remember (in the late 60’s) listening to the first round ACC tourney games on radio (those were not televised in those days) secretly hidden in school (I’m sure the teachers knew we had the radios but they knew also what a big deal the tourney was – and didn’t have the pols on their necks about everything either).
    State, Carolina, Duke, WF and South Carolina (I personally have never forgiven them for leaving the conference).
    In the 80’s I always saved vacation days for watching the tourney on TV – I had a big party – probably was better than actually attending the tourney live.
    Now I once again have good reasons to watch basketball – nice to be home again!

  7. choppack1 02/05/2007 at 9:09 AM #

    Sidney obviously gets it – and it’s obvious that he’s gotten from the start. Beating the tar heels and the blue devils is important – sadly, I don’t know if our AD agrees w/ this mindset. All evidence indicates that he would have take NCAA tourney appearances and a winning regular season conference record, but third or fourth tier status in the Old North State.

    Sidney wanted to beat that team in blue dammit – even if they were No#3 in the nation.

    As for the future, w/ games like this, I tend to jump to the next one as soon as the horn blows. If we had lost, that wouldn’t be the case, but winning has opened up some opportunities for us. We were as good as any team in the nation LAST week. Sid knows just how important one teammate can be.

    I was thrilled when I saw the red jacket, and thrilled when I saw the passion our guys were playing with. The key isn’t always to have the best talent -but to have a combo of talent, passion and execution. If you have all 3 of those and you’ll be fine. Saturday was a thing of beauty, the likes of which I haven’t seen in a long time.

  8. RickJ 02/05/2007 at 9:26 AM #

    Beautiful entry and thanks from a fan that had the privilege of witnessing Greensboro & Albuquerque. There are currently 336 Division 1 NCAA basketball programs. From a historical view, I believe there are only six (Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, UCLA, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana) that have clear inherent advantages over our program. The most remarkable thing about this list is that two of the six are so close to us geographically and this causes our own fan base and others to undervalue our potential. There are another dozen or so programs in Division 1 that have an equal chance of success as NC State.

    As great as the win was on Saturday, a cautionary note is warranted. Les Robinson had more success against UNC-Chapel Hill than either Norm Sloan or Jim Valvano and all of it was against Dean Smith. Les once beat Smith, lost 9 games in a row and then beat him again.

    I don’t mind dreaming and there are valid reasons to be optimistic about Lowe. After a terrible coaching transition where we lost Simmons, Brackman, Davis & Werner through no fault of Lowe, he has managed to remain positive and get this team to play about as well as possible even with our most indispensable player injured. Equally important is that we are adding (assuming everyone qualifies) five talented players that are were secured during a period that we were recruiting in a pretty negative environment. Duke is the only other league team adding as much talent as NC State.

    Lowe does not remind me at all of Sloan or Valvano. He is way more centered and calm but at the same time fiercely competitive. He knows how important Saturday’s win was to the program but he didn’t sound any different to me in his post game comments than any other game this year.

    We may well have struck gold with Sidney Lowe. It is all about hope.

  9. redfred2 02/05/2007 at 9:43 AM #

    Great piece of work!!! It frustrates the hell out of me though. How could any administration sit back and just watch it all just fade away like they did? Just listening to some our own fans and watching the university stumble through it’s daily routine, I was honestly beginning to think that maybe it was too far gone, and it would never happen again. The most REMARKABLE aspect about it is the way SIDNEY LOWE AND HIS STAFF have brought it all back to life. I can’t believe how quickly they’ve accomplished instilling the many intangibles back into lifeless Wolfpack basketball program. They have already brought back something that I seriously thought may have been lost forever.

  10. choppack1 02/05/2007 at 9:46 AM #

    RickJ – I think that differences between Sidney and Les are night and day.

    One of the reasons Les’ teams beat Dean was because he never paid attention to the 3 ball – and quite frankly our guys often played over their heads. We did play over our head Saturday, but I don’t think that Sidney has the fundamental flaws that Les did.

    Where Les failed was in the organization and preparation segment. I think Sidney is solid in both of these. Herb was all, but Herb’s “one game at a time” methodology didn’t mesh well w/ games where our guys would need a little extra to get over the hump.

    I am excited as hell about what Sidney can potentially do. It’s definitely premature to expect great things from what we’ve seen thus. But LAST WEEK, we played incredible basketball.

  11. redfred2 02/05/2007 at 9:54 AM #

    Bo, great post!

  12. burnbarn 02/05/2007 at 9:56 AM #

    It is so nice to have our program back after 17 long years of waiting. Our program was taken away from us by from today’s standards was nothing. It is all fun again. Thank you coach Lowe!!

  13. foz 02/05/2007 at 10:22 AM #

    From Tarheel Fan Blog:
    “I said in the preview that this was a textbook trap game and UNC just did not adjust to the way NC State was playing them. This is the Tar Heel youth coming to bear and it has some of the lunatic fringe in Tar Heel nation screaming that this means UNC will not win the national title.”

    Tarheels have a lunatic fringe?

  14. Sam92 02/05/2007 at 10:29 AM #

    I was a freshman in 88/89 (chucky brown, rodney monroe) and not since then have i really had the feeling that we *could win any game*

    that’s what this win means to me, and it feels good. not to take anything away from this team’s achievement, but can you imagine what we can do with the talent Sid is bringing in?

  15. old13 02/05/2007 at 10:32 AM #

    Good article. I grew up in the 50s and 60s and remember Wolfpack Coach Everette Case and the Dixie Classic – what brought big time basketball to the ACC. My freshman year at State (’64-’65) was Case’s last. Added to the article above, the youngsters should be aware that it was an NCSU coach who was largely responsible for making the ACC a national power conference in basketball, not to mention lifting NCSU along with it. In fact, I would have to say that the NCSU basketball legacy is the longest running in the ACC.

  16. redfred2 02/05/2007 at 10:33 AM #

    ^Just maybe I should have just used the word “just” just a few more times in that first post up there. Just for good measure.

  17. class of 74 02/05/2007 at 10:35 AM #

    I’ve said this before but I firmly have felt from the beginning Coach Lowe will be spoken of in the same way as Case, Sloan and Valvano. He completely understands the game of basketball and he understands NCSU prior to 1990 coup. Inspite of the horrible bungling of our coaching search last year, we got the best longterm man for our job. Thank you and congratulations Coach Lowe and staff and continue your good work as we do appreciate your efforts under some trying circumstances.

  18. Sw0rdf1sh 02/05/2007 at 10:37 AM #

    I completely agree with the post SFN.

    I wear my wolfpack pride on my chest (and my license plate, my bottle opener, you get the picture) and I too feel like the Pack is back.

    I’m a diehard BB and FB fan (lacrosse…c’mon get out of here) and I’ve walked away from Reynolds, RBC, or Carter Finley way bummed to many times in the last 15 years (seems moreso in the past 5 though).

    I get EXACTLY what you are saying and am glad somebody could put it into words. It is just so damn hard to describe.

  19. tmb81 02/05/2007 at 10:38 AM #

    I was there and was thrilled to witness one of the greatest games in my 40 years of following the team. but can we be “cautiously optimistic”?

    In 1998, when Herb still had that “new coach smell” about him, we went into Chapel Hill and knocked off the #1 Heels.

    In 1995, After a decent start to the season (only narrow losses were to top 5s Kansas and UCLA), we defeated #1 Carolina at home in our first conference game.

    After both of those wins I had this same proud, giddy feeling.

    Cautiously optimistic…

  20. Texpack 02/05/2007 at 10:40 AM #

    My dad graduated in 1950 so I grew up on stories about Coach Case, The Dixie Classic and players like Sammy Ranzino. I lived and died with State basketball growing up. The only time I ever saw my father boo at a sporting event was when Larry Miller won the Everett Case Award in 1968 (I believe) and we were at the finals of the ACC Tournament at the old Charlotte Coliseum. Went to basketball camp at State in 73 & 74 during the glory years. Names like Paul Coder, Ed Leftwich, Tiny Pinder and Al Heartley all mean something to me. Enrolled at State in the fall of ’79 and loved every minute of the ride to the National Championship.

    My two boys have grown up in Texas, away from the hated UNC-CH fan base, but they’ve been made keenly aware of how disgusting Carolina is to me. Both of them made a special point of wearing their State garb to school today. My 11 year old even stayed up to watch the entire replay of the game Saturday night. They know it’s not just 1/16th of the conference schedule. They see the Valvano autographed copy of the SI every day, because it hangs on the wall in our gameroom.

    The only thing we can do as Wolfpack faithful is to keep telling the story of Wolfpack Basketball every chance we get. ESPN can’t change the facts and sooner or later we will re-establish ourselves as a consistent upper level competitor in the ACC. Sidney Lowe doesn’t shy away from what Wolfpack Basketball is supposed to be because he helped to make one of our crowning achievements possible. He doesn’t whine about how things have changed in the ACC. Instead he talks about what things he wants to change at NC State. That is the first ingredient necessary in taking this program back to its proper place among the greatest college basketball programs in the country.

  21. Mr O 02/05/2007 at 10:41 AM #

    Wearing the red jacket on Saturday took a lot of guts. I seriously thought we would be lucky to keep it within 40 points. The oddsmakers had us as a 15-17 point underdog. With as many shots as people took at Sidney Lowe and NC State for how we hired him, his NBA record, the fact that he hadn’t graduated from college when we hired him, etc…getting blown out by UNC on our homecourt in the RED jacket would have given people more ammunition to take shots at Sidney.

    But instead of being afraid, he wore the jacket anyways. And we didn’t just keep it respectable, we actually won the game and outplayed UNC for almost the entire time. I can only imagine how the players felt when Sidney walked in the locker room and saw him in the red jacket for the first time.

  22. choppack1 02/05/2007 at 10:42 AM #

    “I was a freshman in 88/89 (chucky brown, rodney monroe) and not since then have i really had the feeling that we could win any game”

    You see, I’ve heard this before, and I’ve thought it was a little skewed. In the last 5 years, there has been frustration, and there were truly pathetic performances vs. UNC -but I have to say, the reason that there was frustration was because I felt that we could/should have won some of the games. When we were winning, I did believe we’d screw it up, but I started believing in our ability to beat good teams in 2002 when we beat UMd in the ACC tourney. I fully expected to us beat UConn that same year. The next year, we were up by 15 w/ 10 minutes left in the ACC championship game. 2 years later, we knocked off UConn to get to the Sweet 16.

    However, how would I have felt w/ Sendek leading this year’s team against Carolina? Probably not as optimistic as a I felt w/ Sidney leading this team. And I certainly started expecting more and becoming more hopeful when I heard his pre-game comments. Then we showed up wearing that red-blazer and we were battling right from the start….Well, let’s just say, Sidney aced the hell out of this test!

  23. Mr O 02/05/2007 at 10:45 AM #

    Statefans: Recruiting has been great so far. IMO, if the coaches had known they would do this well, then we might not see Degand or Bartosz on this year’s roster.

    We could really use those two scholarships right now. As it stands, we don’t have anymore scholarships to offer the 2008 class unless someone leaves early via a transfer or early departure.

    We also need to start planning for Costner’s early departure in addition to Hickson’s. At this rate, there is no way Costner stays for three more years.

  24. BLUE SUCKS 02/05/2007 at 10:47 AM #

    I’m in wholehearted agreement. Super post!

    At age 39.9999, I remember … THE rivalry was STATE/Carolina. Shame on the University for allowing mediocrity to set in.

    Here is something for the younger STATE fans … find an old records book that pre-dates 1983. Look no further than the top 15 college basketball programs of all time …

    There you will find my NC STATE

    Know what I mean? Sid does

  25. JimValvano 02/05/2007 at 10:47 AM #

    BMOC voting is going on now at ESPN.COM
    Fells is up for the voting. We all need to get over there and vote for him as many times as possible. Delete your cookies and vote over and over again for him. Let’s publicize ourselves and our victory as much as possible. Plus it means tarhole fans will have to keep hearing about it.

    http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/index

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