GMoronski on Saturday - StateFans Nation StateFans Nation

One thing that I evidently missed when my cable box died this weekend was Mike Gmoronski’s continued chest thumping about his love for Herb Sendek and for where NC State’s basketball program belongs — below Duke. I’m tired of it; and I hate it because Gminski (and his Duke teams) were amongst my all-time favorite ACC players and teams.

A friend in Raleigh actually called me in the second half to get my reaction to Gminski’s comments and some of the graphics that Fox ran. (He was obviously disappointed that my cable was out.) I realized that my friend’s reaction was not isolated when I saw this thread discussing Gminski on Pack Pride.

Gminiski pulled this same shit a couple of times over the last couple of years on Fox’s coverage of ACC Basketball, and it is exhausting. Can’t he come up with an original thought? I’m not going to belabor the point, but I will quote a couple of the better comments from the thread with which I agree:

The little graphic on the greatness of Herb picked up with the Gminski positioning of Herb and his statements from last year.

-it feels as though he implies that this is good as it will ever get for NC State basketball. We are where we belong.

-comments about Herb keeps his kid’s “off of the police blotter” is a backhanded slap at Jim Valvano. Yep … V had some kids get in trouble… but guess what, that happened at Duke and a lot of other schools too.

His only mistake was when he said NC State basically should be happy with the status quo and that it could not expect to be like gold standards such as Duke. 25 years of Coach K and yes Duke is one of the greatest programs of all time. Another national title by Michigan State or UCONN and they will also be gold standards. New Gold Standards can be established over time. NCSU could have been one but blew it by forcing out the best thing it had going…James T. Valvano..a guy the media loved.

The police blotter comment was totally uncalled for and Gminski should apologize for it as he implied, whether knowingly or not, that previous State coaches were dirty. Now if Gman wants to play that trick, ask him about the police records of his teammates, Dennard and Banks, which never hit the papers.

Only thing he said that I didn’t like was when talking about NC State, he said we had two schools in our backyard with national championships. Last I checked, we had two.

Mr. G has a history on this subject going all the way back to last season. That is why his commentary was not accepted by scwolf as something “said nice about the NC State program”. If you would have been around last year… you could have participated in the discussion on these boards about Mr. G’s statements around “it is good as it is going to get” and NC State fans (of which I am a grad and a fan…) shouldn’t expect any better.

NC State has a great basketball tradition. ACC basketball was born in Reyonlds Coliseum… and we have two national championships. We use to be feared. My daughter is a 2005 NC State alum. She is a fan. Unfortunately, she has no expectations of us being a threat to anyone in college basketball.

6 Responses to GMoronski on Saturday

Rick 11/28/2005 at 10:46 AM #

I cannot stand the guy either.
All announcers are very positive about coaches but it seems like he goes overboard.
Jeff 11/28/2005 at 10:51 AM #

His “comments” related to Herb over the last couple of years were quite combative towards State fans. I could care less about his love for Herb. I think that it is wonderful our coach is liked by some. But, his disdain for NC State fans is manifested in his condescension that we are idiots for wanting to succeed at levels of success similar to what we had in the past. He makes his opinion of how good our program should be known. That is the primary rub.
BJD95 11/28/2005 at 1:34 PM #

Somebody remind this asshole that if not for the coaching carousel which sees “good people” get fired, a guy like Herb Sendek likely never would have received a chance to coach in the ACC – certainly not at the age he started.
Jim 11/28/2005 at 2:19 PM #

Last year that pompous SOB said that our wins in ’74 and ’83 “were basically aberrations”, and that we should be content where we are inferring that is the best we could hope for playing against the likes of his beloved Blue Devils and the Heels.
Saccov 11/28/2005 at 6:52 PM #

I remember the comment from last year, and it really boiled my blood. I think the comment Jim referenced was interlaced with something like “State really had only two good years.” Last time I checked, Duke and Carolina have three titles to our two, and UNC has only won 1 of those in the last 12 years. Gminski, like Vitale and others, love to imply that State is still wallowing in the misery that was Les Robinson, who conveniently also misses his share of the blame for the downfall of the entire athletics program. The blotter comment was definitely uncalled for because it it a cheap shot at Jim. Bill Foster and Bucky Waters weren’t exactly saints at Duke during G-man’s stay. It also proves my theory that if you know absolutely nothing about basketball, you will probably get a job on TV as a commentator. Lastly, I would like the record to show that once I found out Gminski was doing the “color,” I put the TV on mute and watched the game in silence. I suggest we all do that more often to avoid the idiocy and the “status quo” fellatio put forth by guys like Gminski.
TVP 11/29/2005 at 1:22 AM #

Let’s just put to rest this fallacy that NC State can’t recruit at a high enough level to be a national player with Duke and UNC. Because that’s what “GMan” and his ilk are really saying, right? That we can’t get top players in here to compete because of the college basketball “royalty” next door?

I bet GMoron would be shocked to know that, in the past 8 years, we’ve had a top 5 recruiting class nationally (01), 3 more top 10 recruiting classes (98, 99, 05) and another in the top 15 (04)! But that’s exactly what happened.

These numbers come from the composite recruiting rankings available at http://home.nc.rr.com/rsci, which average the rankings of several recruiting services. I was looking through this data tonight, and it’s “amazing” how well we’ve actually recruited since 1998. We were top 3 in the ACC every year except 02 and 03, when we (presumably) felt the effects of Herb’s near certain dismissal in prior years.

During that time we’ve pulled in 4 McD’s All-Americans, 3 players ranked in the top 11 of college-bound seniors, 8 top 40 players, and 18 top 100 recruits.

This is all with a coach who has won zero NCAA or ACC titles, who has never advanced past the Sweet 16, and who was on a very hot seat during at least half of those years. If he can recruit that well at NC State from that position imagine what an Izzo or Pitino would do here. But no, we should be happy to take whatever crumbs UNC and Duke deign to toss aside to us.