As one of our most favorite bloggers highlights tonight, Duke is not going 16-0 and Florida State is not going to the NIT.
I’d like to discuss the Blue Devils for a moment in an attempt to put an NC State ‘spin’ on this topic for a second.
In the various debates amongst Wolfpackers, one of the primary mantras of the NC State Excuse Squad is that it is perfectly acceptable for NC State to continuously lose to Duke in basketball “since Duke is so good and since everyone loses to Duke.” Of course, these general statements conveniently ignore any use of statistics or information to accurately compare NC State’s rate of losing with “everyone elses”.
Seriously, since “everybody loses to Duke” is the generally accepted original thought of the day consistently proposed by the excuse-mongers, then surely State’s record vs Duke is as bad as everyone else’s whom we claim to be “competitive” against? Actually, since many State fans claim to have a better program than so many of our ACC bretheren, then shouldn’t our record against Duke be at least little better than everyone else’s record?
Did you know that North Carolina, Maryland, Wake Forest, and Florida State have won more games against Duke in the regular season than NC State has in the Herb Sendek era? Even lowly Virginia (who has employed three different coaches in that time frame) has as many regular season wins vs the Blue Devils as NC State (2 wins). Both Clemson and Georgia Tech are only one game behind the Pack and Cavs. (Note: Clemson had a 4-1 record vs Duke over a couple of year period when Rick Barnes was coaching at Clemson.)
So, in the Herb Sendek decade, NC State ranks next to last in the ACC in number of regular season wins vs Duke.
NC State won an ACC Tournament game vs the Blue Devils in Herb Sendek’s first season (1996-1997). This boosts the Pack’s total win count vs Duke in the last 10 years to 3. Unfortunately, State has lost a disproportionate number of ACC Tournament games vs Duke in the ACC (total of 5), dropping State’s total record vs the Devils in the Herb Sendek era to 3-21 (12.5%).
Since no other team in the ACC has played Duke as much as State in the ACC Tournament, then only Clemson and Georgia Tech have winning percentages below that of NC State in the Herb Sendek era.
BUT…surely everyone in Wolfpack nation knows has heard that things are going to get better if you only have some patience. You just wait until next year…or the next. It will happen if we just close our eyes and hope long enough. Perhaps even your children may be alive when it does.
