A View from the Cheap Seats

06-07 Basketball General Sidney Lowe78

I was wrong.

Way back in November, before teams were playing in Maui or Anchorage and March Madness was still nothing but a distant idea, I wasn’t a complete believer. I had begrudgingly offered my support for the new coach that I had, admittedly, felt was simply the guy that we knew would say yes. And I wasn’t exactly pumped for a season in which we had returned a mere 36% of our scoring and 34% of our total minutes. Three of our starters – Costner, McCauley, and Fells – had combined to average seven points and six minutes in 2006.

Back in the fall, our hopes and dreams were simply romantic; we’d have to settle for those hard-fought intangible moral victories this season. But somewhere along the line all that changed: for Lowe, for the players, for us. In March, it’s suddenly a not-so-distant reality.

Believe it or not, it started way back in November against Wofford in a game that would prove to become a microcosm for the entire season, a prelude of what we could expect in the months to follow.

[If] this team continues to play with the passion and intensity every night that they showed against Wofford, then it will be very tough not to get behind this team. It’s not something I’ve said a lot in the past decade, but this could be an exciting State team to watch. And the dreamer in me can’t help but think Lowe’s first team has at least a couple big upsets, defining victories, in store.

And whoa, did it ever. We beat Carolina in Raleigh and Duke in the ACC tournament, and then proceeded to storm past the co-regular season champion, Virginia, and then completed our season sweep of tournament-bound Virginia Tech.

Just for emphasis: we beat Carolina and Duke. That’s poetry, folks.

But the defining moment for me wasn’t even during a State game. Appropriately enough, it was during the final minute of the Big XII championship game. For the second straight weekend I had watched Rick Barnes mismanage his team in the final minutes of a close game, losing both times to Kansas – in the final minutes of that championship game, not only had he directed his team into a zone defense against a team that had been shooting lights-out in the second half, but inexplicably he had failed to get the ball into the hands of the best college basketball player of the past decade.

It was one of those clairvoyant moments of complete enlightenment. Suddenly, it hit me: we could have gotten Rick Barnes, gained instant credibility and notoriety in the basketball world, and then watched our season end after a second-half collapse against Duke on Thursday night of the ACC tournament because we lacked passion.

That’s when I realized just how wrong I had been.

As a lifelong State fan, it’s my nature to be cautiously optimistic, especially in regards to recent first-year coaching successes. But in his first season, Lowe did everything that we required of him. He played to our strengths and inspired this team to play with unflinching passion, to which they responded in kind. Coaches, players, fans – we all embodied that cherished “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up” persona that defines NC State basketball.

Oh yeah, we beat Carolina and Duke. Never gets old.

Meanwhile, this team just kept improving; we finished a better, stronger, smarter team than we started, and most importantly, we built a solid foundation for next season and beyond. The three players that collectively started this season as one big question mark – McCauley, Costner, and Fells – will start next season as the nucleus of this team. In addition, Grant will be our piston on offense while Horner, whose maturation is something akin to Gugliotta’s as a freshman, has become an outside-in threat that every team now has to respect; I love how fearless that kid plays.

And now that 2007 is over for us, after another remarkable run, I say this: K can have his card, his life and all the so-called recruiting advantages that come with it, and I’m so deeply moved that Roy’s mom ironed extra clothes every night so he could have a dime to buy a Coke every afternoon; even more importantly, I’m absolutely teeming with glee that Carolina fans can no longer complain about those unfair recruiting advantages K’s commercials created (I think Coke easily closes that gap created by American Express).

As for me, I’ll take the Red Blazer any day – all it did was make us believers once again.

Sometimes it feels good to be wrong.

About LRM

Charter member of the Lunatic Fringe and a fan, loyal to a fault.

06-07 Basketball General Sidney Lowe

78 Responses to A View from the Cheap Seats

  1. LRM 03/23/2007 at 1:29 PM #

    “Chris Corchiani told Sidney this year that Valvano often said point guards were born not taught.”

    If anyone knows that, it’s Fire — my childhood idol and the best PG in ACC history.

    “The same can be said for teachers and coaches.”

    Excellent point, C6. The marines have a similar philosophy at their officers candidate school — leadership can’t be taught, only discovered and honed. It’s why the corporate world is largely unproductive: too many managers that lack true leadership qualities, but very few people know the difference.

    Sid is a leader, and that’s what we all needed around here.

  2. lush 03/23/2007 at 1:41 PM #

    call it what ever you want to call that silly offense. herb-ball, the po, heave and weave, it doesnt matter, it works if you can shoot 50% from deep, and it helps tremendously when you can hit em at the end of the game. we never seemed to be able to do either when it mattered most.

    the same garbage that drove us all crazy under herb is the same garbage that beat us at wvu. must be karma f***ing with us lunatics8)

  3. lush 03/23/2007 at 1:42 PM #

    i thought 8) = smiley face?????

  4. TNCSU 03/23/2007 at 1:43 PM #

    It’s a colon and a parentheses…:)

  5. TNCSU 03/23/2007 at 1:44 PM #

    I guess not after a bunch of periods, though. 🙂

    Redfred, you’re harsh!

  6. lush 03/23/2007 at 1:45 PM #

    oh, ok. should read lunatics 8)

  7. GoldenChain 03/23/2007 at 2:12 PM #

    On this very blog I stated my desire to get someone who was new and fresh and from another angle. I think one year has made us all glad that we didn’t get many of the names that were being considered (I won’t bother to recap the list). That being said, because of the way the search had been handled I had some reservations.
    Lowe was completely outside the box. Totally. It made for some fun jawing on talk radio and we took some shots in the media but the beauty of it is that NO ONE really had any idea what he could do, how he could recruit or handle game situations.
    I kept this quote:
    “NCSU will never be at the level of Carolina or Duke in basketball, and unrealistic expectations by the fan base will ultimately cause the new coach to fail…State fans should accept their fate.”
    -Jim Rome 4/3/06
    Well maybe we aren’t there 100% yet but we are wayyyyyy ahead of where I thought we’d be!
    Thanks Sid.

  8. ShootingGuard 03/23/2007 at 2:12 PM #

    A lot of great points on here, and I love the excitement found in most everyone’s posts. A few “bytes” of my own here…(responding to all of the blogs I haven’t been able to over the past several days)

    As far as Barnes goes, I think the guy is great and would have supported him full throttle had things worked out, but I always had my fear that we wouldn’t get to the promised land under him, that his recruiting would be more like his at Clemson than his at Texas, and, thus, our results would be more like his at Clemson than his at Texas. A lot of people try to put Texas down because they are a “football” school and haven’t won an NCAA bball title, but I go out there every year and have always thought that was a goldmine waiting to happen in basketball with the right coach. Barnes has done some very good things at Texas, but they have also fallen short quite a bit when you look at the awesome talent they have had. Of course, I am not sure you can blame that totally on Barnes—I have been out there enough the night before a home bball game to know that, when you see basketball players in a bar drinking with supermodel coeds hanging all over them every night you are out on the town, Barnes doesn’t always get their 100% focus and effort.

    I think Beilein is a fine coach but a terrible fit for State after Herb. Montgomery would have done fine, but he wasn’t a good fit. So many of the names popping up were complete jokes like Lavin. I was torn about Calipari but was willing to “dance with the devil” for a little while there after dealing with “Mr Goody Goody” for so long, but the devil always does you wrong in the end—I hate Calipari, even more now than before.

    As for Lowe, I was actually very excited about Lowe’s hire, but, as someone said above, I was a little nervous as he was a risky bet with the potential to either do great things due to his resume and charisma or totally flop because he had never recruited or coached a college team before. Everything is about risk-return in my opinion, so I was perfectly fine with shooting for the moon and risking the potential downfall.

    With one year down now, I have to say that Lowe met or exceeded all that I felt was fair to ask of him based on everything that he had to face initially such as the stupid media tearing the program down, Fowler bumbling the coaching search in embarrassing fashion, having to publicly get his degree while being made fun of for it, getting a late start on recruiting, missing out on Herb’s biggest recruit in 11 years (plus having to hear about all of these amazing recruits who were suddenly going to join Herb in Year 12 and win an NCAA Title), etc etc etc.

    We had every excuse in the world to just roll over and die this year. Many people expected it anyway. Plenty of people would have given us and understanding pass on this season…But we didn’t. Sid kept our heads up and kept us working.

    When our only experienced player, only ballhandler, and team leader went down, we didn’t make excuses and start talking about next year. No, Sid literally went out on the court vs Michigan and played point guard for us and brought us back for one of the most exciting comebacks and wins of the season.

    We beat all of the no-names. Even when we were down to several of them, Sid didn’t let the guys stray too far and just chalk it up. Sid kept us together, and we pulled them all out.

    We got some high profile wins, especially the UNC one that completely shocked the basketball world. Sid set himself up for total failure. He said that game was different and more important than any other, and he proved it by coming out in that blazer.

    In the end, we almost won the ACC Championship. While we should all be a little guarded as State fans because, yes, we almost won it in year 1 of Herb, we have plenty of reasons to think that, this time, it is different, and there is hope that it will turn out much better. For one, Herb made his way to the ACC Final by slowing the game down to a snail’s pace to keep it close by smoke-and-mirrors—keep it close, then try to win a low possession, low scoring game in the final minutes. Sid did it playing real basketball, the type of basketball with NBA type sets that most of the best recruits out there want to play. Which raises the second point about why this could be different, recruiting. In his first recruiting class, and only a few months on the recruiting trails, Lowe secured a McD AA, one of the best centers in the country, to join up. Who knows how that will work out, but, on paper, that is a better start than even a combination of Kenny, Ron, and Corn. Nothing against any guy that suited up for the Pack for 4 years, but Inge liked elbow battles better than winning, Ron was just too jolly a nice guy to excel, and Corn was just Corn. JJ sounds pretty driven and capable of playing in the NBA someday—and that’s what we need to really succeed big (plus, Brandon and Ben know they better work hard or they will see minutes go). While I wish we had CC Harrison bombing away or one of our taller guards had Archie Miller’s jumpshot, we have a lot of options in the backcourt, and I am optimistic that they will prove more valuable to the long run success of the program than Ron Anderson and Rouldra Thomas (and I am also fairly confident that Mays + Williams + ? will prove more valuable than Herb’s year 2 class of Harrington and Bean).

    You have to give major props to Larry Harris as well as Monte Towe and Pete Strickland for running here to join Sid and help him. That says a lot about those 3 guys, but it also says a lot about Sid from the perspective of guys who have been involved with college basketball since the 1970’s. Don’t ever underestimate that.

    As much as we have a great coaching team and need to keep those guys together, in the end, good or bad, it all rests with the top man, and in year 1, Sid Lowe gave THE PROGRAM many things it has lacked for too long. Sid in that blazer gave us some CHARACTER back—just like Stormin’ Norman and Jimmy V gave us character, NATIONAL CHARACTER. He gave us CREDIBILITY—he beat Duke and UNC here, he won the ACC and NCAA here, we can do it again, he says so, he should know, he’s done it all already. He gave us PASSION again—seriously, sometimes I thought Sid was going to steal the ball he was so far out on the court—I wanted to go out on the court every time we won and, sometimes, even when we lost. Definitely high on the list, he gave us some BALZ again—telling everyone in the world that the UNC game is the most important game of the year, going out in that blazer which may as well have had a target on it, playing real basketball, playing aggressive basketball, and dunking on UNC’s ass took some BALZ. He gave us our NAME and our PRIDE back—“this is NC STATE, this is what we do…” And, after the last game of the season, he gave us the DREAM back—“There are 3 programs in the Triangle again…”

    Facing a lot of bad luck this year, we managed to have some FUN. With a little good luck next year, we can continue to build from a solid first year. Of course, when you have a lot of CHARISMA and PASSION and WORK HARD at something you LOVE, you make a lot of good luck for yourself. Here’s hoping Sid does just that next year…

    Excuse me if I can’t WTNY…

  9. TNCSU 03/23/2007 at 2:28 PM #

    Damn good post, ShootingGuard!

  10. scpackman 03/23/2007 at 3:04 PM #

    Getting Sidney was like getting a face card on a doubled down 11.

  11. Buck 03/23/2007 at 3:05 PM #

    I remember that November post…it pretty much infuriated me at the time and I wrote a scathing comment or two, but I have to give LRM props for coming forth and following up with this post.

    The main thing is we all are now a unified nation. Sidney has contributed to that far beyond what any other coach could have possibly achieved.

  12. redfred2 03/23/2007 at 3:07 PM #

    “Redfred, you’re harsh!”

    TNCSU, huh?

    I don’t know exactly what you’re speaking of there. If it was about the mention of Dennis Johnson’s passing, I meant no disrepect. He really was one of my all time favorites. He was a very, very, consistent team player who made everyone around him better. Playing exactly as he did back then, he would start, and be the leader on most any NBA team today.

  13. RedTerror29 03/23/2007 at 3:15 PM #

    “Getting Sidney was like getting a face card on a doubled down 11.”

    Getting Sid was like getting a 7 hitting on a 14.

  14. redfred2 03/23/2007 at 3:15 PM #

    Great post Shoosting.

  15. LRM 03/23/2007 at 3:25 PM #

    Getting Sid was like splitting aces and drawing two face cards.

    Sorry, I wanted in on the Vegas talk is all.

  16. redfred2 03/23/2007 at 3:29 PM #

    Wayne Newton.

  17. RedTerror29 03/23/2007 at 3:35 PM #

    Hiring Sid will help Bobby Purcell pick my pockets Harrahs Casino-style.

  18. PackMan97 03/23/2007 at 3:42 PM #

    anyone remember the 1-4 offense that Herb used when CC was here? Spread 4 guys out down on the baseline and have CC create at the top of the key.

  19. legacyman 03/23/2007 at 5:26 PM #

    I still don’t get all of the folks admitting that they had so many doubts about Sid’s hiring…It is mindboggling. I suppose it should be based on a lack of experience on the part of many young posters. If you witnessed the 1983 team led by Sidney then why would you think that he would lack the drive, desire, brains to run a team? Maybe the gloom was predicted too early…you should ahve waited to see what type of staff he would assemble. He got Monte, a PG on the 1974 NCAA championship team, and Harris, chief recruiter for that other guy, and another guy who is a former head coach. That’s three head coaches on one team with strong recruiting support. Is it any great surprise that the entire coaching team led by Sidney would have success?

    I was ecstatic when Sidney was announced…I did not even consider him because of the college degree problem..and never, for a moment, doubted that he would succeed although I am a bit surprised that the team(players and coaches) accomplished so much so fast under the current conditions.

    Sidney’s NBA experience as a player, head coach and then assistant coach showed that he could coach and handle players. Monte and Larry had plenty of recruiting experience and contacts so that was an easy transition. And, who can discount that infectious grin and laugh and the manner in which he handles interviews and talk shows…the man is a natural born winner.

    Folks, strap on your shoes and tighten up your belts for we are going on a ride that you haven’t seen in a long time and it is darn well way overdue. The Pack is back and ready to kick some butt…there are many lcoal teams who deserve and fear what is coming their way.

    Lastly, Packpride is embodied in a Red Coat.

  20. scpackman 03/23/2007 at 5:51 PM #

    watching Sid coach was like going “clubbing” in Vegas….wink, wink, nudge, nudge….lots of talent he has

  21. LRM 03/23/2007 at 6:54 PM #

    Legacy,
    You remind me of my old boss, who was a senior in ’74 and used to speak of ’83 with an almost mythical tone. He’d lean back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and talk about the glory days (“Let me tell you about the time…”).

    While I’ve always had a keen appreciation for that era, I wasn’t yet four years old during the 1983 run. Everything I know about those days is folklore. My earliest memories are of the 1987 title win over Carolina and then the Fire & Ice years. Unfortunately, my formative years took place in the 90s and we never had a winning conference record during my college years — from 1997-98 to 2000-01 we beat Carolina once and never beat Duke — so that’s fueled an intense skepticism about our Return to Glory.

    And yet, here I am, 100% confident that Sid will lead us there, if for no other reason than he “gets it.”

    My generation has never known Glory…that’s why we need guys like you to set us straight.

  22. legacyman 03/23/2007 at 7:54 PM #

    LRM,

    I go back to the last days of Everett Case so I just missed the original glory days. I enjoyed Sloan’s title run with the best team we have ever assembled. I enjoyed V’s remarkable rise from ashes to the title. I(and all other oldies) experienced the good along with the bad and the good made the rest of it worthwhile.

    As a youngster(relatively speaking) you have to stay for more than a few years and you will be rewarded for even though our administrators have made some mistakes, eventually, for whatever reason, the correct changes will be made.

    My comments were not meant to be condescending and happily you didn’t misinterpret them. I have often wished that the young folks could someday experience what the oldies did in 1974 and 1983. One of those titles was highly expected and the other was considered by many to be a miracle…it was not, as Sid said, it was from hard work and talent, not luck.

    After this amazing year, many feel that the train is back on the track and the fans are beginning to feed the coal into the fire box to build the steam up so we can run over anyone who dares to stand on our tracks.

    Thanks for your kind words.

  23. highstick 03/23/2007 at 9:26 PM #

    I picked up a magazine in the doctor’s office yesterday and brought it home to post a bit of information:

    The article I was reading was about “tomatoes”.

    To quote “the actual name tomato is derived from the word tomatl in the Nahuatl language, which was the language of the Aztecs. The botanical name lycopersicum, means “wolf peach”.

    Sid knows what “he’s doing with the Red Coat”! He is the “Ultimate Wolf Peach”!! Call him a “Tomato” all you want! He’s our “Wolf Peach”!!!!!

  24. highstick 03/23/2007 at 9:36 PM #

    LRM, “legacyman” has it right and I’m glad there’s some of you “much younger” State fans that get to carry the torch for us old farts. Luckily, I got to be a freshman when Case was still active, and a soph with Case and Press. Through a freak of the times, I got to spend a little time in the Army, then come back to State to experience Tommy Burleson, DT, Monte, Timmy Stoddard and crew mature into a fantastic team and win it all. I stayed awake late into the night during the 83 run when they were playing Pepperdine on the West Coast. What a run and championship!

    Hang in there, it’s getting better and Sid is gonna bring us back into “primetime” and respectability.

    Us old dogs sure are glad that you young pups are out there to carry on the tradition!

    Jeez, just forgot, but saw Spud Webb on TV last night talking about winning the slam dunk contest at 5’7″. Wasn’t that just last week??

  25. Astral Rain2 03/24/2007 at 10:28 AM #

    I’m just hoping some consistent high seeds come in. With the red blazer and Lowe’s gameday ability- if we get the talent and the consistency, a title will come. I am confident about everything but the consistency. Seeing Red in the tourney is nice, but seeing white with red lettering against a shade of blue (or gold, or something else) would be even better.

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