Tuesday Bytes

General86

Doing some traveling this week but wanted to get a fresh entry up. Feel free to use the comments in this entry to discuss anything that may be going on out there.

* With a new football coach (and basketball coach), NC State fans don’t have to talk about the hotseat for a while. This is a welcome change in Raleigh.

* I found this statistic very interesting. Who knows how bad Chuck Amato’s recent teams would have scored under this metric. Perhaps we will track MOE some during this season.

* Have you seen this regarding NC State’s ‘Tradition’ of Friday Fight Day? Man, we really did have the biggest meatheads in college football running our program the last seven years.

* Former ACC referee Hank Nichols is retiring as the national coordinator of officials.

* Ricky Stokes is out as ECU’s Head Basketball coach. It is ECU Basketball…so, nobody really gives a shit; but since we now play East Carolina in everything to tiddly winks then it is something for us not to ignore. Of course, there is more to this story that will never be made public. 850 has a little more.

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General

86 Responses to Tuesday Bytes

  1. pakfanistan 08/07/2007 at 9:58 AM #

    Why do you guys continually to the, “WE’VE GOT A SECRET, BUT WE CAN’T TELL YOU…” thing? It’s so irritating. If you have some super secret information about UNC’s actions recruiting Manning or why Ricky Stokes has been let go, either spill it or keep quiet.

  2. BoKnowsNCS71 08/07/2007 at 10:28 AM #

    Ease up. Sometimes people hear good things about recrutis but can’t say 100% until the ink is dry and the recruit says it himself. That of course backfired on one of two recruits.

    There are also some things that can border on libel if you say them publicly and can’t prove it (even though it may be true but unprovable) so discretion is preferred by some.

    For example, I once heard something about one of CA’s former coaches who left unexpectedly — it involved a student — but it was never verified by or in the media. If people were free to throw out unsupported rumors — things would be very ugly.

    Super secret information might also be stuff that if the person tells — that person gets in trouble with a parent, relative, or other person who would know who named them. Take all hints and insider claims with a grain of salt and don’t let is bug you. Every now and then a nice lead or heads up comes out that you will hear here first.

  3. noah 08/07/2007 at 10:38 AM #

    MOE is a good stat to track. As much as I think Bill James has his head up his ass on how he deemphasizes pitching and defense, he’s totally correct on his emphasis on slugging and OBP as an indicator of runs scored.

    You ought to be able to do similar type things with stats in football. We already know the importance of winning the turnover battle. The MOE stat ought to yield some important bench marks in terms of sacks and penalties as well.

    Frank Beamer was the first coach I ever heard talk about “hidden yardage” in terms of special teams. ST plays make up between five and 10 percent of the total plays in a football game. So a lot of coaches…like Tommy Bowden…claim that they can’t waste time worrying about them.

    But often, it’s those plays that make the difference in the game. If you have a kicker who can reliably put the ball in the endzone on a kickoff 90 percent of the time, think about all the yardage you never have to defend on kickoffs that are returned (I’d be willing to be that returned kicks in college football average a starting field position of about the 27 yard line). Likewise, if you can keep your net punting average close to 40 yards, you’re probably saving yourself points in terms of drives that end up in FG instead of TDs and drives that end in punts instead of FGs.

    And then there are mistakes in ST plays. Mistakes on ST usually have catastrophic results. A missed XP can often require a defense to produce an entire extra possession for the offense. A bad snap on a FG or punt or a missed block often means a TD for the other team.

    I know people groan about draws on Third and 10, but it’s not just about getting a first down and keeping the drive going. The success rate of a pass on third and 10 is probably below 40 percent. And it probably plummets the further you get from the “and 10” part. If you can pull off a draw and prevent a turnover and get five or six yards, not only do you control the clock, but you also have added 15 to 18 feet of territory to your punt. They’re that much further away from FG range or a touchdown. And if you force a punt, that’s five or six yards added BACK on to your field position.

    There’s a SABR-metrics element to football just like there is with basketball.

  4. primacyone 08/07/2007 at 10:45 AM #

    09 PG Recruit John Wall of Raleigh has offically picked up an offer from both NC State and Kentucky.

  5. RickJ 08/07/2007 at 11:00 AM #

    It isn’t surprising that the number of MOE’s is a good indicator of offensive success. What is surprising to me is that limiting major offensive errors to 10% of your plays is apparently a very good figure. This certainly explains why defensive coaches are always harping on not giving up a big play. If you make them run enough plays, the odds of them screwing up along the way are pretty good.

  6. noah 08/07/2007 at 11:09 AM #

    Yep. The bend-but-don’t-break philosophy is a good one for a defense that might be overmatched. It maximizes the opportunities for a colossal mistake.

    It’s the equivalent of playing back on the infield with a runner at third to keep from giving up the big inning.

  7. DRW 08/07/2007 at 11:09 AM #

    Anyone know when the hoops schedule is going to be released?

  8. RochesterRedWolf 08/07/2007 at 11:18 AM #

    The last two years State averaged 11-12 turnovers a game, were ranked almost last in al of D1A for takeaway margin, then add in sacks given up…I think our MOE would be horrendous.

  9. RochesterRedWolf 08/07/2007 at 11:19 AM #

    sorry, 11-12 penalties/game

  10. highstick 08/07/2007 at 11:22 AM #

    Since this appears to be an “open thread”, this is a continuation of our discussion a week or so ago about Valvano.

    I was able to pick up Jimmy V’s book and read it while I was at the beach this week. Actually I got so “glued to it”, I couldn’t put it down and read until 4:30 Friday morning.

    While it’s Jimmy V’s version, somebody’s got to prove to me that the bulk of it isn’t true! Jeez, did he get screwed! For some reason, I thought Poulton did it to him, but it was Monteith carrying the torch! And the comment above about V not being AD was correct. He’d been replaced by that time!

    My question is, if anyone can answer…. Where did Wendell stand on the issue? It appeared that he was a V supporter as his only mention was at the end of the book and it did not appear to be negative.

    I’m supposed to pick up Bob V’s book next week to read.

    These books should be required reading for any State grad.

  11. noah 08/07/2007 at 11:39 AM #

    What you have to understand is that the administration at BOT at NC State didn’t do *anything*. They were completely frozen.

    You had all the stuff with Washburn and Shackleford’s grades starting in the fall of 1984 and carrying over to January of 1986. You had all the Kenny Drummond nonsense (there was a lot of whispering) in 1987 and then in 1988, you had 48 Hours and the book jacket. You also had Armen Keteyian and Alexander Wolff skulking around working on their book.

    At no point did any administrator step in and say, Hey…we need to figure out: A) What’s going on, B) How we’re going to handle questions about this and C) How we’re going to fix whatever is broken.

    When the excrement hit the fan, you just got silence as an answer. So the only thing people heard were the accusers. This was a completely manageable situation. We were lucky that the person who threw the first really big punch was totally inept. Imagine how bad it would have been had Kelsey Weems or Bennie Bolton or John Simonds gone to someone competent!

    The book jacket showed up the day before the Temple game. By the end of the game, Golenback should have been a punchline. Someone at NC State should have set up a War Room and every single misquote, every single botched fact, every missed date, every wrong score, every single bungled opinion and every single piece of mangled logic should have gotten a press release.

    A University spokesperson should have said, “We’re going to answer every single one of these charges. We hope you’ll be patient, not because we’re trying to get our stories straight…but because there are so many errors!”

    We should have had someone walking reporters FROM THE N&O around Reynolds Coliseum and showing them the water damage in the roof, the substandard flooring, the 1940s electrical system and what was required just to put a game on TV. Then they should have asked, “If we had a safe with millions in a slush fund….do you really think we’d be wasting it on a backup point guard from Atlanta? Or do you think we’d rebuild this damn roof so we didn’t have to run around with a bunch of plastic trashcans evertime it rains??”

    We should have had a plant at the press conference who would have stood up from the back and said, “Mr. Athletic Director…the book said that 25,000 people attended a game at Reynolds Coliseum. Where did you find 15,000 hobbits?”

    We didn’t do any of that. We sat very still. Until it became too late to do anything…and then we just went around with a wrecking ball and knocked the whole damn thing down.

    Incompetence.

    And btw, I’m speaking as someone who has and had a problem with what V and the administration were doing. I believe we did shave points. I believe we were wrong in admitting about 75 percent of the basketball players and so on and so on.

    I just think V should have been given strict guidelines and been told he had to clean things up. I think he should have had the opportunity to correct his own mistake.

  12. RAWFS 08/07/2007 at 12:15 PM #

    Noah, you speaketh truth. Word.

    I’m enjoying the cockiness out of BC’s bloggers. Sheesh, these guys do indeed make UMD’s fans look a lot better.

  13. BoKnowsNCS71 08/07/2007 at 12:50 PM #

    I could accept that players may have been given money by alums. I would suspect that at least 1 or 2 players on every team in the ACC got a $50 handshake or an anonymous cash letter in the mail.

    I have a hard time accepting the point shaving allegation. And if it ever happened — I definitely don’t think Coach V was aware of it.

  14. RochesterRedWolf 08/07/2007 at 12:55 PM #

    RAWFS, post the links to the blogs i need a good laugh.

  15. noah 08/07/2007 at 1:23 PM #

    “I have a hard time accepting the point shaving allegation. And if it ever happened — I definitely don’t think Coach V was aware of it.”

    Senior day…1988 vs. Wake Forest. Ralph Kitley scored 26 points and we won…but we didn’t cover.

    Funny how the only person who had trouble that day was Charles Shackleford. Even though he was superior athletically in every way to Kitley, he just couldn’t figure out how to stop the glacial-like Kitley from getting past him.

    That game was probably the most obvious example. There were a couple of others. When you shave points, you don’t LOSE. You just don’t cover. Unless you had access to point spreads (I guess you could go back and look in old USA Today’s…I think they usually run basketball spreads), it would be hard to know which games were candidates.

    The Tampa game in 1987 was one that everyone thought was fixed. But we lost. Furthermore, that game wasn’t on the line at Vegas. The Murray State game was a possible candidate. Yes, we lost…but there were several very questionable plays (Kelsey Weems, in particular, had a couple of rather noticeable gaffs….like missed layups) that always made me wonder.

    The WFU game was the one that everyone seems to agree on, though.

  16. waxhaw 08/07/2007 at 1:44 PM #

    You could probably analyze 10,000 collegiate games and find suspicious missed layups in most of them. Making a leap from a suspicious botched play to institutional points shaving is a mighty long leap.

    I agree that NC State could have handled the situation better. I also think it was a witch hunt and 99.9% of what we were doing was happening everywhere.

    As far as athletes being admitted, I guess it depends on your perspective. I personally don’t see why we should impose stricter standards on ourselves than other places. We should come up with an African American studies major (like UNC-CH) that has about 30 less credit hours than any other majors.

  17. Clever_Wolf_Name 08/07/2007 at 1:46 PM #

    There were a billion things wrong with the book, some as basic as grammar. The school and V should have sued Golenbock into the stone age because it is pretty clear to me that there was actual malice and a deliberate printing of false info.
    From a spin perspective, I agree the school should have been out front, calling out every single mistake, calling the book a work of fiction and completely discrediting the author and all of his “sources.”
    It was a travesty, a sham and a mockery. That book was a “traveshamockery” at its best.

  18. noah 08/07/2007 at 1:50 PM #

    “Making a leap from a suspicious botched play to institutional points shaving is a mighty long leap.”

    Except that ignores the FBI investigation, Charles Shackleford walking out on a more lucrative contract with the Nets to play for LESS money in Italy (where he was less likely to face extradition) and the murder on the Jersey Turnpike of the guy accused of being the go-between.

    Do I think Valvano knew about the point-shaving? No. He had too much to lose. Do I think Charles Shackleford shaved points? I absolutely believe it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Do I think someone else did as well? I think it’s pretty likely.

  19. noah 08/07/2007 at 1:55 PM #

    “From a spin perspective, I agree the school should have been out front, calling out every single mistake, calling the book a work of fiction and completely discrediting the author and all of his “sources.”

    That’s not spin.

    “Spin” alters the perspective through which a set of factual events are viewed in order to present them in a more favorable light.

    What I’m talking about is simply competent crisis communications management. I’m talking about having a proper, thorough and prompt response.

    You don’t have to “spin” anything. I’m just saying you need to address these things when they happen.

  20. noah 08/07/2007 at 1:57 PM #

    Isn’t there a joke about a group of statisticians who go hunting in the woods? The first one shoots at a deer and misses 10 feet to the left. The second shoots and misses 10 feet to the right. The third one says, “You hit it! Great shot!”

    Something like that?

    That’s the mentality we were operating under in 1990. We completely underreacted for a year. Then we spent the next year completely overreacting. At the end, Monteith patted himself on the back and said, “Great shot! We hit it!

  21. highstick 08/07/2007 at 2:03 PM #

    Noah, what you say “jives” with the book and actually made me feel a little better about V, but it definitely made me even more ticked off at the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees. The bit about Klopman’s questions to V made me ill and it sure seems like Spangler really was inept at handling it.

    I’ve got a friend on the BOG who has been there a long time, but I’m not sure he was on there at that time. Sure would like to “grill him” if he was,but I think he came on later.

    The graduation rate arguement that V gave was somewhat weak to me, but it did “hold some water”, but I’ve always felt that some of those guys should never have been admitted too.

    I never saw the games so I can’t even address anything except what I read. However, given the recent NBA official situation, I guess anything could have happened.

    The other thing that really bugs me is that it’s been 20 years and the administration still lets a lot of those “untruths” continue to be written as history. I came across a set of Student Senate minutes when there was some discussion about naming the RBC court for Valvano and I came away with the impression that he was still a “persona non grata”, no matter what had been proven untrue.

  22. noah 08/07/2007 at 2:07 PM #

    We mentioned this in one of the other threads. My dog will have buildings on State’s campus named after her before V does.

    You don’t have to like it. But it’s true.

    Whether V did anything or not, he’s going to have enough of a tainted legacy that I’ll see the Lucy Center before I see the Jim Valvano Center.

  23. Trout 08/07/2007 at 2:07 PM #

    From the hotseat byte:

    The reason why I think Groh’s seat may be hotter than Tommy’s? This stat from the Dienhart article:

    “Bowden has won six of eight against South Carolina, earning him extra time.”

    Let’s be honest here, if Amato had been 5 of 7 against UNC, instead of 3 of 7, he’d still be coaching at NC State.

    Groh is 1-5 against his main rival, Va Tech.

    On the flip side, UVa is not as passionate about football as Clemson, plus that big fat, $1.5 million long-term contract Groh has makes things a bit difficult as well.

  24. noah 08/07/2007 at 2:08 PM #

    (And by the way, my dog is a complete sweetie-pie, so if anyone wants to ACTUALLY name something after her, you’ve chosen well…even if she is scared of strangers. And thunder. And the vacuum cleaner. And gets car sick. And she’d probably spend the entire naming ceremony licking her butt. But she’s a cutie-patootie)

  25. primacyone 08/07/2007 at 2:14 PM #

    Both C. J. Williams and Julius Mays made the updated Rivals top 150 list. CJ at 146 and Julius at 150.

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