Lowe talks NIT, effort

During his weekly press conference Monday Sidney Lowe spoke about the possibility for NC State to receive an invite to the NIT following the regular season and ACC Tournament. WRAL’s Tim Hall looks at NIT possibilities here.

Postseason play has almost been reduced to a distant memory at N.C. State. Argue all day about what kind of job the head coach is doing and what direction the team is headed, but the facts are simple. The Wolfpack haven’t played in an invite-only postseason tournament since 2007.

For two seasons the Pack have gone one and done at the ACC Tournament, and that has been it. There’s been no ticket to the NIT, not even a trip to the CBI, and certainly no invite to the big dance.

Another topic of discussion Monday was the health of junior forward Tracy Smith. Smith hurt his knee in the second half of Saturday’s win over Miami. Although the injury looked fairly serious at first glance, Smith came back into the game late and helped lead NC State over the ‘Canes .

N.C. State’s leading scorer Tracy Smith banged up his right knee late in the second half of Saturday’s win at Miami. He was helped to the bench to receive treatment but he did come back in the ball game before it ended. Smith did have some soreness in the knee on Sunday. He didn’t practice today, but did take part in some light drills.

Lowe praised Smith for his toughness at the end of the Miami game.

“That’s the character of this team, all the way down the line. Every single guy. He was determined to help us win that ball game.”

09-10 Basketball ACC & Other

123 Responses to Lowe talks NIT, effort

  1. VaWolf82 03/02/2010 at 10:00 AM #

    It sounds like State Reverend or one of his followers has returned.

    You can not blame Herb for all of the recruits that SL has signed that he has led to a tie for last place.

  2. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 10:01 AM #

    Atsur was a SG, Lowe had to teach him how to play point

    And there were multiple articles after last year that stated Lowe turned down several NBA jobs (1 HC position) to stay at NCSU.

    And no, in a rational world, we wouldn’t just base everything on W’s and L’s. In a rational world, we would look at the team and the players and how those freshmen are improving, as well as some of the older players on the team. In a rational world we would look at the circumstances surrounding a coaching hire. You’re not arguing for rational, you’re arguing for IRRATIONAL. You act like college basketball occurs in a vaccuum and every coach should be given the same amount of times and judged based upon the same set of criteria as every other coach… which is completely absurd and irrational.

  3. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 10:03 AM #

    No we certainly can’t blame Herb for leaving Lowe with a team that didn’t have enough players to run a practice so Lowe had to recruit whomever would be willing to come to this school just so he could run a practice. We certainly can’t blame Herb for leaving us with no PG and no C so that Lowe had to recruit a PG and a C with less than a year’s worth of time to recruit them. We certainly can’t blame Herb for leaving him with a team full of weave and heavers. Yeah that’s certainly not Herb’s fault.

  4. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 10:05 AM #

    Pack Mentality, again Lowe recruited Degand and Gonzales because he didn’t have enough people to run a practice and he needed a PG. His only other truly viable option was Warren and I’d argue Javi is better than Warren. How the hell is that Lowe’s fault?

  5. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 10:06 AM #

    And VA it’s nice to be known… especially when you think I have followers lol

  6. Pack Mentality 03/02/2010 at 10:16 AM #

    “How the hell is that Lowe’s fault?”

    This is how:

    YEAR 4, 4-10

    Anything else you say is completely irrevelant to that. He started poorly in year 1. We are in year 4!

  7. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 10:24 AM #

    Not to mention, we lost 3 of our top 4 rebounders, our top 3 scorers, 3 of our top 4 assist men, and 3 of our 4 best defenders. All of that, while we put in 4 unheralded freshmen that we expect to contribute significantly. Yet you expect them to perform better? On what planet does that logic make ANY sense.

  8. kyjelly 03/02/2010 at 10:24 AM #

    You should head back to pack insider HarrowOwnzU. Sid has the worst winning percentage out of all HC in the nba history,what team was going to hire him as HC? 19-43 in acc play. I do agree with you about him in his first year having no control . That is why year one was his most successfull,Sid did not put his mark on the team yet!

  9. Pack Mentality 03/02/2010 at 10:29 AM #

    Wow, you have really thought out these different rebuttals. Kind of like when you were a kid, one guy complained all the time when he barely lost and gave all these different reasons. The other guy just had to say “scoreboard” for his argument.

    Sure year 3, whatever you say.

    Oh yeah, 4-10

  10. ktoh 03/02/2010 at 10:33 AM #

    Wow where did this guy come from?

  11. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 10:33 AM #

    I don’t have to work on different rebuttals. Everything I’ve stated is fact. I’m not sure why you act like 4-10 is something that’s going to hurt my feelings or something. This team performed almost exactly like I thought they would perform. I tried to tell everybody, you’re not going to get above 9th or 10th place this year with this team and you’re probably not going to see a postseason tourny, so anything above and beyond that is gravy.

    I tried to tell people next year is when you’re going to see a significant improvement in the W’s and L’s. With Tracy a Senior, Williams a JR, Wood, Howell, Painter, Davis and Vandy as Sophs and Harrow and Brown as Frosh, nobody is going to want to play that team.

    kyjelly why don’t you tell me what teams he coached. I won’t even have to respond about his NBA record after the teams are stated. And multiple coaches have said he’s a good coach and that he was just put in bad situations.

  12. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 10:36 AM #

    The reason we’re losing this year is because teams can just double Tracy and defend the 3. They aren’t concerned about being beat off the dribble so they just double Tracy and get in the face of our 3pt shooters. But when you add Harrow and Brown to the team, they won’t be able to do that. They’ll have to honor the 3, the drive and the dish off to Tracy. We’ll be dangerous next year. We just don’t have all the pieces this year.

    I will acknowledge where I was wrong tho. I said I didn’t think Brown would add enough to this team THIS year, to push them to challenge for an NCAA tourny bid. I was wrong. You put Brown on this team, with his ability to drive and dish and score if they defend the pass, we win at least 4 more games which would put us on the bubble. I will still stand by my statement that it’s better for him to come in next year though, for all the reasons I’ve stated previously.

  13. VaWolf82 03/02/2010 at 10:40 AM #

    Not to mention, we lost 3 of our top 4 rebounders, our top 3 scorers, 3 of our top 4 assist men, and 3 of our 4 best defenders.

    Not to mention those same idiot players that were built for the weave and heave were purposefully and systematically trying to undermine Lowe’s authority.

    There is no need to argue with someone that isn’t capable of keeping his own arguments straight.

  14. Rochester 03/02/2010 at 10:44 AM #

    Sendek took the program as far as he could, and it’s just as well he left, but this “he didn’t leave them enough players to run a practice” is a load of bull. Had Sendek stayed, Larry Davis and Dan Werner would have been there along with Horner. Maybe Herb knew Ced Simmons and Andrew Brackman weren’t coming back, and if so, it would have been wise to recruit another big man (who probably would have welched on his LOI after Fowler screwed up the search).

    As for not recruiting a point guard, Sendek had a commitment from Chris Wright for the following season (Sid’s second year).

    Bashing Sendek is easy to do, but keep it reasonable. The man wasn’t evil. He left when he did because he found another opportunity and wasn’t feeling a lot of love in Raleigh.

    And consider seeing an anger management counselor or something. When you fire off 20 posts in about an hour it makes the rest of us a little nervous every time we hear a car backfire.

  15. Wulfpack 03/02/2010 at 10:45 AM #

    Harrown just to put to rest one of the silly arguments you made:

    Herb placed the following players in the NBA – Josh Powell, Ced Simmons, Julius Hodge, Anthony Grundy.

    So you are factually incorrect.

  16. Pack Mentality 03/02/2010 at 10:45 AM #

    I’m not trying to hurt your feelings by saying 4-10. But it does hurt my feelings being a State fan and that being our record. I can’t always look ahead to next year. I live my life in the present moment.

    So when did this year begin to not matter to you? Last summer? Because I don’t accept that you can take a season off if you’re going to be better the next year! And I definitely do not accept the fact that if you know you are going to suck and then you meet those exectations it is alright – and anyone who is unhappy about sucking RIGHT NOW is just unrealistic. I’m glad that you knew we would suck before the season started, as did everyone else. Now let’s go sing Kum-Ba-Yah together because you got it right.

    This year matters!!!! The recruiting class for next year doesn’t do a damn thing about it either.

  17. VaWolf82 03/02/2010 at 10:53 AM #

    And VA it’s nice to be known…

    You probably wouldn’t say that if you knew why I remember you. If you want to stay around longer this time, then don’t repeat the same mistakes you made in the past.

  18. PoppaJohn 03/02/2010 at 11:46 AM #

    I think it is remarkable that we are talking about the possiblity of the NIT. I’m still skeptical that we’ll win another game, much less make it to ANY tournament.

    I personally would love to see this team get to the NIT. Hopefully it is year 1 of a series of post season appearances. Forget the CBI, no one even knows it exists. (I laughed at the post that says it cost UVA money to attend – how bad is that?)

  19. PoppaJohn 03/02/2010 at 11:48 AM #

    Hey Harrow, go for it man. Nice to see two sides to the debate.

  20. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 11:50 AM #

    So I’d just like a little clarification on the rules if you don’t mind.

    Avoid profanity and personal attacks. Avoid attacks or accusations against SFN and the authors. We would prefer that comments not be stupid, but we don’t ban people for that.

  21. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 11:53 AM #

    Hodge sat the bench in the NBA for a couple months till he got shot and now he’s in australia. Grundy went to Europe, as did JP. And Ced went didn’t get to the NBA till AFTER Herb left and i’m pretty sure noone would argue that Herb did very little to up Ced’s draft status.

  22. Thinkpack17 03/02/2010 at 12:01 PM #

    It’s true that Herb’s offense did little to show if his big men had NBA skill sets. I don’t know how he got big men sitting in a living room pitching that to high school kids. “Ok we are going to keep you at the top of the key, you’ll set a bunch of screens, you should probably start working on your 3 point range too. It will be great”. Had it not been for Coach K’s arrogant refusal to double team any NC State big man Ced’s stock probably would have never gotten that high. You still have to credit Herb with adapting to Coach K’s gameplan…almost worked too. But…ya know…Herb.

  23. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 12:04 PM #

    You know what really really pisses me off about Herb. He KNEW we HATED that offense but he REFUSED to change off of the weave and heave to a more up-tempo offense.

    And what does he do immediately after going to ASU? He goes to a more traditional offense and more of a running offense. That really ticks me off.

  24. Rochester 03/02/2010 at 12:06 PM #

    Ced went didn’t get to the NBA till AFTER Herb

    Come on. Ced went to the NBA the same year Herb left. Herb left immediately after the season ended. Should Ced have declared midseason?

    Sticking up for Sid isn’t a bad thing. Being obnoxious about it is.

  25. HarrowOwnzU 03/02/2010 at 12:11 PM #

    But it’s okay for them to be obnoxious while bashing him right? Seems like a bit of a double standard.

    And yes it was Herb’s last year, but would you argue that Herb, in ANY way shape or form, helped Ced get to the NBA?

Leave a Reply