The Importance of Qualifications: Gottfried and His Staff

11-12 Basketball ACC & Other Mark Gottfried NC State NCS Basketball Sidney Lowe48

Ever since the hiring of Mark Gottfried to NC State, we’ve heard a few people saying “wow, what a great hire”, a few people saying “I can’t believe that it happened AGAIN” and a ton of people saying “well, I didn’t know if I liked it at first, but I guess it’s ok, but maybe it’s not, so… we’ll just have to see.”  It’s not that difficult to look at this staff, before they even coach one game, and acknowledge that the team is already looking at a brighter future.

…and I don’t just mean that from a classic NC State ‘well, we couldn’t get any worse’ attitude, either.

COACHING EXPERIENCE VS PLAYER EXPERIENCE

As the old adage goes, ‘those who can’t do, teach’.  Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean they should.  Sometimes when you have someone who has spent a long period of their life “doing”, they lose their ability to think and act objectively outside of the system that they use to act in.  You could make this claim for the other coaching staff compared to the new.

First, let’s recall who was on Sidney Lowe’s staff.  We had Sidney, himself a National Champion player on the 1983 Wolfpack team, Monte Towe who was on the 1974 Wolfpack team, Larry Harris who was a record-holding forward for Pittsburgh in the 1970’s and Pete Strickland, a fellow teammate of Harris’.  Of the four coaches, all but Pete Strickland would play professionally.  Monte Towe and Larry Harris only played for two seasons before beginning a coaching career, but Sidney Lowe played for just shy of a decade.

Obviously Gottfried doesn’t approach the task of team-building from the same “player experience matters” aspect.  Gottfried himself played for Oral Roberts for one season before transferring to Alabama, but after completing his degree in 1987, he opted to not participate in the NBA (despite the fact that he was drafted) and instead ended up attending graduate school at UCLA where he began coaching as an assistant.

That only speaks for Gottfried; what about his assistants?  Look no further than Bobby Lutz.  Bobby didn’t even get a chance to walk-on to his college team.  Still, he ended up getting an assistant coaching job at Clemson after getting his four degrees (including his masters at Clemson).  Through his results, he proved a successful enough coach to get an offer to serve as Head Coach at Pfeiffer followed years later by getting an offer to coach at UNC Charlotte where he would become their winningest coach.  All of this despite the fact that he had no college or professional player experience.

EXPERIENCED IN WINNING TITLES

You can’t talk about the Sidney Lowe coaching staff without talking about their existing lack of credentials when they ‘arrove’ in Raleigh.  The only individuals who had even sniffed anything that looked like a “Title” at any level was Monte Towe who was an assistant coach at Florida when they won an SEC title in the 1980s, and Pete Strickland who had won a conference title at Old Dominion as an assistant coach back in the 1990s.  Obviously Sidney Lowe hasn’t been coaching in the college game, but he hasn’t accomplished much better in the NBA.

Looking at Gottfried’s staff, you see a myriad of “Titles”.  These guys are focused on producing hardware, which is something NC State hasn’t sniffed in upwards of two decades, or one-or-two generations of Wolfpack fans depending on how you are keeping count. 

Gottfried, himself, has been a part of 3 conference championships (1 as an assistant at UCLA and 2 as a head coach at Murray St) and 1 national championship while serving as assistant coach at UCLA.  Rob Moxley, by most accounts one of the nations top recruiters, was a part of 2 conference championships serving as an assistant under none-other-than Bobby Lutz.  Lutz totaled 4 conference championships at UNC Charlotte, 1 as an assistant and 3 as head coach.  Orlando Early also brings in 3 conference championships, 2 on the same staff as Lutz and Moxley, and 1 as an assistant coach at Western Carolina.

Between Gottfried’s coaching staff during their assistant coaching years and head coaching years, they bring in experience from 8 conference national championships (only counting shared titles as “1” win), and 1 national championship.  That’s a stark change from the Lowe staff’s mere 2 conference championships.

OVERALL WINNING SUCCESS IN THEIR CURRENT ROLES

To a lot of critics and supporters alike, it’s useless to attribute a win to an assistant coach if we are asking them to serve as head coach since they didn’t “lead the team” to their success.  Just because someone was a national champion quality assistant doesn’t mean he’ll perform the same as a head coach.

That being said, it should have been obvious how doomed NC State was from the start (and to be fair, many would claim that they did see it from the start) of the Lowe era at NC State.  While Lowe was a head coach, he was only successful in beating his opponents in barely over 25% of his matchups.  As an assistant, he was still only a part of 55% successful teams.  As for Lowe’s assistants, Towe’s teams were typically 58% successful with him as an assistant, Harris 44%, and Strickland 47%.  Now, can you blame an assistant for 30% success?  Not exactly, because he could have just had a terrible boss/head coach.  At the same time, it does speak to the “winning experience” they bring in.  Overall, Lowe’s “winning experience” was 26% as a head coach (albeit, NBA experience, not NCAA experience) and his assistants only brought in an average of 50% “winning experience”.

If the application of this fictional “winning experience” measure isn’t evident, let’s take a look at Gottfried.  First of all, Gottfried is personally responsible for 68% success as head coach (75% at Murray St and 62% at Alabama).  That is already a massive improvement over someone who is 26% successful.  As for his assistants, Moxley, Lutz, and Early bring in 55%, 56%, and 58% “winning experience” as assistant coaches respectively which averages out to just over 56%.

The conclusion you can draw is that Gottfriend not only brings in significantly more experience as a winning coach than Lowe did, but his staff also brings in more experience of being a supporting character in more successful squads than Lowe’s staff ever did.

NON-NUMERICALS

There are a lot of qualitative improvements this staff brings over the previous administration.  First of all, when you look at the origins of the previous staff prior to arriving at NC State, Lowe brought in NBA connections which helped him with recruiting, but his staff consistented of one assistant coach from the same university he came from and two other assistants that both attended Pittsburgh.  Lowe and his staff also spent a lot of their careers working in very distant positions from the recruiting grounds of North Carolina.  Larry Harris worked in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Washington before arriving at NC State and Monte Towe spent 11 years in Florida, 8 years in Venezuela, and 5 years in Louisiana.  Strickland would be the only one on the Sidney Lowe staff to have “deep” connections to the region.

Mark Gottfried’s staff is studded with regional stars (and I feel pretty safe referring to them as “starts”).  As previously mentioned, Moxley is one of the nation’s top recruiters, by some accounts one of the nation’s top 20.  He has spent his entire coaching career in North Carolina, Marlyand, and Tennessee.  Bobby Lutz is obviously the home-town sweetheart of the famed Queen City.  the only time he strayed away from the Carolinas was last year when he served one year as an assistant of Iowa State.  Orlando Early has also spent 9 of his 18 years coaching in North Carolina, only leaving the state to serve as an assistant to Mark Gottfried at Alabama and then accepting a head coaching position at Louisiana-Monroe from 2005-2010.

The ironic part of having a coaching staff with no organic roots to NC State is that they are far more connected to the region they will be coaching in than the previous staff which was heralded as a “hometown darling” for NC State by the then-administration.

CONCLUSIONS

I’m only writing this last section for posterity because I think the conclusion is clear: this staff is loaded with so much more promise and potential.  For those that get put-off by promise and potential and demand results, this is as good as it will get until tip-off this fall.  You have coaches with far more experience coaching and winning than the previous administration and who are accustomed to winning.  Unlike other “winners” we have brought into NC State for various teams, the one thing that makes this group unique is that none of them have had the luxery or opportunity to get comfortable with their success.  Mark Gottfried obviously made the personal decisions he did in Alabama which cut his winning tradition short.  The various assistants that are serving Gottfriend have all experienced success at UNC Charlotte where they wracked up multiple NCAA tourney bids and 20-win seasons, but Bobby Lutz was dismissed in 2010 after a 218-158 record.

This is a staff that you could argue is so well suited for NC State that its creepy.  They have a history of success, but in recent years have had an unfortunately series of events, some self-inflicted, that have stopped them from continuing their success.  If you don’t take anything else from the article, just consider this: this coaching staff “fits” with NC State and like the staff’s careers, we are in need of proving a point.  If any staff is going to “get it” and be capable of acting on it, it’s going to be this group.

About NCStatePride

***ABOUT THE AUTHOR: NCStatePride has been writing for StateFansNation.com since 2010 and is a 2009 graduate of the College of Engineering.

11-12 Basketball ACC & Other Mark Gottfried NC State NCS Basketball Sidney Lowe

48 Responses to The Importance of Qualifications: Gottfried and His Staff

  1. SaccoV 10/21/2011 at 1:12 PM #

    I think the $64 question has to be how Early and Moxley will step up to fulfill the role that Lutz leaves because I don’t think there is anyway under the sun that Lutz stays as an assistant for more than two years (which I believe is the length of his contract that UNC-Charlotte is still paying out). Lutz cannot take another head coaching position until that contract terminates. If Moxley and Early can either solidify recruiting or be the defensive stud-coach that Lutz is known for, we have a chance to be consistently good for a longer stretch. I have no doubt that DY likes him enough to be constantly on the prowl for new assistants (given Moxley and Early’s stints at other places). Great work overall, NCStatePride!

  2. NCStatePride 10/21/2011 at 1:23 PM #

    I, too, wondered about Lutz leaving since he’s the only big flight risk I saw. I can’t tell if I’m nervous or not about his job security here. Consider that his entire coaching career, to date, has been aimed at coaching at UNC Charlotte. That was his “dream job”, and he made Gardner-Webb well aware of that when he “was their coach for a full week” before leaving for UNC Charlotte as an assistant. I feel like if he is treated right and gets along with the staff, we can convince him to stick around. If he was ONLY motivated by pay, then he could have gotten a better gig out of UNC Charlotte than becoming an assistant for State.

  3. ncsu1987 10/21/2011 at 2:05 PM #

    “We shot for the stars, and landed in the trees.”

    “Not the “name” hire many expected…”

    So we all had loads of fun with the coaching search epic thread, but how many REALLY expected us to lure a big name coach away from his currently successful gig? As has been pointed out, even UNX had trouble getting Roy to come. Expectations were out of balance with reality.

    But, as I think back, I’m trying to remember the things that Yow said she was looking for in that original press conference that marked the start of the search. Without actually looking it up, I seem to recall:

    1) Someone with demonstrated success
    2) Someone who would embrace the challenge and wouldn’t be afraid of the blues (I’m sure that’s not how she said it, but that’s the essence of it)
    3) Someone who would embrace high expectations and run a clean program

    She also said that cost would not be an issue.

    I’m sure there was more, but this is what I seem to remember.

    Based on the criteria above, it sure looks like she got what she was looking for. Just because we were hyped on our own foolishness (Donovan, Miller, Barnes) it FELT like a disappointment. But I really wonder if Yow saw it that way.

    Someone will argue the letter she sent the night before. But we don’t know the full story. Isn’t it possible that Gottfried had been offered and refused before, then changed his mind and accepted? Pure speculation, no doubt, but plausible. I can say definitively that, although I reacted poorly to the announcement, Gottfried is worlds beyond what I was expecting after the letter.

    I’m old, I’m jaded, and I’ve lived through way too much disappointment the last 20 years. But I’m optimistic in a way I haven’t been.

    Thanks for the article, nicely done.

  4. nseast8 10/21/2011 at 2:11 PM #

    On a side note regarding Gottfried, I saw on an ESPN chat that someone asked him if Sid left him a red jacket and if not, was he planning on buying one. His response was no, and he has no plans of buying one either.

  5. EasternWakeWolf 10/21/2011 at 2:20 PM #

    It’s been 28 years since my anticipation for basketball outweighed what’s left of my enthusiasm for football.

  6. TruthBKnown Returns 10/21/2011 at 2:57 PM #

    A couple of thoughts…

    Obviously Gottfried wasn’t our dream hire going into that coaching search. At least not on paper. But so far, I think most of us like what we’ve seen from him since he arrived. I don’t think we could realistically hope for more from a new coach than what he’s done so far, so I’m pleased… so far.

    As for shooting for the stars and landing in the trees, but not the clouds…… if he’s as good at in-game coaching as he has been at everything else, I’d say the jury is still out on us being in the clouds. But coming back down to earth, he still needs to win before we’ll be in the clouds. I’m not saying we can expect that, just that it is within the realm of possibility. I believe we’ve had some pretty good talent, just without a good coach that knows what to do with it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we have that guy now.

    Also, I think we could have had this discussion without badmouthing Sidney so much. […]

    NCStatePride: The article doesn’t beat Lowe up, it just uses his staff as a benchmark. If I was getting paid, I would probably have included Sendek’s staff and maybe some of Valvano’s, just to get a good spectrum.

  7. package5 10/21/2011 at 3:07 PM #

    Gottfried coached at Alabama 10 years.

    Orlando Early was at Alabama from 2001-2005.

    Those are the only 5 years Alabama made the NCAA tourney

    coincidence?

  8. package5 10/21/2011 at 3:10 PM #

    Lutz is still getting paid by UNC-Charlotte. His contract says he cannot be a college headcoach anywhere for 2-3 more years or he will forfeit that paycheck.

    NC State is paying big bucks for him to be an assistant right now so he’s double dipping

  9. TruthBKnown Returns 10/21/2011 at 3:10 PM #

    Sounds like we need to do whatever it takes to keep one Orlando Early on the staff!

  10. PackMan97 10/21/2011 at 3:19 PM #

    Lutz has two years on his Charlotte contract, which becomes void if he takes a head coaching position. I don’t know what his “plan” is, but I feel that there are two scenarios:

    1) Help get NC State to the NCAA’s each of the next two years to get his name on the “hot list” for when a BCS/good mid-major job comes open and hopefully take a pick of one he likes which isn’t a complete rebuilding job. In this case, I see a risk that he takes one of the other assistants with him.

    2) Be content to be near his friends and family (he was born in Hickory, has degrees from Charlotte, Clemson, Winthrop and Lenoir-Rhyne) and being the number two for a team that is winning ACC titles and making Final Fours.

    Of course…this is all conjecture at this point 🙂 We’ll have to see how it plays out.

  11. NCStatePride 10/21/2011 at 3:47 PM #

    #2 isn’t just a pipe-dream; it’s more realistic. As I said before, Lutz has always placed desire above pay, but then again you could argue that his pay has always been an argument between minor programs so it wasn’t as large of a factor. If we maintain a decent salary for him that is at least competitive, I don’t see him bolting.

    Along with #1, however, you nailed the comment about taking assistants with him. Early is the link between the UNC Charlotte coaches we have and Gottfried. If Lutz goes, I see Moxley (the recruiter) exploring other options.

  12. mak4dpak 10/21/2011 at 6:43 PM #

    Been several years since I have attended a Men’s BB game. I am excited and ready to buy some tickets. Go Gott! Put State back on the ACC map in BB. I am a believer!

  13. choppack1 10/21/2011 at 8:53 PM #

    Yea – I think those practice comments pretty much reinforce what a lot of us thought. That the previous staff and team didn’t work nearly hard enough before the game – and that’s why you saw Lowe crazy on the sideline during the game.

  14. coach13 10/21/2011 at 9:36 PM #

    We went from a really good coach, V, to a stop gap measure, to a weird little guy with limits, to a horribly failed experiment. I don’t know what Gottfried’s ceiling is, but I am confident it is the highest we’ve had since V. That is the most encouraging fact we’ve had to go on in a couple of decades.

  15. 61Packer 10/21/2011 at 9:46 PM #

    As a part of the pre-game intros on the Jumbotron, I’d like to see the video of the wolves running toward the RBC, with the following stanza of Hungry Like The Wolf being belted out by Duran Duran:

    Burning the ground I break from the crowd
    I’m on the hunt I’m after you
    I smell like I sound, I’m lost and I’m found
    And I’m hungry like the wolf.

    For the first time in 21 years, could something good be coming our way?

    There’s simply Gott to be an end to our sports misery. We just might have finally found it in a most unsuspecting place. Time will tell.

  16. howlie 10/22/2011 at 7:11 AM #

    I want to see glimpses of 1) Dean Smith & 2) Bruce Pearl in the coaching staff–both of whom I despise.

    1) Smith, ON HIS OWN, was good for at least two victories a year. On his own. If they could keep the game close, Smith could make some in-game, last minute adjustment that would give his cads a victory. THAT, alone, is worthy of a huge contract & may be the difference-maker to get you off the bubble & into the tourney. Back to this in a moment.

    2) When Bruce Pearl brought his MilwaukeeGB team to State, I was impressed with the way he used his staff as braintrust. It was clear each assistant was tasked with watching a particular PART of the game, and at each timeout they coaches had their OWN powwow when the players came off the court. Pearl spent a lot of the timeout getting input from every assistant, THEN they turned to make the adjustment needed to give them an edge until the next timeout.

    Point being, your university is blessed when your coaching staff gets you a W with in-game adjustments. I watched previous staffs looked disinterested with chin-on-hand, with nothing to say during timeouts, or act as cheerleader–which we already have.

    ‘Word’ was that Gott made little in-game adjustments at Alabama. As good as Coach K at Duke has been, I believe he’s a poor in-game coach. He prepares the hell out of his team in practice, but makes few in-game adjustments. If Gott can recruit like K, then that’s good enough, in time. I know Gott traveled to many programs as analyst at ESPN to watch practice, but he did NOT get to sit on the benches or to be with the teams during halftime. He may very well have coaches on the bench with him with more, in-game adjustment sensibilities than he has alone.

    I’m VERY interested to see how this [what appears to be] exceptional staff will be used IN-GAME to draw upon their COLLECTIVE insights… & I would LOVE if one on that staff would be focused on the DEFENSIVE end of the court.

  17. choppack1 10/22/2011 at 8:21 AM #

    Howlie – and your brief statement shows why I think adjustments in basketball are over-rated.

    You say that this is an important trait, yet you freely admit the most successful coach of the modern era – sucks at it…And you’re right. His teams have blown leads and wilted down the stretch – and as a result, he has only 4 championships instead of 6 or 7, and a few more ACC championships.

    And you know why Dean didn’t have the same number of rings – because he couldn’t motivate the way Coach K can.

    The majority of Coach K’s kids play like Tyler Hansboro (or at least they did) – they play hard as hell and they sell out on every play. And you know what – they practice like that too. Dean’s kids were like robots…they ran their stuff beautifully – and were very well prepared – but they didn’t have the fire that Coach K’s kids did…so some games were a lot closer than they should have been – and they lost some of those close games.

    And don’t think that Roy didn’t what Coach K did versus what his mentor did. His guys play at a much more frantic pace – offensively and defensively – and play harder than Dean’s did.

    Me – I want a coach who is going to convince his guys there is no other to play this game than play it all out. (I want my football coach to be able to convince his guys the same things.)

    And to me – that’s what sucked most about our last coaching staff. They obviously had a cavalier atmosphere towards work and preparation – and go figure, it filteredd down to our kids. They were out of shape and their effort was pretty mediocre.

  18. choppack1 10/22/2011 at 8:28 AM #

    Oh yeah – it’s worth mentioning the best coach of the previous era – John Wooden – believed once the ball was thrown up, his job was done.

    In the words of Sun Tzu:
    The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.

  19. ncsu05mit10 10/22/2011 at 10:01 AM #

    Nice article, though I agree a look back at Sendek and maybe even Les would have helped the comparison.

    Frankly, I don’t know enough about Sendek’s assistants when he started, but I do remember when we hired him, most State fans were excited about the hire. Pitino protege, very smart guy, young… we all were very excited about the future. 10 years later…

    It’s easy when comparing ANY staff to our previous one to cite reasons for optimism. Thinking about Lowe & Co. just gets me angrier at Fowler for putting State fans in that position. Giving us our hometown heroes and eventually making us turn on our own. Les, Lowe, Towe– they’re remembered more as bad coaches rather than great NCSU players. I digress…

    Point I’m trying to make is that I’m excited to see an experienced staff of COLLEGE coaches who will teach a fairly talented group of players a tried and true COLLEGE system (Wooden’s high post). Les didn’t have the players or the plan, Sendek had the plan but none of us like it and he had met his ceiling, Lowe definitely had no plan but got some players.

    The ceiling is immediately higher because of the combination of our current players (got to give Lowe credit there) and current plan. It’ll finally be traditional college basketball. FINALLY!

    I also won’t be surprised if we’re a colossal failure this year too, b/c well… we are NC State.

  20. Cincinnati Wolf 10/22/2011 at 12:59 PM #

    I am a big fan of Sean Miller but I actually think that Mark Gottfried and his staff will hit the ground running better than Sean would have. Recruiting is already on an upswing and Coach Gottfried’s experience and his two year sabbatical all bring a lot to the party. He has hired a great staff including our S&C guru. He needs to win games to prove it out, but on paper this hire was a home run hire. Debbie may have whiffed on some targets because of her reputation but she landed Coach Gottfried because of the relationship they have built over his career.

  21. ScottieJ2000 10/22/2011 at 11:10 PM #

    I remember hearing about Gottfried keeping a notebook while he was working at ESPN. I’d love to see that notebook. It has notes from other coaches and other teams’ practices. This is great! It tells me a lot about Gottfried…he is not set in his ways, is bringing his and others’ style to the game, is adaptive, is willing to learn, and is HUNGRY to get back to coaching. Much more than you can say about the old staff that would do the same old things and wonder why aren’t we winning!?!?

    The way the search was going, I would have been just happy to get Lutz as a head coach… pretty sad. I didn’t know Gottfried (Not the sexiest hire but we weren’t going to get a sexy hire regardless) but after doing some research and hearing his assistant coaches and how aggressive he was going after recruits and trying to keep this team to stay together I was very happy with the hire.

    AND It’s always a positive to get an ESPN good ole boy too.

  22. TeufelWolf 10/23/2011 at 5:08 AM #

    Call me optimistic but I like him. Here’s why. It’s one thing for a coach to come out and say the right things — that’s easy, they know what to say. It’s another thing to have the players admitting that he’s working them harder than they worked last year; admit that they’re hanging out more and putting in more time in the gym; that they now have to get to study hall and the weight room on time. Also, you can see that the skinny guys have bulked up and the overweight have slimmed down. As a Marine, I like hear about those types of things – a team getting squared away. Those ‘little’ things add up to make a disciplined unit. Good to go Coach.

    I also think that Alex Johnson and Thomas De Thaey have been a good influence. They bring work ethic and passion to the team.

    I’m happy so far. GO PACK!

  23. howlie 10/24/2011 at 9:08 AM #

    Nice reply choppack. I’m with you 99%.

    However, if there’s a youtube [?] of the end of the NChampionship game where Duke is behind by 1, & has 7 seconds left in the game…

    … the team comes to the sidelines for a timeout, only to hear Kcusschefsky say, “We’re putting the ball in Trajan Langdon’s hands…

    … & then watch four Duke players stand under the basket to see Trajan going one-on-five to dribble into a briarpatch & hoist up a horribly contested 25′ shot…

    …you see what I mean about in-game coaching.

    For the university [& basketball world’s] sake, you hire a coach to draw up a play–set a pick at least [which Duke has done a bazillion times for other ‘designated shooters’ on their team]. THAT day K sat on his hands and lost the entire season because he didn’t think he needed to ‘coach’ the last play.

    Epic failure.

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