McCallum: Good luck with that white sauce. I’ve had more of that than I would care to admit (used to hang out with some Auburn grads). Alabama managed to take perfectly good NC BBQ sauce and wreck it by adding mayo. It kind of works on fried chicken (sort of like chicken fried steak), but is a quick way to wreck a hog or cow.
Grey: I love your optimism, and our recent recruiting momentum in football may allow you to be the one who says “I told you so” regarding DD. Your posts help keep the site going and I enjoy our debates.
I’m probably somewhere in the middle of the scale between optimist and pessimist. I’m generally optimistic in life, but also try not to ignore glaring data points that are there to counter.
For instance with Sid Lowe, Packi and I knew exactly how it would end the day he was hired. We decided to hope for the best and that Lowe could out recruit his coaching record. Didn’t happen, but we always liked the guy. He was doomed before he started with the assistants he chose.
I had followed Gott prior to his time at NC State, so I knew exactly what we were getting there. He was okay early when he had structure with Harrick and actually listened to Lutz. Those two masked a lot of issues. Once Harrick disappeared leaving Gott on his own, and Lutz was more clearly marginalized, then the trajectory was pretty much what I had expected from day one. That was just a desperate, bad hire. There wasn’t much to ever be optimistic about, only the hope that he didn’t totally screw up our program by the time he was gone (which it sadly appears he’s going to be the gift that keeps on giving).
With KK, I think I made it clear on this site that if it wasn’t Archie, it likely was KK or Wade and I much preferred KK to Wade. Packi can tell you I was a little upset (~20 minutes) that it really wasn’t Archie, but turned optimistic fairly quickly because it was KK. Nothing about the ensuing 14 months has changed my opinion that the NC State men’s basketball program is in the best hands it has been in since V was coaching here.
I was very worried about Wade and kept tabs on his year 1 at LSU. He’s recruiting well, but I knew he would. There are a lot of intrinsic recruiting advantages to LSU basketball that allow for that. The actual on the court results, coaching within the games, post game press conferences, player issues, etc. were a lot of what I was concerned about. Not surprisingly people are sniffing around the recruiting as well. I think we dodged a bullet with that one. It doesn’t mean that Wade won’t be successful at LSU (some of those built in program items may allow for that), but I think he’d have been a really bad hire for NC State. I think had we missed on Archie and hired Wade, I may have taken a BJD styled hiatus for a year.
