It turns out nothing newsworthy has been going on around Duke's campus, so I thought it would be a good time to turn our attention to the oft-forgotten third resident of Tobacco Road.
N.C. State is still searching for a new coach after Herb Sendek left for Arizona State April 3. It seems that Rick Barnes and John Calipari were content to use offers from State to increase their salaries at Texas and Memphis, respectively, but weren't keen on being third fiddle in the Triangle. While my personal recommendation would be to have Wolfpack head football coach Chuck Amato coach both football and basketball, I understand there are still some other options out there.
Whoever finally takes this job, he or she (hey, I'm all about equal opportunity) should deliver a Rick Pitino special in the introductory press conference:
"David Thompson is not walking through that door, people. Tom Burleson is not walking through that door."
These should be the first words out of the new coach's mouth, followed only then by the traditional, "I'm excited to be here."
The new coach must demand realistic expectations from the Wolfpack faithful. N.C. State plays in the best league in the nation year in and year out, and competes with Duke, UNC and Wake Forest for nearly every top in-state recruit. As Shavlik Randolph-whose grandfather starred at N.C. State-showed, not even family history can serve as a guarantee to lock up recruits.
Sendek was basically run out of town after five straight NCAA Tournament appearances, tied for the best stretch in school history. The coach was often criticized by the N.C. State fan base for running his own version of the Princeton offense that relied heavily on backdoor cuts and three-pointers. They may find out, however, that such an offense is necessary to compete with teams who can just plain offer more to recruits.
On the day of the Wolfpack's first-round game against California this season, N.C. State's student newspaper ran a staff editorial calling for Sendek to resign if the team did not win that night (which it did). The brilliantly written piece cited the large number of students picking Cal in their brackets (I'm not making this up), as well as State's failure to win the ACC regular season championship as the school expected. Apparently the Technician did not get a copy of every single preseason poll in the nation.
I'm not claiming that Sendek is the best coach in the nation, but N.C. State seems to be under the impression that it has the tradition and the resources to do much better. The reality is that the Wolfpack's history consists of one tremendous player-Thompson-and one great postseason run in 1983. The program has won exactly one ACC regular season championship outright in the 32 seasons since Thompson led them to the NCAA Title.
So if Calipari turning down a $2 million annual salary to stay in Conference USA hasn't humbled State enough, here it goes: this is a second-tier job. It will likely be filled by a second-tier coach. Andy Katz wrote that they can't afford to get turned down again, and he's right. Whether they hire UNLV's Lon Kruger, Winthrop's Gregg Marshall, Iona's Jeff Ruland, Fordham's Dereck Whittenburg or one of a laundry list of others, being competitive in the ACC on a yearly basis is all State fans should ask for.
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