Monday, March 28, 2011

The Post-Lowe Era Strategy

Good riddance
This is more of a repudiation of Lee Fowler than it is Sidney Lowe because the latter’s record in the NBA suggested that he just wasn't college coaching material. A 79-228 (.257) record is horrible at any level, and a sub-.300 record gets you passed over for most jobs worth anything. Obviously, Fowler missed that sign. Furthermore, the fact that he embarrassed the NC State name with way handled the coaching search was bad enough, but knowing that the one guy--Sean Miller--who actually wanted to come to Raleigh never received a phone call JUST INFURIATES ME TO NO END! As a result, those are five years that we will never get back especially now that Miller is married and is committed to rebuilding Arizona.

When Lowe was being described as the NC State version of Matt Doherty less than midway throughout Season 2, I didn’t want to believe it. When the team tuned him out like it did at Cameron last month when it scored fewer points in the entire game than Duke did in the first half that was the ultimate sign that Sidney would be tagged with that dubious tag. He may get another gig at the NBA as an assistant coach, but he is damaged goods when it comes to being head coach.

What’s needed
Debbie Yow is doing the right thing in closing off the coaching search to the media. Anybody wanting stuff leaked should be stomped out of town. In addition to having someone who’ll take challenging Duke and UNC seriously, we cannot have coaches like Bruce Pearl and John Calipari because…the local daily clearly hates us and the weekly is little better (read Bob Geary’s post on State basketball following the team’s awful showing in Greensboro to get my point). People say things go in cycles but the relationship between Wolfpack Nation and the N&O is irreparable.

We need to adopt an “us against the world” attitude since Duke and Carolina have their allies lined up in the press so when we get back to the top, we can ignore them and the national media. It worked for the Pistons in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and it can work for us since all everybody seems to do is kiss up to the schools in blue.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Monday, March 14, 2011

Some food for thought as I wait for the inevitable announcement from Raleigh

I recently stumbled upon this tidbit about DJ Kool Herc's situation, which pointed me to this article where Dres of Black Sheep put the hip hop community on blast for not helping pay for Kool Herc's medical bills even though the "Godfather of Hip Music" has no insurance. It was only after this act of shaming that today's rappers got on the ball. The delayed reaction is basically the community forgetting where it came from. The link at the end of the post points out that many of the genre's founding fathers are in the same boat as Kool Herc. As for Dres, he never got enough money back in the day to quit his day job.


Black Girl Pain...: Hip Hop Benefits don't include Health Insurance......: "By now everyone has heard about DJ Kool Herc and how he needs money for an operation for kidney stones (I believe). Twitter and many hip hop..."

Stunted City Redux

Well, it looks like this prediction from almost seven years ago is coming to pass--albeit slowly: Durham and Winston-Salem traded the #4 an...