You have to be happy for Mark Gottfried and N.C. State. First the spontaneous, child-like reaction upon seeing they'd made the NCAA Tournament field, and now a blissful run to the Round of 16.
Wonder what Sidney Lowe is thinking? It's abundantly clear that this is a talented team, and he's the one who constructed most of it. Lowe, by the way, is now an assistant with the Utah Jazz.
Remember when N.C. State AD Debbie Yow was getting all kinds of heck for a disaster of a coaching search? After getting turned down by Shaka Smart, Mark Turgeon and a number of other guys, she settled for Gottfried and not many people endorsed the choice. The introductory press conference was known more for Yow taking lame shots at Gary Williams than for anything related to Gottfried.
It was hard to be turned on by the hire of a guy who'd spent two years at ESPN after getting fired by Alabama.
"I had no idea who he was," N.C. State guard Scott Wood told Jeff Goodman of CBSSports.com yesterday.
"I didn't even know he worked for ESPN. We don't have ESPNU."
Ouch.
But Gottfried showed at Alabama that he was a pretty good coach, and he's done some pretty good coaching this year. Moving Lorenzo Brown from shooting guard to point guard was a masterstroke.
I've never understood the "but he won with such-and-such's players" line to describe a coach who has immediate success. How often do you hear "but he lost with such-and-such's players?" And if such-and-such had done is job, he'd still be there.
There's a reason they call it head coach and not head recruiter. Jimmys and Joes matter, but you still have to work the X's and O's.
-- The 11th-seeded Wolfpack gives the ACC something it desperately needs: a team in the Round of 16 not named North Carolina or Duke.
The ACC hasn't had any problem achieving at a high level in recent years -- five national titles in the last 11 years -- but the problem has been that the Tar Heels and Blue Devils have been those teams almost all the time.
When Florida State advanced to the Round of 16 last year, it was just the second time in six seasons that one of the ACC's "other" 10 schools survived to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament (the other was Boston College in 2006).
The ACC needs depth, and there's the hope of that moving forward with N.C. State, Florida State and Virginia seemingly on the rise (not to mention Syracuse and Pittsburgh on the way).
-- Two ugly first-round showings by Duke and Virginia brought back a trend of first-round ousters. Last year, all four participants advanced past the first round. But in 2010 and 2009, the ACC suffered a total of seven first-round defeats.
-- Speaking of Duke, remember when Mike Krzyzewski finished one vote shy of Leonard Hamilton for ACC coach of the year?
It seemed ridiculous that K got more votes (20) than Gottfried and Tony Bennett combined (14).
Then again, maybe recent events (three losses in the last four games) showed that K did a pretty good job of squeezing results out of a team that was offensively challenged. Heading into the regular-season finale against North Carolina, the Devils were regarded as an elite team and were playing for a possible No. 1 seed.
-- Last week, I blogged about decreasing interest in the NCAA Tournament. The first weekend used to be like Christmas morning to me and other folks, and now not so much.
I mentioned several factors but neglected to mention the biggest: one and dones.
The past four days of college basketball were quite compelling if you bothered to watch. But the problem is, fewer people are compelled to watch because there's less identification with talent that essentially changes out every year at the highest levels.
Still a lot of good basketball, still plenty of exciting moments. But the only constants are the head coaches, and that's not enough to hold the attention of everyone.
-- Have seeds ever been more meaningless than now? VCU was a 12 seed and lost to No. 4 seed Indiana, and it felt like an upset.
Had VCU held on and advanced to the Round of 16, any characterizations of the Rams as "Cinderellas" would've been the height of laziness and even stupidity.
Watch Smart's team play, and you see that there's not a whole lot of difference between them and major-conference teams. They're fast and athletic, and they absolutely jump all over you defensively.
Kudos to Smart on a splendid job. Seems like just last year that he was known as a bright young assistant that Oliver Purnell brought to Clemson.
LW
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