Sidney Lowe Leaves And NC State Fans Rejoice
Posted by nvr1983 on March 15th, 2011The day that many NC State fans have been waiting years for finally came today as Sidney Lowe announced that he would be would be offering his resignation after another disappointing season in which the Wolfpack finished 15-16. In his five seasons as head coach Lowe was 86-78 overall and 25-55 in the ACC. After succeeding Herb Sendek who left the school to go to Arizona State Lowe never finished higher than 9th in the conference and only made the NIT twice, which was a point of considerable consternation amongst NC State fans given the success of in-state rivals Duke, UNC, Wake Forest (ok, maybe not this year), and even Davidson.
With Lowe gone NC State will begin its search
The next step for NC State will be to find someone to take the reins of a floundering program. According to current Athletic Director Debbie Yow the school has a list of potential candidates that she declined to specify, but stated was single digits and would be a coach who has made the NCAA Tournament consistently. While many NC State fans looked forward to Lowe’s resignation with the hope of getting a coach similar to the one that Yow describes they may be less than thrilled with the actual result. When Lowe was offered the job it was only after the school was unable to land several bigger name coaches.
Given the profile that Yow describes, NC State’s lack of recent success, and the ridiculous concentration of basketball tradition/success within the state it seems likely that NC State will be relegated to repeating history in their coaching search unless they stumble upon someone from a relatively big school that happens to want to go back to North Carolina. Otherwise they should probably be willing to look for through the mid-major ranks for a star wanting to go to “the next level” or an assistant at a successful program who wants to be calling the plays himself.
