Another day, another athlete leaves N.C. State by “mutual decision.”

And you have to think there’s  more – a great deal more – to this story as Russell Wilson has decided not to return to N.C. State, but to leave open the door for playing football somewhere else.

N.C. State announced in a news release that Wilson had requested, and been granted, the right to play at another school in the fall if he wished. Wilson, as a graduate, would be eligible elsewhere, just as Justin Knox did in basketball for Carolina last season.

“Russell and I have had very open conversations about his responsibilities respective to baseball and football,” Pack coach Tom O’Brien said in a statement. “While I am certainly respectful of Russell’s dedication to baseball these last several years, within those discussions I also communicated to him the importance of his time commitment to NC State football.

My staff and I thank him for his contributions as a member of Wolfpack football and to this University and wish him only the best in the future.”

Wilson, in a statement, said, “It has become apparent that the time has come for the program to move on without me. … While my immediate plan includes playing professional baseball, I have not closed the door on football. With one more season of college eligibility remaining, I will continue to explore and consider all my options.”

You can’t blame either side in this equation. O’Brien is a demanding coach who wants to build around his starting quarterback. Planning for Wilson means one type of offense; planning for Glennon another. And O’Brien has never seemed thrilled by the fact that Wilson missed spring practice.

Wilson, on the other hand, is a gifted football player who was spectacular last season despite playing baseball all summer. And you knew something was up if you read Chip Alexander’s excellent piece on Wilson in The News & Observer recently.

Alexander wrote, “Wilson was told that some scuttlebutt among N.C. State fans was that as a graduate, he could use his final year of eligibility and play at another school if he wanted. But could Wilson see himself playing football for any school other than N.C. State? That question was posed to him.

“‘Obviously, I love N.C. State football,” he said. “It’s been a bless’ing in my life, and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.”

Ah, in other words, he dodged the question.

On Friday, Wolfpack fans got an answer.

By the way, an old trick in the media relations game is to release bad news on Friday. The thinking is that the news comes out late in the day, leaving the media little time to report the story, and by the time most reporters are back to work on Monday it’s old news. NCSU released the Wilson news very late in the work day Friday.

It’s disappointing Wilson didn’t have a more dignified end. N.C. State can be tight-lipped with the media, and he never spoke with the press after the season about his plans. But Wilson is a great guy who deserves a tremendous legacy at N.C. State. He’s one of the best players ever to wear Wolfpack red, and regardless of what he does, and where he plays, he deserves a spot of honor in Wolfpack lore.

A news release from NC State’s athletics department says that guard Ryan Harrow’s decision to leave the college was a mutual decision.

The news release reads, “NC State head men’s basketball coach Mark Gottfried has announced that he and rising sophomore guard Ryan Harrow have reached a mutual decision that Harrow will transfer to another program.”

Gottfried, who noted that he would release Harrow to any school except on in the ACC, said “We wish him well and will do anything we can to assist him in this process.”

For his part, Harrow said that the new State staff will do good things. He has to sit out a year before playing for another program. “The year off will help me improve in many ways and I think the decision is the best for me personally,” he said.

Harrow started 10 games and played in 29, averaging 23 minutes a game as a freshman last season.

N.C. State’s C.J. Leslie has decided to return for his sophomore season, Wolfpack spokesperson Annabelle Myers announced today.

The 6-foot-8 forward averaged 11 points and seven rebounds per game for the Pack but Leslie lost his starting job in January and was suspended for the Duke game for breaking team rules. He later re-gained his starting spot.

Leslie played high school ball at Word of God in Raleigh where he was rated the 11th best prospect in the country by Scout.com.

NC State’s sweep of fifth-ranked North Carolina this past weekend was the Wolfpack’s first sweep of the Tar Heels since 1997, which was Elliott Avent’s first season as head coach. Avent now holds a 25-23 record vs. North Carolina in his 15 seasons at the helm.

Avent is 16-8 vs. the Tar Heels at Doak Field at Dail Park, and 5-13 in Chapel Hill. Avent’s Wolfpack teams are 1-1 vs. North Carolina at the USA Baseball Training Complex in Cary, won a 1998 neutral-site game at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, and 2-1 in the ACC Tournament.

As a team, NC State batted .330 for the weekend. Cameron Conner and John Gianis were the Wolfpack’s leading hitters. Tarran Senay led the Pack for the weekend with four RBIs, and Brett Williams hit the team’s only home run. Williams also made the incredible catch-and-throw play in the fourth inning of Sunday’s game, turning a possible two-run triple for the Tar Heels into an inning-ending double play.

Conner batted .556 (5-for-9) with three doubles and three RBIs for the series. Gianis matched his career high for hits in a game with a 4-for-5 performance on Sunday and was 5-for-8 with a double and two RBIs for the series. Pratt Maynard was 5-for-12 (.417) with four doubles and two RBIs. Chris Diaz was 4-for-11 (.364) and scored three runs. Senay went 2-for-5 with a double and four RBIs.

The Wolfpack pitching staff posted a 4.00 ERA for the series, and starters Cory Mazzoni and Rob Chamra, and reliever Chris Overman stood out in particular.

Mazzoni allowed four runs, all in the second inning, on four hits in seven innings of work on Friday. Aside from the second inning, Mazzoni was his usual untouchable self, allowing no runs or hits in innings one, three, four and five, and one hit but not runs in inning six.

Chamra got the start on Sunday and ran into trouble just once — in the fourth — in 5 1/3 innings. Chamra retired nine of the 11 men he faced in the first three innings.

UNC put runners on first and second with one down in the fourth for Chaz Frank, whose drive into the gap in right-center looked for all the world like extra bases and two runs. Instead, Brett Williams made a lunging catch in full stride just as he reached the warning track, ran into the wall, and then turned and fired a bullet to shortstop Chris Diaz to double the lead runner off second base.

Chamra then cruised through the fifth and into the sixth before turning the ball over to the bullpen.

Overman pitched only 2 2/3 innings in the series, but got credit for a save in each of the first two games, both of which were one-run nail-biters. He walked two and struck out three.

Overman came into Friday’s game with runners on first and second and one out in the eighth inning, and set down five in a row for his third save of the year, preserving a one-run lead.

On Saturday, Overman got to the mound with runners on first and second and the Pack up three. UNC got the potential tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position before Overman recorded the final out for his fourth save and second in as many nights.

Attendance News
The series between NC State and North Carolina drew near-record crowds to Doak Field at Dail Park. Friday’s crowd of 2775 was, at the time, the fourth-largest crowd at the Doak since the ballpark was renovated in 2003-04.

Two days later, 2828 fans squeezed their way into the ballpark, making that the fourth-largest crowd in stadium history and bumping Friday’s crowd to No. 5. Had it not been for the severe weather and tornadoes that roared through the Raleigh area Saturday afternoon, the series could well have drawn more than 8000 fans, which would have made it one of the two most-attended three-game series in stadium history.

Despite the severe weather that afternoon, a crowd of 1727 came out for Saturday evening’s game. The final tally for the three games was 7330, which ranks as the third-largest attendance for a series since the stadium was renovated.

The big crowds for the series with the Tar Heels pushed attendance for the season to 29,449 through 23 dates, an average of 1280 per game.

At that pace, with 11 games remaining, NC State would draw 43,529 fans for the year, which would rank second in stadium history. The stadium record is 48,263 set in 2008. Second on the list currently is 41,846 set in 1995, the first year the ballpark had lights.

This season’s average attendance of 1280 per game, should that continue, would rank third in stadium history.

– NEWS RELEASE –

South Carolina assistant coach Orlando Early has been lured to Raleigh to be assistant coach of the Wolfpack by his former boss at Alabama from 2001-2005 Mark Gottfried.

“I’m leaving South Carolina because this is an opportunity for my family and me that I can’t pass up,” Early said in a release. “Mark Gottfried and I are longtime friends and have a very close relationship. When I left Alabama, I left to take a head coaching position, but Mark and I have always talked about working together again in the future, and that opportunity has opened up for me at N.C. State.”

Early coached as South Carolina one season after being head coach at Louisiana-Monroe for four seasons.

N.C. State AD Debbie Yow, who used to be the AD at Maryland, says the Terp basketball coach Gary Williams tried to sabotage her coaching search for a basketball coach to replace Sidney Lowe. For his part, Williams denies the claim. The Baltimore Sun in an online blog has provided the public with a brief history of their relationship.

Here’s what the paper said:

“Williams’ and Yow’s relationship has been characterized by ill feelings and distrust, according to many current and former Maryland officials and supporters.

“Each usually seemed inclined to keep details of the relationship private.

“But raw feelings surfaced in 2009 when Williams and the athletic department offered conflicting accounts of the circumstances under which two Maryland recruits — Gus Gilchrist and Tyree Evans – ended up at other schools. “It wasn’t my fault that they’re not here. That was somebody else’s call,” Williams told reporters.

“The next day, Kathleen Worthington, a senior associate athletic director under Yow, called some media outlets, including the Baltimore Sun, to ‘clarify’ Willams’ statements.

“Williams, feeling undercut, told reporters that evening: ‘Kathy Worthington doesn’t speak for me, she has never won a national championship, she has never done anything. She’s an associate AD. This is just giving you guys stuff to make me look bad.’

“The divisions were well-known enough that Maryland insiders talked about “camps” of supporters lined up variously behind Williams, Yow or former football coach Ralph Friedgen, who also had a trying relationship with Yow. “There are Gary people and there are Ralph people and they lash out at the athletic director, and it’s wrong,” state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, told The Sun in a December 2009 interview. “I’m in all three camps. I like all three very much.”

“Longtime Terrapin Club member Barry DesRoches, a Gary Williams advocate, said in an e-mail that Yow’s comments on Tuesday were “unwarranted” and that “this type of behavior is not what we need from an athletic director at a member institution in the ACC.”

“Like DesRoches, many others connected to Maryland seemed long ago to have taken sides. ‘It doesn’t seem like there’s much in the middle,’ Fabian Jimenez, a Maryland supporter, said at a time in 2009 when the Yow-Williams dispute was still simmering.”

Read the reaction from Baltimore Sun online readers.

New N.C. State basketball coach Mark Gottfried is trying to avoid the now infamous rift between State AD Debbie Yow and Maryland coach Gary Williams. Yow publicly announced during the Gottfried press conference than Williams had tried to sabotage the search for a coach to replace Sidney Lowe.

“Let me say this, Gary Williams is a good friend, we have played golf together many times, and he is just a phenomenal, phenomenal basketball coach. For whatever reason there have been some issues between the two of them,” Gottfried said. “That’s not my fight to fight.”

Gottfried said that Yow wants to win. “She wants people to understand that she doesn’t want to back down from anybody either. I’ve told many people that if she’s going to play in the game I want her on my team,” he said.

“I don’t know that the other thing going on has anything to do with me but I’m glad she’s the kind of person that wants to do right for her own program,” he added.

New N.C. State basketball coach Mark Gottfried said today that his main goal is to get the Wolfpack back in the NCAA tournament on a regular basis.

“(This is) no knock on Sidney (Lowe) because I think he is obviously a great basketball guy, but we haven’t won here a lot in the last few years,” Gottfried said during an Atlanta radio interview. “These players are hungry to win, fans are hungry to win, and there’s a group of guys here that want to play in the NCAA Tournament, the greatest show on Earth.”

State hasn’t exactly been a threat in games against North Carolina and Duke either and Gottfried, the former Alabama coach, understands that the Pack needs to win some of those games. “We’re not backing down from anybody, but the goal here is to get involved in what I think is the greatest tournament of all-time, which is the tournament,” he said. “If you get in the tournament you have a chance to do something special. But you have to get in the tournament. That’s the goal, that’s the first step is to find a way where you got a chance then to compete.”

Gottfried said the State has some good young players but, trying hard not to disrespect Lowe, he said they are not a confident team. “He (Lowe) did a nice job of assembling some good players here, but they’re not a confident group right now. Winning breeds confidence and success is what gives you confidence. They need that. They need something to believe in.”

Gottfried has met with players and says he really likes them and their honesty. Still, he said they need to add some pieces to the current roster.