N.C. State fans can give thanks for football. Other than that, this year has illustrated how new athletics director Debbie Yow has her work cut out for her in West Raleigh.
It’s hard to imagine a more disappointing men’s basketball season. State stumbled out of the gate yet again Tuesday night and lost at Virginia, 69-58. This is a Cavaliers team that could barely score Saturday against Boston College, and yet they ran right over N.C. State.
As one Wolfpack fan said recently, the team isn’t even “relevant.”
The media picked N.C. State for fourth in the ACC in preseason, a lofty assessment based on a strong recruiting class. But State is now 10th in the ACC and, as we predicted last month, in danger of having a losing season. The Pack is 15-14 going into Saturday’s home finale with Florida State.
A loss there, and then in Greensboro’s ACC play, puts the Wolfpack under water for the year. State fans should be outraged, but even a fan base with an amazing commitment to its school is greeting this season with a collective shrug.
For whatever reason, Sidney Lowe has not been able to elevate this program, and a season that looked promising has been greeted with deafening indifference from Wolfpack fans.
The football team, obviously, was a bright spot this season. But other than that, it’s almost comical how low N.C. State is across the board in ACC sports.
- The women’s basketball team is in 10th place despite a huge win over North Carolina
- The men’s swimming and diving team and the women’s swimming and diving teams both just finished eighth in the ACC championships in February
- The wrestling team is in fifth place among the six teams that compete in the ACC – ahead of only lowly Duke – heading into this weekend’s ACC championships
- The volleyball team finished 11th in the ACC at 4-12 in league play
- Men’s soccer was eighth out of nine teams at 1-5-2 in ACC play
- Women’s soccer was 10th of 11 teams at 0-9-2 in the conference
Baseball, softball and tennis are the spring sports that are underway, and State has some potential in those. The Wolfpack does not compete in lacrosse or field hockey, and heck, that’s a good thing for Pack fans who are tired of suffering.
N.C. State has had brighter days – much brighter days, in fact. But Yow has a big job ahead when it comes energizing an athletics program that is struggling to gain traction across the board. And nothing – nothing at all – would do more for the spirit of the school than to find the right man to energize the basketball program and get N.C. State headed toward respectability again in that critical sport.
I know that current success of sports at NCSU is a big disappointment to many Wolfpack fans but when Forbes magazine rates NCSU as the 3rd best educational value among higher universities, we can hold our head up high in any crowd. Case in point, the CBS/SI crime in college football finds Va. Tech as the 6th worst team in America, Fl State 7th and Miami, 10th. That’s 3 of the worst 10 in American, with Carolina 15, thanks to B.Davis recruiting. Remember when the ACC was 2nd only to the Ivy League in the 3 ships(Scholarship, Citizenship and Sportsmanship). Well, the greed of the football programs, except
Duke and Carolina, has sunk those ships for the ACC. And 8 of the 9 coaches that were here when V.Tech & Miami were admitted are history. I love sports but I am very proud of my school(NCSU). Also, how many univs have 5 schools in top 5.