Wolfood98
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Hard times in Raleigh
Seth Davis, SI.com
Seth Davis
SI.com
A few days after he decided to leave North Carolina State to take over at Arizona State, Herb Sendek called Les Robinson, his predecessor in Raleigh as well as his former boss there, to touch base. It may seem odd to some fans that a coach would leave a school with such a rich tradition to work at a place that has never gone to a Final Four, but Robinson understood more than most why Sendek saw fit to head for the desert.
Sendek told Robinson, who is now the athletic director at The Citadel, about the day he was riding in his car in Raleigh shortly after N.C. State's season ended with a second-round NCAA tournament loss to Texas. "He said he turned on one of those talk radio stations, which he never does, because he figured they'd be saying good things about their season," Robinson told me. "But all he heard was that he can't beat Duke and North Carolina. Herb doesn't usually let on that that stuff bothers him, but what I was hearing from him was, 'I've had it.'"
I imagine the feeling was mutual for many N.C. State fans. But that was nearly a month ago, and N.C. State still does not have a coach. Rick Barnes was the school's first choice, but he wouldn't even take their call. John Calipari interviewed for the position and took things to the brink before choosing to stay at Memphis for less money. LSU's John Brady hinted that he might be interested, but it was obvious Brady was really interested in using that speculation to wrest more money out of his current employer. So N.C. State went after West Virginia's John Beilein and ESPN analyst Steve Lavin and got no's from both on the same day.
Besides the embarrassment of seeing every big coaching name in the country scatter hither and thither, Wolfpack fans have also had to say goodbye to their best player, sophomore center Cedric Simmons, who entered his name in the NBA draft. Meanwhile, Chris Wright, a 6-foot-1 high school junior from Washington, D.C., who had given Sendek his oral commitment, announced that he is reopening his recruitment. Wright would have been arguably the best player Sendek had ever recruited to Raleigh, but now it appears he, too, is headed elsewhere.
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Given this sorry state of affairs, I'm guessing there are a lot of disappointed N.C. State fans, such as the one who goes by the handle gsu101 and posted the following message on an Internet message board two weeks ago. The message is addressed "To all Herb Haters" and it reads: "You guys are now getting a reality check. There is no coach that can propel us past UNC and Duke, at least not right now, but Herb kept pushing the program along in the right direction. He was a classy guy, and a great coach. And his reward [was] ONLY CONSTANT CRITICISM AND SNOTTINESS FROM YOU FOLKS! Consider what is happening to State now as a fitting punishment, you ungrateful people."
Can I get an amen?
Frankly, I was surprised to hear that Sendek had finally let the criticism from fans get under his skin. (For the record, he had a huge fan and supporter in N.C. State's athletic director, Lee Fowler.) The stream of niggling and nitpicking has flowed for years, yet anytime Sendek was invited to address it, he shrugged it off with a smile. Not so anymore. On the day Sendek accepted the Arizona State job, Rick Pitino told me he had spoken to his former assistant about a week before and had never heard him so down. You can understand, then, why Sendek's peers have been reluctant to take his place. If the fans down there can get to a guy like him, imagine what they can do to someone who doesn't stay on such an even keel most of the time.
When I spoke to Sendek late last week, he did his best to brush his hurt feelings aside, but I could tell the constant carping had taken its toll. "You'd like to be on the highest plane possible and not let those kinds of things affect you, but I think it would take a pretty self-actualized person to maintain that," he said. "There are times those things can touch you, but by and large I look back on my experience at N.C. State with a grateful heart."
Too bad more N.C. State fans couldn't show Sendek some gratitude. After all, he came to the program 10 years ago in the wake of the scandalous final years of the Jim Valvano era and the consistent losing under Robinson and turned it into one of the most successful in America -- and without a whiff of impropriety. Under Sendek, N.C. State has gone to the last five NCAA tournaments. The Wolfpack is one of only eight teams to win an NCAA tournament game in each of the past three years. Only Duke has more ACC wins over the past five years. Last year the Wolfpack upset UConn and reached the Sweet 16. This year they beat Cal in the first round before losing to the Longhorns. (That loss, incidentally, came on the same day that North Carolina lost to George Mason in the second round.)
Yet, as Robinson and gsu101 can tell you, Sendek was run out of town because he committed the unspeakable crime of not measuring up to Duke and North Carolina. Of course, nobody else in America measures up to those two either, but nobody else lives right down the road. "When I took the job, people asked me about competing nationally. I said I couldn't care less about the nation, I just want to be good in the neighborhood," Robinson says. "The rest of the nation will say, Good heavens, Duke and North Carolina have been 1-2 over the last 15 years, but State fans don't see that. They just see them as two local programs."
Says Sendek, "It's a tough street corner. North Carolina won the championship two years ago, Duke was ranked No. 1 in the country for most of last season, and North Carolina will probably be No. 1 at the beginning of next season. Our fans want to do favorably well against those schools. It's just part of the territory."
I certainly don't find fault with fans who want their teams to beat local rivals and compete for national championships. But allowing expectations to get so out of whack only hurts their team's chances of doing just that. In time, N.C. State will be able to overtake Duke and North Carolina, but it probably won't happen until after Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski are gone. It could be 10 years or more before that happens. At a time when the coaching profession has never been less secure, it's no wonder so many well-respected names are reluctant to move onto this street corner.
So it must be hard to be an N.C. State fan these days. One day you think your program is a premier destination, the next day you find out it's a notch below Memphis and West Virginia. Yet Robinson, for one, hopes something positive can come out of the humiliating comeuppance. "This situation might be good for everybody -- the school and the fans," Robinson says. "This might be our chance to take a good look at ourselves and say, 'You know what? We had a pretty good coach here.'"
***I think he hit the nail on the head with this one folks!***
-Corey  5/4/2006 12:00:48 PM
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