Originally Posted by
Mudge
^^THIS!^^ I remember Valvano as a guy who brought in a lot of questionable character guys (Bailey, Lowe, and Whittenburg were not his guys-- they were Norm Sloan's-- Valvano brought in guys like L. Charles, C. Washburn, C. Corchiani, C. McQueen, etc.) and then got cheating while doing it-- and only got forced out, when he didn't win as much as State fans expected, after getting caught cheating. I remember Valvano's players as being disinterested students (at best), and I certainly didn't get the sense that his players' academic progress was important to Valvano (other than to make sure they stayed eligible for their 4-5 years at State)... but apparently, people cut you a lot of slack, if you're funny (cf.- JFK)... and of course, no one wants to speak ill of the dead, especially someone who died relatively young, so the "God rest his soul" theme also causes people to give Valvano a lot of latitude (again, cf.- JFK)... but in the interest of giving equal time to a much different view of Valvano at NC State:
I must be the only person on this board who was rooting hard for Houston in that game, and was incredibly disappointed when Whittenburg missed that shot (badly), and Charles was just dumb lucky enough to be standing there when/where no one expected the ball to be there. I had the same feeling when Charles put that missed shot back in that I did when Kentucky's Sean Woods banked in a straight-on shot from beyond the free-throw line, to put Kentucky ahead of Duke with 2 seconds to go in 1992-- i.e.-- what a great team Duke had, and how terrible that their tremendous season is going to be spoiled by a ridiculous shot like that-- the better team is not going to win. (Fortunately, Duke still had enough to time-- and a miracle-- to put things right with the world.)
I remember disliking NC State almost as much as UNC... I hated the way Valvano's teams played, and I hated the way he was a non-stop series of gyrations on the sideline, orchestrating every last move of his players, while standing on/in the court-- it was almost as if he didn't even trust his players to so much as set a screen, without him directing their every move. (I interpreted this as Valvano had recruited really dumb players, and then was unable to "coach them up" to the point that they could act on their own, so instead he had to give them constant oversight on every moment of every possession.) I hated the constant intentional fouling-- it ruined the flow and pace of every close game. (I wish they had given a single "bonus" shot plus the ball, to the fouled team; the best compromise ever was the short-lived test rule, where teams had the choice of taking the ball out of bounds, instead of shooting.)
For me, this film (of which I have only watched snippets, so far) continues the ESPN tradition (along with the innumerable re-broadcasts of his now-famous ESPY speech) of whitewashing the Jim Valvano legacy. To me, Valvano was a typical win-at-any-cost basketball coach, not much different in his coaching and recruiting practices than John Calipari (except he never had the bully recruiting pulpit of UK, to help him reel in the most athletically elite recruits in the country, so instead, he recruited lower athletic quality, lower character, lower academic quality players-- and cheated to do it-- and then did the best he could with them). I give him credit for getting a lot out of what he was able to bring in-- but I think he had some serious ethical flaws.