Featherston's Article

[Ping Lin]

I believe Al Featherston's article merits another post (as opposed to the "Ugly Sister" post which references a different article).

tl;dr version of what follows: I believe Featherston had some good arguments about NC State's national misperception, but is largely unfair to Herb Sendek and either dismisses or ignores relevant points.

Now, I also caught the woeful Herb graphic (and its attendant incorrect commentary) during the NC State - UNC game, and that topic is probably what has helped produce the relative raft of commentary about this whole "ugly sister" bit...heck, even Seth Davis has jumped into the act.

But, in short, I firmly believe the overwhelmingly negative attitude toward Herb Sendek is less about the results he produced on the court and more about "fans who had grown weary of his boring style of play, his boring public persona (one-on-one, Herb could be quite engaging and personable … but put him in front of an audience or a microphone and he became a cliché-machine)". Seriously, are we going to prosecute and condemn a coach for his personality -- as Featherston appears to agree with?

Furthermore, in comparison with the two coaches' records, Featherston once again ignores the fact that the two teams Sendek and Lowe inherited were absolutely different. One was so undermanned and short-handed that they essentially had to leave free throws unguarded during the ACC tournament to allow their players a rest, whose key reserve was... Luke Buffum. The other had a number of four-star players and experienced players coming off of several NCAA tournament appearances. Granted the cupboard wasn't completely full -- several recruits, notably Chris Wright, left when Sendek did, and Brackman and Simmons didn't return in any case -- but the two situations could not have been more different...again, not even mentioned during the comparison. With a cupboard almost as bare as possible, Sendek wasn't going to be sniffing the NCAAs anytime soon.

Featherston also does not even mention that Herb Sendek's ACC win rate placed him at #3 in the conference, just behind us and UNC -- and this while Duke was setting records in terms of ACC wins! -- which is a far cry from the "mediocrity" he refers to. How one can put up Lowe's last-place ACC win total while completely ignoring Sendek's #3 mark is, shall we say, misleading. And dare I add there is no mention of how many other ACC teams made the NCAAs five consecutive times during the same time period?

Finally, a bit of meta- analysis here. It seems to me that, as I hinted above, Featherston's beef with Sendek is largely visceral in nature, and this is a bigger driver than any desire to stand up for, say, Sidney Lowe. How do I get this impression? Well consider that this article just printed is Featherston's second longest of the year, only behind the great reminiscences of Duke and UNC games in glory days past. That combined with several hints of grievance (the word "success" in quotes, the consistent use of the word mediocrity as if it were a given) give me the strong impression that it's emotion that is the primary driver of the article rather than cool analysis.

Now that I've thrown out all these criticisms, there's some things I want to mention that I definitely agree with Featherston on. Sendek is probably no more than an above-average coach. The circumstances of his leaving and Lowe's hiring are distorted in the media. And, perhaps most importantly, NC State absolutely positively does have a rich basketball history that they should be justifiably proud of. None of the prior facts, however, really justify distorting a prior head coach's record to prove a point.

[Bob Green]

None of the prior facts, however, really justify distorting a prior head coach's record to prove a point.

I read the article and did not come away with the perception Al Featherston was bashing Herb Sendek. I believe he was defending the N.C. State basketball program, by pointing out the inaccuracies being portrayed in the national media.


Just because new AD Debbie Yow is unlikely to hire a proven BCS-level winner does not mean she can’t make a great hire … maybe a mid-level Division 1 head coach such as the guys Duke, N.C. State and Georgia Tech all found in the early 1980s when they picked up Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano and Bobby Cremins from Army, Iona and Appalachian State, respectively.

She just has to find the right guy.

From my perspective, this is the point Featherston was building up to in the article. N.C. State fans need to give AD Debbie Yow the opportunity to make a hire and rebuild the program. N.C. State does not have to accept mediocrity.


...give me the strong impression that it's emotion that is the primary driver of the article rather than cool analysis.

The same can be said about your post. I find your post to be more emotional than Al Featherston's article.

[allenmurray]

I'm a big fan of Al Featherston and always enjoy his writing. The one thing that left me a bit puzled about this article was a seeming contradiction. First he makes a good case as to why Sendak's first five years are so very different from Lowe's first five years when he says


However, there’s a problem with evaluating Sendek. His 10-year tenure should be divided into two parts – his first five years and his second five years. In his first five seasons, when he struggled to rebuild a program shattered by NCAA probation and (far worse) some draconian self-imposed sanctions, Sendek’s record looked a lot like Lowe’s.

Then ho goes on to compare them when he says:


Those two records are astonishingly similar – even down to the coincidence of an improbable first-year run to the ACC title game.

Featherston already made a good case for why you shouldn't compare the two records (Sendak's first five years with Lowe's first five) - Sendak inherited a total mess and Lowe did not. Instead the more fair comparison is Sendak's second five years with Lowe's record - a comparison that looks pretty bad for El Sid.

[Wander]

He puts too much emphasis on history. Depaul was a good program in the 1980's and is now probably the single worst BCS program. There's mathematically not enough Final Fours and conference championships to go around for every school to be as good as their historical best. I agree with the basics of the article by Parrish (who is easily the best national college basketball guy in the country).

That said, I do kind of sympathize with NC State. There are 6 programs widely considered to be the best all-time, and only 2 of them are in the same conference, let alone the same exact urban area. It's a sucky situation to be in for a 3rd basketball school.

[Reilly]

I saw this thread before reading Featherston's piece, so it got me interested and I went and read it. To me, it was another in a long, long line of 'ho-hum' Featherston pieces in that they all seem very much the same: interesting, thoughtful, detailed, well-reasoned, well-researched, well-written, heavy on data analysis, careful, cool ..... he's sort of a one-trick pony ....

[sandinmyshoes]

One thing that seems lost in all this NCSU evaluation, is that the last time Duke and UNC were in the position NCSU is in right now, they did not go out and hire big name coaches. UNC did so with McGuire, but afterward, Dean Smith was just an assistant, and Coach K was at Army.

In both those cases, the early returns were iffy. I clearly remember how many people wanted Coach K gone in those early years.

The question seems, will NCSU fans give Lowe, or his replacement time to get the pieces in place?