When asked to break down the season following the Wolfpack’s loss to Temple on Friday in Dayton, Ohio, N.C. State head coach Mark Gottfried showed little willingness to make excuses for what many believe to be an underachieving season for the Wolfpack.
With the loss to the Owls, a seed lower than NCSU, the time for mincing words had passed.
Phrases to describe the team like “immaturity at times,” “hard at times to have everybody buy in,” “doing things the right way” and “putting team first” cropped up from Gottfried unexpectedly in the final post-game press conference of the season.
The coach bluntly and personally accepted all blame for not living up to the lofty preseason expectations.
“I take full responsibility,” Gottfried said.
In many ways, it was almost as if the ending of the 2012-13 campaign gave Gottfried the freedom and enough cover to express views that had been on his mind for several weeks — things he was previously unwilling to say publicly.
Having a wildly inconsistent and underachieving season in the course of building a successful program, along with searching for answers as to why a team is not fulfilling its potential, is a quandary that is not exclusive to Gottfried. Nor has Gottfried been the only coach to experience lofty preseason hype and fail.
In 1985, Mike Krzyzewski of Duke had a team returning all five starters from an NCAA tournament team from the previous season and was ranked as high as No. 2 for several weeks. But the Blue Devils were an average team in the second half of the year after opening with 12 straight wins and finished 23-8 after a befuddling one-point loss to a Boston College team coached by Gary Williams and led by diminutive guard Michael Adams in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Jim Valvano also had to deal with inconsistency and pressure to take a veteran team far. During the 1982 season, the Wolfpack made its first NCAA Tournament appearance under the charismatic coach but was surprisingly upset by Tennessee-Chattanooga, 58-51, in its opening contest, which raised questions as to whether Valvano had what it took to lead State on a deep run in March.
N.C. State now faces the loss of senior forwards Richard Howell and Scott Wood. The Pack also will potentially deal with the departures of Lorenzo Brown and the mercurial junior forward C.J. Leslie in the coming weeks to the NBA Draft. Gottfried is close to losing all of the talent he inherited when he accepted the job after the 2011 season.
But Gottfried was also reflective in regards N.C. State’s growth since his arrival.
“I also kind of look at the big picture here,” Gottfried said Friday. “And I see the picture of winning 48 games in two years and going to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments, getting back to the top-25 here and there. … So, there are good things happening.”
The coming off-season, with its departures, will be a bridge that Gottfried and the N.C. State basketball program will cross. But where it will lead the program is still not clear. Regardless of who actually leaves or transfers, there will still be significant talent remaining in Raleigh and more on the horizon.
There has been a willingness from most to give Gottfried some leeway with the inconsistency this season, since his two teams at State have still been a marked improvement over the previous five years.
The listlessness of Sidney Lowe’s tenure as head coach has faded away and is a repressed memory now. For all of its suffering over N.C. State’s mediocrity during throughout the last 25 years, the Wolfpack Nation has never had a problem with raising its expectations or letting its voice be heard when it like what it sees.
The biggest benefit for Gottfried that comes from that exodus of players will come from the knowledge that N.C. State basketball from here on will be almost a complete reflection of the work he and his staff have done since arriving in Raleigh. He can no longer blame his predecessor for his team’s shortcomings.
The willingness for Gottfried to take responsibility publicly is probably the best gesture he could have possibly made at his final post-game press conference of the season.
Whether he realized it or not, instructing the media to “put it all on me” was actually an effective preemptive measure.
Gottfried has taken N.C. State to places it has not been for far too long. Starting next season, he will probably get more of the blame if he cannot expand on the growth of the program.
