Doesn't matter how long N.C. State search lasts, matters how it ends.

    At N.C. State every search for a basketball coach feels like a journey. Call a leading coach and you expect to hear, "Hi, this is X and I can't come to the phone right now because I'm turning down N.C. State."

    But turn-downs real and imagined won't matter if the Wolfpack hires the right man.

     Sidney Lowe was the wrong man. If he had succeeded, we wouldn't be talking about the coaches that rejected the job before it became his.

     I don't know how many have said no since Lowe went away. There are still outstanding candidates available, among them Shaka Smart of Virginia Commonwealth and Gregg Marshall of Wichita State.

     Some N.C. State supporters might want bigger names. Many fans are hung up on big names. If he ain't famous, he ain't for us.

      But Smart has his team in the Final Four and Marshall's team just won the NIT.

      I don't know Smart. I spent time with Marshall, who is from Greenwood, S.C., when he coached at Winthrop. Went to his house. Intense guy. His dream job then was Charlotte.

     Marshall can recruit and coach and has long had major college hair.

     He also has the quality all leaders must -- his players believe that if they do what he asks, they'll win.

    And they do. 

Comments

[Stankonya]

they need herb toms.... not they old coach herb but fo tweenty herb. they bess leeve vcu coach lone toms. thatd be durty,. stank out

[Ben]

Doesn't matter how long, it matters how it ends. Sounds like you read the Raleigh N&O from 5 years ago during the last search.

[metro49er]

Fire Bobby Lutz, hire Gregg Marshall. If only it was 2005.

[Turtle]

I argued for years that UNCC should hire Marshall or Brad Brownell or Steve Lavin and got laughed at over on NNN. Thats why that place has been and always will be a joke.

[Tiffany Jewellery]

Tiffany Jewelry Online Creative design, as the feelings burst forth from the first spark to the long accumulation of sublimation;