A Wolf In Winter

Winter Performance Director’s Cup Era

Performing a deep dive on NC State Winter Sports during the Director’s Cup era yielded this nugget, while seemingly always in the Top 25, and having an Olympian in the most recent Summer Games, Rifle has never finished 8th or higher nationally and thus has never earned NC State any Director’s Cup points.

I estimate that this year NC State has a 15% chance of winning an NCAA team title in Swimming (Men currently 3rd, Women currently 14th) and a 5% chance in Wrestling (currently 5th). That’s the best odds, I have for NC State in any sports this year. This year is likely the best chance in the Director’s Cup era to win an NCAA title since the Women’s Cross Country Team finished 2nd overall.

Women’s Basketball

It’s appropriate that we have a statue to Kay Yow on campus, let’s start there. Her teams earned 11 NCAA tournament appearances during the Director’s Cup era. Prior to that, Kay Yow led teams finished had 6 Top-10 finishes and an additional 8 Top-20 finishes. That level of sustained success over her career is just astounding.

The post-Kay Yow era has been a bit rougher, with Kellie Harper getting the team to the first round in her first year, but then not so much in the later years. Debbie Yow replaced Harper with Wes Moore.

Moore has led the program back into the tourney twice in his tenure and seems primed for a repeat performance. This season’s performance is just one June removed from a senior-led squad that was a few bad calls away from the Sweet 16.

Men’s Basketball

Talk amongst yourselves, here are the high/low-lights:

Les Robinson - The 8/9 seed game in the ACC when there were 9 teams in the ACC was named the Les Robinson Invitational (or LRI). Moving on…

Herb Sendek - First 5 seasons, not great Bob, half the fan-base alienated forever. Last 5 seasons, pretty good, but not great. Fled to the desert…

Sidney Lowe - Had an awesome red blazer. Brought in a couple of great recruits that blossomed under…

Mark Gottfried - They had to guard us too, pal. However, we never tried to guard them. Really good recruiter. Tailed off after four straight NCAA appearances to start his NC State tenure, leading to...

Kevin Keatts - Still in his honeyjune period

Women’s Gymnastics

Mark Stevenson led the NC State Gymnastics program from its inception 37 years ago until his retirement following last season. While Stevenson’s best finish over his tenure was 11th, he also was remarkably consistent in qualifying for the NCAA Regionals, and in so doing, scoring Director’s Cup points for NC State.

Let’s just put it out there, Debbie Yow owns non-revenue coaching hires. Yow replaced Mark Stevenson with a triple twisting, double flipping hire in Kim Landrus of Illinois. As head coach for seven seasons at Illinois, Landrus led the Illini to Top 25 finishes in each of her 7 seasons. Her team’s 11th place national finishes in 2011, 2013 and 2014, were the three highest finishes in school history.

The Gymnastics team does not have its own dedicated practice facility. The team has to share its practice space with a rock climbing wall for the Student Body at large. If any of you want to suggest the next facility for the Wolfpack Club, I think this would be a great investment.

Co-ed Rifle

Fun fact, since there are 23 D1, 3 D2, and 3 D3 programs, the NCAA holds a single tournament across D1, D2, and D3 for Rifle. The fact that there are only 23 NCAA schools that have NCAA Rifle programs explains how NC State is consistently in the Top 20 for Rifle for the past 27 years under Head Coach Keith Miller, while having never earned any points for the Director’s Cup through a minimum of a Top-8 finish over the history of the Director’s Cup.

Another fun fact, Rifle was not a part of the Director’s Cup calculations until the 95-96 season. On June 12th, 1995, Director’s Cup President, Hugh J. Target, noticed 29 distinct “laser pointers” on the right breast pocket of his shirt. Rifle was added as a part of the Director’s Cup calculations within moments of President Target seeing the red dots. On an unrelated note, many in Indianapolis reported a noxious urine odor across the city that day.

Women’s Swimming

Prior to Coach Holloway taking over the Men’s and Women’s Swim teams, the Women’s Swim team had a single season in which they scored any points in the Director’s Cup for NC State. Last season the NC State women finished 7th at the NCAA Nationals meet. This season they’re ranked 14th currently, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a performance close to that of last year.

Men’s Swimming

NC State has had a great history in terms of individual performers coming out of the Men’s Swim team. *David Fox, Cullen Jones, and most recently Ryan Held all earned Gold Medals in the 4x100 Freestyle at the Olympics for the US.

Prior to our current swim leadership, we had Brooks Teal, Scott Hammond, Beth Harrell, and Don Easterling all coach our teams.

Once Debbie Yow made a Triple Lindy hire in Coach Holloway, the swim team’s rise has been steep. This year’s team has the best chance to capture the first NCAA team title for NC State in the Director’s Cup era. NC State currently sits 3rd in the latest polls behind Texas and Cal.

*A personal note on David Fox, he and I were both in the NC State Alumni Association and Wolfpack Club in Philadelphia for several years. We watched many basketball and football games together. I knew he was a former swimmer at NC State, but that was really about it. It was the fourth year before I asked him about his career in swimming just to make conversation. He told me matter-of-factly, that he was an elite swimmer, and had swum in the gold medal-winning 4x100 relay at the Olympics in 1996. I still remember thinking, if the roles were reversed, I would wear that Gold Medal (or at least a replica) around my neck at all times. David Fox is a much better human being than I am.

Indoor Track and Field

When I noted earlier that Gymnastics Practice facility might be a good investment for the Wolfpack Club, I should have pointed out that their home matches are held at Reynolds Coliseum. Why is this important under Indoor Track and Field? Well, there isn’t an indoor facility for practice or matches for the Indoor Track team. This puts the track portion of the track and field team at a big disadvantage in training, as there is no place to run the banked curves of indoor track on the NC State campus. So, if you really want to help NC State Athletics overall, perhaps an Indoor Track Facility should take precedence over a Gymnastics training facility. Better yet, how about a building housing both an indoor track, and space for Gymnastics to train?

As for the Men’s and Women’s Indoor Track and Field teams themselves, they’ve been headed by Rollie Geiger for the duration of the Director’s Cup era (Spoiler Alert: Coach Geiger has also been the Head Coach for the Outdoor Track and Field Teams throughout the Director’s Cup era).

The performance on the track and in the field has been really noisy, with no discernable trend or pattern to the performances year in and year out. Looking through the records, its usually one to three athletes that qualify for points during the NCAA meet, and depending on how well those athletes perform, the team can range high or low.

Women’s Indoor Track and Field

The current team has some opportunities to score this year on both the Men’s and Women’s sides. On the women’s side, Laurie Evans could finish in Shot put or Weight throw. Additionally, Laurie Henes and Erika Kemp, both 5k runners, have a decent shot at finishing with a point or two for the women’s team at the NCAA meet.

Men’s Indoor Track and Field

On the men’s side, Joshua Davis has the best NCAA weight throw of the year so far and should be one of the favorites at the NCAA meet. Davis has twice been named ACC Athlete of the Week.

Wrestling

With all the well deserved excitement surrounding this year’s NC State Wrestling team, it’s worth looking at the history of the program. Unfortunately, as with many of NC State’s sports, the Director’s Cup era is not filled with the highs of program history. Of course, this has also produced the gallows humor that keeps all of you coming back for more of Steven and Omega’s wit.

Bob Guzzo led the Wolfpack for 30 years, with only the last 11 years captured in the Director’s Cup era. The season immediately prior to the Director’s Cup first season had the Wolfpack finishing 7th nationally. That is still a program best, though junefully it will be topped this season. In fact, Guzzo’s teams had 4 Top 10 finishes, and additional 8 Top 25 finishes. The Guzzo era also included 4 NCAA Individual Champions: Matt Reiss, Tab Thacker, Scott Turner, and Sylvester Terkay. Tab Thacker actually changed the rules of the Heavyweight division, as his 450+ pounds made him the immovable object, and now the division is limited to 285 pounds.

After the Guzzo retired, Carter Jordan took over the program and acted as a steady caretaker of a mid-level program that consistently scored Director’s Cup points for NC State. NC State also had its 5th individual NCAA champion, Darrion Caldwell, under Head Coach Carter Jordan.

Yow replaced Carter Jordan with current Head Coach, Pat “The Skip(per)” Popolizio. Popolizio coached NC State’s 6th NCAA Champion, Nick Gwiazdowski, who won back to back NCAA titles and came within seconds of winning a third NCAA title. Popolizio currently has NC State ranked 5th nationally, with matches coming up against #3 Oklahoma State in Italy, and #2 Ohio State in Reynolds. It would be a surprise if this season isn’t the new high bar for the NC State program. There’s an outside chance that the Wolfpack can win the NCAA title this year.

Conclusion

June is now a winter month.