North Carolina State University Athletics
PACK PERSPECTIVE: Lowe Welcomed into ACC Coaching Fraternity
11/7/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
GREENSBORO -- Sidney Lowe sat in the crowded room, talking about the old days and the future.
Some of the reporters at the annual ACC Operation Basketball at the Grandover Resort in Greensboro were there when Lowe, Dereck Whittenburg and Thurl Bailey led NC State on its remarkable nine-game postseason run in 1983 to win perhaps the most improbable NCAA championship in the history of college basketball.
Some of them weren’t even born yet.
Also spread throughout the room were the 11 colleagues and competitors that Lowe will square off against this coming season, and not one of them expressed any doubts that the new NC State head man would be effective in building a program at his alma mater, despite the fact that he has no college coaching experience.
Those who know that Lowe has worked more than two decades in professional basketball believe he is as well prepared as any new coach can be entering college basketball’s toughest league.
“He’s got a great background, starting back at DeMatha High School with Morgan Wootten and then at NC State with Jimmy Valvano and on into the pros,” Maryland head coach Gary Williams said. “He brings all that with him to NC State.
“I think certain people can coach, whether they are pro coaches, high school coaches or college coaches. I don’t think you necessarily have to have been a college head coach somewhere before you can come to [a place like] NC State and be a head coach.”
It was quite intriguing to hear each of the coaches share his thoughts on the newest member of the ACC coaching fraternity. Lowe himself would probably be surprised.
He may not want to hear it, but one of his fellow head coaches in the league idolized Lowe as a kid. That’s how big of an NC State fan Miami’s Frank Haith was back in 1983 as a junior at Burlington’s Eastern Alamance High School.
“Sid doesn’t know it, but I am a big, big fan of his,” Haith said, probably sounding a little giddier than he should have. “I haven’t really told him that. I just got to meet him.”
Three of his fellow coaches tried to recruit Lowe and Whittenburg, his backcourt partner, when they were playing at DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, Md. But Oliver Purnell, Seth Greenberg and Roy Williams were obviously not successful. (A fourth, Gary Williams, didn’t even try. He was a young head coach across town at Washington’s American University, but he knew he had no shot of recruiting the prep All-Americans.)
Lowe and Whittenburg had their sights set on Norm Sloan’s program at NC State, and super-recruiter Eddie Biedenbach was not about to let anyone out-work the Wolfpack for the high-profile successors to Kenny Carr and Hawkeye Whitney in Wootten’s program.
Roy Williams, in his first year as a full-time assistant on Dean Smith’s staff at North Carolina in the spring of 1979, was so new on the job that he declined DeMatha coach Morgan Wootten’s invitation to meet Lowe and Whittenburg the first time he ever stepped foot in the DeMatha gym.
“I have never been so dadgum scared in all my life,” said Williams. “Here I am in my first year of recruiting, and they want me to come in and talk to these two guys. We had the bump rule back then, and I didn’t want to do anything I wasn’t supposed to. We watched them play quite a bit, and I thought Lowe was a great leader on the court.”
Lowe might have fit in well at North Carolina. Wootten used the same kind of offensive system that Smith used all those years, with similar plays and terminology. Smith and Wootten were close friends.
“My heart was at NC State,” Lowe said then and now.
Williams knew that, then and now, and he expects that Lowe will bring the same kind of love for his alma mater that both he and Gary Williams have brought to their schools. Both the Williamses have led their schools to national championships, just as Everett Case-protg Norm Sloan did with NC State back in 1974.
More importantly, Lowe will bring a vast knowledge of the game to the program, even if it was not learned on the college level.
“He will have the positive of telling guys, I spent X number of years in the NBA, and I know what it takes to get there,’” Roy Williams said. “I think he will do a great job.”
Lowe has appreciated all the kind works and the welcoming arms with which he has been greeted by this elite community. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski a close friend of Valvano and the boss of one of Lowe’s best friends in the coaching community, Blue Devils assistant Johnny Dawkins was one of the first to congratulate Lowe on getting the job and to offer to help in any way he could.
“He is a good man, and I think they will do a real good job,” Krzyzewski said of Lowe and his staff of Monte Towe, Larry Harris and Pete Strickland.
Others also called to offer any help they could give during Lowe’s transition from NBA assistant to college head coach, even though most of the offers expired prior to Oct. 13, when practice began for all college teams.
For Lowe, it was a classy way to begin the tenure of his dream job.
“Several of them have said, if you have any questions, if there is something you are not sure of, don’t hesitate to call,” Lowe said. “All of them, at one point, were where I am right now, getting started with their programs. Whether someone did the same thing for them or not, they all remember what it is like to be here at the beginning. Or maybe they remembered some of the things they went through, and wished that someone had offered to help.
“They have all been great in making me feel comfortable sitting in this chair.”
That, of course, was for the congenial, out-of-season, welcome-to-the-league occasion. Now that November has arrived, Lowe expects to see the true competitive side of his coaching rivals.
“We all understand what is at stake here,” Lowe said. “We are all competitors. When we hit the floor, that is when business starts.”
And Lowe and his squad are ready to ring the opening bell on a new era of Wolfpack basketball.
Tim Peeler is managing editor of www.GoPack.com and a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker. He can be reached at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
