North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Lowe's recruiting isn't over yet
8/21/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH – Recruiting for men’s basketball ended more than three weeks ago for most Division I coaches. But new NC State coach Sidney Lowe and his staff are still going hard after one particular target: junior dual-sport standout Andrew Brackman.
“He’s been our first priority,” Lowe said about the junior big man Monday afternoon. “We’ve recruited him like he was coming out of high school.”
To the point that earlier this month Lowe and his entire staff went to watch the right-hander pitch one inning in a USA Baseball exhibition game against the Fayetteville SwampDogs, a club in the wooden-bat Coastal Plains League.
And, Lowe added, they would have been on the first plane to Cuba to watch Brackman play in for Team USA, if U.S. travel restrictions didn’t prevent them from going to Fidel Castro’s island.
“Andrew is that important to us,” Lowe said. “He is our most important piece right now.”
The Wolfpack already lost one big man in Cedric Simmons, the 6-9 center who left school following his sophomore season for the NBA and was drafted in the first round of the June draft by the New Orleans Hornets. The Pack also lost two recruits who had signed letters of intent to play here last fall, but opted not to enroll after Lowe was hired in early May.
So losing another potential centerpiece – especially one who has now grown to an even 7-feet tall – would be difficult to overcome.
Meanwhile, NC State baseball coach Elliott Avent has been as hands-off on the matter as Lowe has been hands-on in trying to re-recruit Brackman.
“I don’t think Andrew has made up his mind yet,” Avent said. “I have left him alone all summer and intentionally haven’t talked to him about his plans for basketball and baseball.
“It is a family decision that will have to be made with Andrew’s best interest in mind. It’s not an easy decision, because I know that he is being pulled by his love of both sports and the positive things he is hearing from the scouts about his future in professional baseball.”
Lowe said he is willing to have Brackman be less involved with basketball than he has the last two years, as long as his basketball teammates are comfortable with that. So far, in his conversations with them in individual meetings, they seem to be fine with it.
“We realize that Andrew has a very rare opportunity to be able to play two sports on the highest level,” Lowe said. “And we certainly don’t want to do anything to jeopardize his ability to play baseball. So we’re going to try to work with him the best we can in every way.
“His teammates have been great about that too. They realize that Andrew has an opportunity that most guys don’t get. He could possibly play Major League baseball or NBA basketball.”
The last two years, basketball came first, with baseball being squeezed in when time allowed.
This past season, however, Brackman began his workouts with baseball much earlier than he did as a freshman and was part of the Wolfpack baseball team’s weekend rotation in every game he pitched. However, his season was cut short in mid-April by a stress fracture in his hip. In a total of seven appearances, Brackman was 1-3 with a 6.35 earned run average.
Lowe, who spent 23 years playing and coaching in the NBA before becoming the Wolfpack’s 18th head coach, may not carry a radar gun to games, like every baseball scout does, but he knows that Brackman has great potential on the pitcher’s mound. The also believes he could have a professional basketball career if continues to develop.
“A kid that big with his hands and his ability to face up and take shots, NBA scouts are looking for that all the time,” Lowe said. “That’s one of the reasons you see so many foreign players in the NBA Draft now because we don’t have enough guys here that can do the kinds of things that Andrew can do.
“He’s a rare breed.”
One Lowe is working hard to ensure is part of both the basketball and baseball programs.
Tim Peeler can be reached at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
