ShareThisThe same pejorative words and damning phrases kept coming up when Mark Gottfried asked about the North Carolina State men's basketball program he inherited.
"Selfish," "didn't play hard," "didn't play together" -- this is what the Wolfpack's new coach heard about his team, which finished 15-16 last season, outside the NCAA tournament for the fifth straight time.
"I heard those comments about our team," Gottfried said. "There's nothing I can do to change the past, but what do we do from here?"
That's the crossroads where Gottfried, 47, an accomplished college coach who was out of the game for two years, finds himself with a proud Wolfpack program, one of only 14 with two NCAA titles but almost 30 years removed from its most recent one.
The program won national championships in 1974 and '83, and 60 years further back, it was the main player in the creation of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball under Everett Case. In recent years, the Wolfpack has slumped to the bottom third of the conference, with sparse postseason success in the past 20 years.
Gottfried, who took Alabama and Murray State to the NCAA tournament seven times in 14 years as a coach, has not side-stepped the big-picture issues during his seven months on the job succeeding Sidney Lowe.
He has put together one of the best recruiting classes in the country for next season, with three in-state products who rank among the top 70 prospects in the country, including two in the top 25.
But Gottfried has tried to be as realistic about this season, and the state of the program, as he can be.
What Gottfried wants the team to become in the immediate future, before the recruiting help arrives, is one that puts in the maximum effort in its preparation, in both practice and the weight room.
He wants a program built from the ground up, on the pyramid of principles established by coaching legend John Wooden at UCLA, where Gottfried worked for eight seasons as an assistant coach before taking the Murray State job in 1995.
Sophomore guard Lorenzo Brown said there already is a difference in attitude and work ethic among the players.
"We weren't pushed as much as we should have been," Brown said. "We didn't have enough leadership on the team."
The promising freshman trio of Brown, Ryan Harrow and C.J. Leslie was supposed to push the Wolfpack, a National Invitation Tournament team the previous season, into the NCAA tournament last season.
But forward Tracy Smith, the team's leading scorer and focal point of the offense the previous two seasons, missed 10 games with a knee injury. The team never found a rhythm, with or without Smith.
The talented freshmen had their moments -- Leslie led the team in rebounding and Brown in assists -- but they couldn't string those moments together during ACC play, where the Wolfpack finished 5-11 in regular-season games.
Harrow, last season's point guard who produced an uneven 9.3 points and 3.3 assists per game, transferred to Kentucky shortly after Gottfried was hired.
In Brown (9.4 points per game, 3.8 assists per game), Leslie (11.2 ppg, 7.1 rebounds per game), shooting guard Scott Wood (72 3-pointers) and power forward Richard Howell (6.4 rpg), Lowe left Gottfried a foundation to be competitive in a what should be a down season overall in the ACC.
Gottfried has singled out senior guard C.J. Williams, an on-again, off-again starter under Lowe, as a key to the team's success.
Williams has developed as a shooter and leader in his three seasons. But he has been the "other" C.J. on the roster. In part, that's why Gottfried has taken to calling Leslie by his given name, Calvin.
A 6-foot-8 forward, Leslie was considered a recruiting savior a year ago but displayed wild swings of production during an uneven freshman season.
Leslie, who was suspended one game by Lowe last season for attitude issues, has impressed Gottfried. "He's willing to make changes and play harder and play better and be more responsible," Gottfried said.
Leslie, in a sign of maturity, understands he has to be more engaged and more consistent than he was last season.
"The past is the past," he said. "You can learn from it, but you can't go back. I've got a new year to focus on."
That's the same message his coach has been preaching. Gottfried already has one convert.
(Contact J.P. Giglio at jgiglio(at)newsobserver.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
