Basketball has certainly become a global game, which means college coaches like Sidney Lowe have a potentially MUCH larger recruiting pool than they did 30, 20 or even just 10 years ago.
If you have a subscription to TBJ you can read the full article (I don't), but the folks at SFN have shared the numbers of interest:
In 2008 NC State’s recruiting budget was $275k on football and $125 on men’s basketball.
UNC’s budget expenses totaled $629k on football and $175k on men’s basketball.
The league averages, according to an anonymous survey, were $350k (FB) and $133k (MBB).
When asked, Duke reported that it spends more than the league average on football.
Since Butch Davis has been in Chapel Hill, UNC’s budget for football recruiting has increased 24% up from $506k in 2006-07. The really sad part? Reports indicate that our trend is heading in the opposite direction. TOB’s budget was $325k last year, but has been decreased to $275k for 2009-10.
If you read on at SFN you can tell the folks are rather peased at the situation, and there is cause for concern, but my take is not as dire.
Yes, State should be spending more on its recruiting budget. There's no reason we should be below the league average and there certainly should be no reason why the number should ever decrease moving forward.
However, there's no reason we should ever spend $629K for football, either. After all, that $304K difference has to come from somewhere. How many football scholarships could you endow forever with that money? Five? Ten?
The article states that the vast majority of these expenses are travel and lodging; if Butch and his staff insist on flying first class and staying in five-star spots while Tom flies Southwest and kicks it at the Holiday Inn, who am I to argue? If at the end of the day it's about getting in the door of a recruit's home or attending a game in person, what difference does it make where the coach stays or how he got there?
Now, you want to ensure that the budget never limits a coach's means to get in front of a recruit. If the budget ever stands in the way of coach O'Brien flying out to see a player on the west coast or keeps him from bringing along a position coach, then that's a major problem and entirely unacceptable. And with the numbers as low as they are, maybe the budget is hamstringing the coach a bit. It's worth mentioning that Sidney Lowe offered up comments saying it's no big deal, but Tom wasn't quoted at all.
But assuming there's nothing holding coach O'Brien back in his recruiting efforts, monetarily, I don't have a huge problem with it. Let Butch wave his blank checks in front of our face...to me, I just see a coach wasting valuable athletic dollars.
I can't begin to tell you how big this game is for a young team like State. To go on the road, following a tough loss at home, and beat a superior team on their court after trailing 11 at the half is just remarkable. I'm not sure what Sidney told the team at halftime, but if you bottled it up and sold it, you'd make a fortune.
As bad as the team shot in the Northwestern game, they tipped the scales the other direction in the second half. State shot a mind-blowing 81.3% eFG% (20-28 from two and a perfect 4-4 from three) and scored 52 points to go from 11 down to 14 up, all in a matter of about 15 minutes. They got to that margin on this NASTY alley oop from Javy Gonzalez to Tracy Smith:
The final five minutes were an adventure at the free throw line. After pushing the lead back to 12 on an and-one from Tracy Smith at the 1:04 mark, State missed 7 of its last 10 free throw attempts. Further complicating matters was State's inability to prevent the Golden Eagles from drilling three treys in about :45.
But in the end the lead was large enough to hold and State settled the score from last year's buzzer-beater loss in the RBC Center.
This is the kind of win where, if everything breaks right over the course of the year, it would look really good on the resume of a bubble NCAA team. State would have to steal some wins in the league just to get to 8-8 and get into the conversation, but with the way this team is playing--fighting through adversity, sticking together even when the shots aren't falling--a .500 conference mark is certainly possible.
First things first, though: it needs to win the games it should win (Elon and Georgia Southern) to set the table for a big conference-opener against Wake Forest in Winston-Salem and a quick turnaround road-trip to Arizona--two very winnable games. Finish this stretch 4-0 and...well, let just say that some heads will start turning State's way as one of the surprise teams of the league thus far.
We just need to put some fannies in the RBC Center to cheer them on...
There's a good bit of random State what-not floating around the innerwebs today, so instead of cranking out a bunch of tiny posts, let me knock 'em all out here:
