The NC State basketball program is one that is steeped in rich tradition. The legacy of Everett Case, David Thompson, and Jim Valvano; the two national championship trophies that sit proudly in the Dail Basketball Center; and the hundreds of former players who proudly donned the red and white and earned their degrees from their beloved university are all testament to that fact.
An important part of the Wolfpack’s storied history moved from the past to the present on May 5, 2006, when Sidney Lowe was named the 18th head coach in the program’s history. When Lowe first stood on the sidelines for the Wolfpack, he simply reassumed the reins of a program he had already helped to an NCAA championship. The first time, however, he was still in uniform, a coach-on-the-court point guard for Valvano’s team that made its improbable run to the 1983 national title.
Valvano said it so many times: He sent Lowe onto the floor and told him not to come off until after the win was secured. That’s why in that famous game on April 4, 1983, in Albuquerque, N.M, Lowe never came out of the game. And he played to near perfection: 40 minutes, eight points, eight assists and no turnovers.
“He may be the finest point guard to ever play in the ACC,” the late Valvano said after that miraculous season.
Now entering his fourth season with the Wolfpack, Lowe has brought a new sense of excitement to the program.
In his first season at the helm of the program, Lowe won 20 games and advanced from the first-round to the finals of the ACC Tournament. He became just the fourth head coach in the Wolfpack’s storied history to win that many games in his first year. One of the highlights of that season was a home win over No. 3 North Carolina, marking the first time a first-year head coach defeated a team ranked that high.
In his second season, Lowe sent his first recruit to the NBA. After leading the 2008-09 squad in both points and rebounds, J.J. Hickson was taken in the first round of the NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Last season, the Pack might not of obtained the results Lowe was looking for, but the Pack got a big boost in the classroom. The Wolfpack scored a 995 out of a possible 1,000 in the NCAA's annual APR, the highest score among the 12 ACC schools and in the top 10 percent of all NCAA Division I schools. Six members of the 2008-09 team finished the year with a GPA of 3.0 or higher.
None of those single factors is the reason that Lowe has become such a beloved figure in Wolfpack lore. But the combination of them all, plus the fact that this job is the continuation of a 30-year relationship between Lowe and the Wolfpack, ensure that he has earned a place among the all-time greats ever to be associated with NC State basketball .
Lowe was fortunate enough to learn the game from some of basketball’s greatest coaches, from Hall of Fame DeMatha Catholic High School coach Morgan Wootten to NC State coaches Norm Sloan and Jim Valvano to his NBA mentors Flip Saunders and Mike Fratello. Between them, Lowe’s influences coached teams that won five high school national championships, two NCAA titles, five ACC championships and a pair of professional basketball championships.
Prior to his return to NC State, Lowe spent 23 years playing and coaching professional basketball, winning three Continental Basketball Association championships as a player and twice being an NBA head coach. He now believes he can translate what he has learned over the last quarter century in the pros to the college game.
And having the chance to do so at the school where he played – a place he dearly loves – makes this the greatest opportunity and challenge of his professional life.
“I know I am the right person for this job,” Lowe says. “Basketball-wise, I have had the experience of being in the game for a long time. I have played this game on [the college level] and on the highest level and in the biggest national championship game ever. That is something I can pass on to our players.
“I can speak from experience. When you are talking to kids, they know you have been through the wars. I know a lot of kids aspire to play in the NBA. I feel like I can work with them and teach them the things they need to know.
“My love for this university and for this area runs deep. My commitment here will be second to no one else who would have gotten this job.”
Lowe’s connection to NC State is similar to other coaches in the ACC who have returned to their schools and found success. Both Gary Williams at Maryland and Roy Williams at North Carolina returned to the programs where they once played and guided their alma maters to national championships.
Lowe came to NC State with his long-time backcourt partner Dereck Whittenburg in the summer of 1979. They had played together for three years under Wootten at DeMatha, and as juniors helped the Hall of Fame coach win the fourth of his five high school national championships by leading the Stags to a perfect 28-0 record.
“If ever you saw a coach on the floor, that was Sidney,” Wootten says. “He understood the game so thoroughly, even as a high school player. He had a tremendous feel for the game. He made everybody else better. He made everybody else believe in themselves. He wanted to be part of something greater than himself. He left his ego at the door.
“One thing I can tell you as a coach, when Sidney had the ball in his hands, you knew everything was going to be all right.”
After graduation, both Lowe and Whittenburg followed in the footsteps of several other star DeMatha players, like Kenny Carr and Charles “Hawkeye” Whitney, in making the trek from Hyattsville, Md, to Raleigh. They were recruited by Sloan and his assistants, Eddie Biedenbach and Monte Towe, all of whom were integral parts of bringing NC State its first NCAA championship in 1974.
“I remember watching David Thompson when I was in high school,” Lowe says. “I liked Coach Sloan – loved his jackets. I think I liked the yellow-and-black one the best. If he hadn’t worn those jackets, I might not have been attracted here. Norm Sloan is the main reason I came to NC State.”
But Sloan left his alma mater after Lowe’s freshman year, replaced by the fast-talking Valvano. Lowe thought about leaving as well, but decided to remain with Valvano, which would be looked on as a momentous decision three years later.
As a sophomore, in Valvano’s first year, the Wolfpack struggled to a 14-13 record. Following the season, Lowe helped lead the United States to a gold medal in the 1981 World University Games in Bucharest, Romania, twice making key plays that helped defeat the Soviet Union. The first was on a last-second, 70-foot heave and the second was on a driving layup over a 7-foot-5 player.
Back at NC State, Lowe, Whittenburg and fellow Washington native Thurl Bailey helped the Wolfpack make the 1982 NCAA Tournament, where they lost in the first round to Tennessee-Chattanooga. But they had big expectations for their senior season in 1982-83, at least until Whittenburg broke his foot in a January game against Virginia, an injury that was thought to be career-ending.
What happened next is one of college basketball’s greatest Cinderella stories: The Wolfpack reshaped itself under the leadership of Lowe and Bailey, the maturation of sophomores Lorenzo Charles, Cozell McQueen and Terry Gannon and the scoring of freshman Ernie Myers. Whittenburg returned just before the post-season, and the Wolfpack went on a roll. In three magical games in Atlanta the ACC Tournament, Lowe directed overtime wins over Wake Forest and North Carolina, and a title game victory over Virginia. His play earned him the Everett Case Award as the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, an award that means even more to him now that he sits in the same seat Case once has as NC State’s head coach.
In the NCAA Tournament, Lowe’s career nearly ended in an ignominious fashion, when he fouled out in the first overtime against Pepperdine in Corvalis, Ore. He watched on the sidelines as his teammates came back from a four-point deficit in the final 30 seconds to take their first steps on the path to the school’s second national title.
In order, the Wolfpack beat UNLV, Utah, Virginia, Georgia and Houston, a team that was portrayed as invincible because of its high-flying, hard-slamming offense. But with Lowe controlling the tempo and contributing two key jumpshots in the second half, the Wolfpack was in position to beat the Cougars when Lorenzo Charles slammed home a Whittenburg miss, immortalizing the members of that team in the annals of college basketball.
Lowe still ranks as the ACC career leader in assist to turnover ratio with a 2.94 mark (762 assists to 259 TOs). At the end of his Wolfpack career, he held the school records for single-season (271) and career (762) assists - marks which now rank second in the record books.
Lowe has surrounded himself with a staff that is both familiar to him and to the legacies of NC State basketball. He hired Monte Towe, the point guard on NC State’s 1974 NCAA Championship and the 1973 and ’74 ACC Championship squads, away from his head coaching job at New Orleans. He also retained Larry Harris, who was a member of former head coach Herb Sendek’s staff for 10 years. He also turned to Pete Strickland, another DeMatha product who was a college teammate of Harris at Pittsburgh.
“Each of these guys has a special connection to me and to this program, and I want each of us to embrace the tradition and legacy that we have inherited,” Lowe says. “We know what it means to represent this university, on and off the court.”
However, Lowe has also injected a strong flavor of the professional basketball skills he learned in his 23 years as a player and coach in the National Basketball Association and the Continental Basketball Association.
Lowe was drafted by the Chicago Bulls as the first pick of the second round in the 1983 NBA draft, then immediately traded to Indiana. He played 78 games for the Pacers in 1984. He started the next season with the Detroit Pistons, but was traded to Atlanta midway through the year.
Over the next three years, Lowe was a point guard in the CBA, leading his teams to three consecutive CBA titles. In 1986 and ’87, he was with the Tampa Bay Thrillers and in 1988 he was with the Albany Patroons. He started the 1989 season with the Rapid City Thrillers, but was quickly signed by the Charlotte Hornets, playing 14 games that season.
In 1990, Lowe joined the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves, playing in a career-high 80 games in the franchise’s inaugural season. In all, Lowe played in four seasons for five different teams, averaging 2.9 points, 3.9 assists and 1.7 rebounds in his 193 career games.
He remained with the Timberwolves when his playing career ended, spending the 1991 season as a color analyst on the team’s television network. In 1992, he began his NBA coaching career as an assistant for Minnesota, under head coach Jimmy Rodgers. Within a year, he was elevated to head coach, a position he held for two-and-a-half seasons.
He joined Mike Fratello’s staff with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 1995 and stayed there for five years, before rejoining the Timberwolves in 2000 as an assistant under Saunders.
On June 1, 2000, Lowe was named the head coach of the Vancouver Grizzlies. He led the team in its transition from Vancouver to Memphis, before ending his tenure eight games into the 2003 season.
In 2004, Lowe rejoined Saunders’ staff in Minnesota, then moved with Saunders to Detroit, where they took over the defending NBA champions. He remained with the Pistons, even after he was named the head coach at NC State, helping the team reach the Eastern Conference finals before it was eliminated by eventual NBA-champion Miami.
For Lowe, coming back to Raleigh, where he had maintained a residence since 1985, is not exactly leaving the nest – it is returning home to the place where he had his greatest glory as a player.
Courtesy: NC State
