Pack Getting Better

It is 10 steps up from the visitors locker room to the court level at Cameron Indoor Stadium and for N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried on Thursday night, it might as well have been Everest. He had just delivered one of the toughest postgame talks of his young N.C. State coaching career, summing up the events of the evening--a 16-point halftime lead, the short end of 37-12 run to end the game and ultimately a 78-73 loss at Duke--by saying, “We’re right there, guys. We’ve just got to get over the hump.” The message must have sounded hollow to Gottfried. He may have even heard those same words echoing inside the room from the mouths of Sidney Lowe and Herb Sendek, the two previous Wolfpack coaches, neither of whom ever won at Duke.
 
After pausing for a moment at the bottom of the small stairwell, Gottfried adjusted his tie and began climbing. From the top of the stairs, it is 128 paces to the media room. For Gottfried, it was the first time he had made this agonizing walk in the footsteps of so many coaches over the years who thought they might be about to win a game at Cameron and then didn’t.
 
In just over five minutes of discussion with the press, Gottfried used the word better nine times.
 
We have to be better late in the game.
We’ve got to do a better job.
We’ve got to find a way to be a little bit better.
We’re going to get better.
We’ve got to get better.
 
At the end of his press conference, Gottfried let out a huge sigh and then retraced those 128 steps, a little slower this time, muttering with his small entourage about what might have been. When he got back to the Wolfpack locker room, Jim Harrick, Gottfried’s former boss at UCLA, was waiting for him. Harrick, dressed in a bright red sweater, draped his arm over Gottfried’s shoulder and gave him the kind of consoling hug that only a coach can give another. Then Harrick said, “It happens to the best of them.”
 
If we learned anything from Thursday night, it’s that the Wolfpack isn’t the best, but they are better than they’ve been in a long time. Clearly Gottfried’s next goal is to make them better than better.