This NC State basketball season in context: Shoot, who knows

As human beings, we tend to rate things based on some ratio of immediacy and the surreal nature of whatever it is we just saw. That's fine, but it's also misleading a lot of the time. What I'm trying to address here is the sheer strangeness of talking about this NC State basketball team, which is nearly endless in contradiction.

This NC State basketball season has been awful. There have been brief moments of good times, and a couple upsets, but mostly it has been awful. State has no chance of reaching the NCAAs without winning the conference tournament.

That's a weird truth, because while we're used to living on the edge, the Gottfried era has also conditioned us not only to squeaking into the NCAA tournament but having success after the fact. This is not at all one of those years. (Barring that miracle conference-tournament-run part.)

Still I don't think this reality has been properly adjusted for context. We can turn so quickly. I think it's necessary to look at the last 15 years and scale accordingly.

NCSU	Pomeroy Rating	Off_Eff	Def_Eff
2016	67	47	134
2015	31	22	87
2014	55	25	125
2013	34	9	112
2012	44	33	78
2011	97	71	170
2010	70	135	35
2009	81	27	198
2008	111	90	153
2007	69	47	114
2006	41	40	82
2005	23	21	41
2004	8	2	46
2003	50	25	107
2002	17	26	28

(bold breaks up the coaching eras--Gott, then Sid, then Herb.)

I feel like the depth of the disappointment we feel about this season says something. Funny thing about Gottfried is that for all his faults, we've been able to assume not only his ability to construct a decent offense but also build a team that can make a March run. This team can score it, but it's ceiling is really low. That's the bummer of this season, which ended waaaaaay before we knew it ended.

It isn't always going to be this way. Next year can be another great time. But since the turn of the century, you never really know about Wolfpack basketball, and don't you forget that.

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