Monday, March 24, 2025

A Lifetime of NC State Basketball Coaches

A panel discussion on the history of NC State basketball.

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© Tim Peeler, 2025

On Tuesday, former McNeese State coach and Clemson graduate Will Wade is set to become the 10th NC State men’s basketball coach of my lifetime (if you count the three-day tenure of former DeMatha Catholic High School coach Morgan Wootten, which I do).

Press Maravich had just taken over from Everett Case a few weeks after I was born and went on to win an ACC championship in his inaugural year.

During that time, there have also been four Wolfpack women’s head coaches,  beginning the Peanut Doak in 1973-74.

I’ve had the good fortune to write about each of them in varying degrees. For posterity’s sake, I collected many of those stories from their various formats: newspaper, magazine, website and blogs. Click the link to check out my lived history of Wolfpack basketball.

Men’s Basketball Coaches

Press Maravich

A star basketball player at Aliquippa High School and at Davis & Elkins College, Press enlisted in the Navy during World War II, becoming a decorated pilot in the South Pacific. After the war, he played basketball professionally for some minor teams in the Midwest, but eventually chose to go into coaching, a profession far less dangerous than the coal mines and steel mills he grew up near.

He was the head coach at two high schools and six colleges — West Virginia Wesleyan, Davis & Elkins (his alma mater), Clemson, NC State, LSU and Appalachian State. After retiring from coaching, he became an assistant athletics director at Campbell. 

Norman Sloan

Monte Towe, the emotional point guard on Sloan's best squads at N.C. State, helped lead the coach to his greatest glory, as part of two ACC title teams and the 1974 national championship squad. He also was an assistant coach at Florida when Sloan was fired.

But for Towe, the head coach at the University of New Orleans, there is no tarnish on Sloan's legacy.

"He should be talked about as a great, great coach," Towe said. "Because that's what he was."

Morgan Wootten

Few may remember it, but Jim Valvano was not the first choice to replace Sloan, despite what the people on the search committee called the greatest in-person interview they had ever participated in. It had happened two weeks before in Washington.

The first choice of athletics director Willis Casey was Morgan Wootten, the famed coach of DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md. On the day Valvano was introduced, Casey so vehemently denied that Wootten had ever been extended an offer that it absolutely had to be true. Casey did say four college coaches had been interviewed for Sloan’s vacancy, and they were thought to be Valvano, Bill Foster of Clemson, Tom Young of Rutgers and Jack Hartman of Kansas State.

In other words: Who?

Jim Valvano

Just a few weeks before his 40th birthday, NC State coach Jim Valvano considered life as a middle-aged basketball coach. Sadly, ne never got to be a retired coach or television commentator.

“I guess I’m going to have to get serious about life,” he says, contemplating a number that before only described his jacket size. “I better figure out what I want to do in life.”

Considering he’s had a sampling of almost everything, Valvano shouldn’t have a hard time deciding. During his previous 39 years, and especially in his six years in Raleigh, Valvano’s been having a ball.

“I tend to enjoy almost everything I do,” he says.

And he tends to do everything he enjoys.


Les Robinson

Former star Chris Corchiani, who played his senior season under Robinson and maintained close contact with his former coach, agreed that Robinson had an important tenure at N.C. State, even if there were more losses than wins.

"I thought Les Robinson had a great impact on Wolfpack basketball," former point guard Chris Corchiani says. "He was a bridge from the troubled times when he came in to the success that the program is having now.

"He didn't have as much success as he would have liked, or as much success that the Wolfpack faithful would have liked him to have, but he put the train back on the track."

Herb Sendek

Many people thought Herb Sendek was a little lacking on the personality front. Not his friends and family.

“Funniest guy I know, other than some comedians,” says his wife, Melanie Sendek. "If he ever has to change fields, he would be great at comedy. He's spontaneous. He just thinks of things. He's really good at that."

Sidney Lowe

Morgan Wootten, who benefited from Lowe’s playground-sharpened skills for three years as the head coach at DeMatha Catholic High School in Washington, D.C., says he never had a player with Lowe’s intuition and court sense.

"He understood the game so thoroughly,” Wootten said. “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. When Sidney had the ball in his hands, you knew everything was going to be all right.”


Mark Gottfried

The Wolfpack’s new mentor is relying on his experiences of the last two years of working for ESPN as a television analyst. Since he was last a head coach, he has seen a variety of new things from other programs, gotten new ideas from other coaches and recharged himself to face the challenge that lies ahead. He’s ready to run a program again, to teach the game to young players and to have the relationships he missed while he was out of coaching.

"I think, when I was coaching [before], I got going so fast ... I'm not sure my family I appreciated as much; I'm not sure I appreciated my job as much," Gottfried said in one of the many interviews he did after he settled into his job. "My team, my players: I think I've learned to appreciate those more. ... That's the thing when you're out of coaching, you miss it — just getting back to having that kind of relationship with everybody."

Kevin Keatts

This is a national championship program, so I consider this to be an unbelievable opportunity for me, something I don’t take for granted. I will work every day like it is my last day of work, that if I don’t do well, I have a chance to get fired. That’s the way I am going to build this program.

I am going to be the first person in the office and the last person to leave. I will be the first person to the court. I told those guys, no matter what you are going through throughout the day, it’s important that when you walk between those lines, that you are focused on NC State basketball. If we can get everybody to play together, to play for NC State, that will go a long way.

Will Wade

At his introductory press conference, Will Wade was brash and confident in his optimism.
 
“I want to be very clear,” Wade said. “This is not a rebuild. We're going to be in the top part of the [Atlantic Coast Conference] next year and we're going to the NCAA tournament.

“Make sure you have that on camera. This is going to be done quickly. We are here to win.”

Fifty years ago, when the NC State women’s basketball team played its inaugural varsity game, more than 11,000 curious spectators showed up at Reynolds Coliseum to see the first women’s team sponsored by the athletics department — and the only program to be fully integrated from its inception — debut on college basketball’s biggest stage.

That attendance might have been slightly boosted by the fact that the debut, under the guidance of interim head coach Robert Renfrow “Peanut” Doak, was the opening game for a doubleheader against Virginia with the Wolfpack’s top-ranked and defending national champion men’s team, featuring seniors David Thompson, Monte Towe and Tim Stoddard.

Regardless, it was a State sweep on Dec. 7, 1974, with the women winning 57-45 and the men winning 101-72.

 

Kay Yow

[Kay] Yow came along at just the right time: just after passage of Title IX of the 1972 Educational Acts that guaranteed women equal access to school-sponsored athletics at colleges and universities that received federal money. It opened the door for her to open the door for others, giving them the opportunity to play college athletics while getting an education.

Many times, however, Yow declared that she was “no women’s libber.” She wasn’t out to change the world or be a pioneer for equal rights. All she wanted to do was to be a successful coach, a righteous example and a good friend.

Funny, isn’t it, the unintended consequences of success?


Kellie Harper

She always knew that she would be a basketball player and a coach. Both her parents played basketball at Tennessee Tech. Her father, Ken, was a Tennessee high school coach and an assistant at White County High during Kellie’s junior and senior seasons there.

“I have always loved the game of basketball,” Harper said Thursday morning, shortly before she was named just the third women’s basketball coach in NC State’s history. “It’s been such a big part of my life. I could not imagine graduating college and not having that part of my life any more. I love teaching the game. I love it.”

 

Wes Moore

A native of Dallas, Texas, he’s a former office supply salesman who used that job to pay his way through college, working a year at a time to save money so he could go to school the following year, alternating between being a Dwight Schrute in boots and a Texas Pete Maravich.

Frank Weston Moore was a late bloomer whose educational journey took him from his hometown Dallas (Texas) Christian College to Johnson Bible College in Knoxville, Tennessee, thanks to strong childhood friendships, the Baptist-based Royal Ambassadors’ youth program and a boost from his first college coach, Gene Phillips, a former ABA player and NBA draft pick.

For the longest time, he was a scrawny little guy who hid his eating talents pretty well, even after marrying into a family with four generations of eastern North Carolina-style barbecue restaurant experience. He was basketball- and baseball-crazy, working off his calories in driveway pickup games and daylong sandlot games.


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