N.C. State, not Duke or UNC, the ACC favorite

• Though the Tar Heels and Blue Devils are staying put, expectations in Raleigh have been ratcheted up as high as they have been since Jim Valvano
• Four starters return from an N.C. State team that made an improbable run to last season's Sweet 16
• Wolfpack coach Gottfried says his team was capable of competing with any team in the nation

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The father of North Carolina State coach Mark Gottfried placed a telephone call to North Carolina athletics director Bubba Cunningham this offseason to ask one question: Were North Carolina and Duke leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference?

"No, why?" Cunningham said.

"Obviously you guys must be leaving," Joe Gottfried joked, "because N.C. State has been picked to win the league, and you and Duke have dominated that thing for years."

Though the Tar Heels and Blue Devils are staying put, expectations in Raleigh have been ratcheted up as high as they have been since Jim Valvano roamed the sideline. The Wolfpack stand poised to upset the hierarchy in a conference in which the only difference between the top two schools in the standings often is the shade of blue.

Such a statement would have been preposterous a year ago, of course, before the Wolfpack community had fully embraced Mark Gottfried during his first few months on the job. But as Gottfried knows more than most, perceptions, for better or worse, can change quickly in his business.

As a teenager he would sit in the stands and listen to grown men curse a struggling Southern Illinois head coach who not long before had thrived in the small-college ranks in Ohio.

At the end of that 1981 season, the school fired the coach, a man Gottfried called Dad.

So Gottfried did not flinch when much of the N.C. State fan base greeted him with a collective yawn — or worse — upon his hiring in 2011. After seeing neighbors North Carolina and Duke win national titles in 2009 and 2010, respectively, fans craved a big-splash name, a Shaka Smart or a Sean Miller, not a guy who had been out of coaching for two years after his Alabama tenure fizzled.

"I was not the flavor of the month," Gottfried said in his office this fall. "I am completely cognizant that when my name leaked out there that afternoon, a lot of people scratched their heads going, 'What? Who?' A year later, it is a different feeling."

A year later N.C. State is one of the flavors of this college basketball season. Some of the same fans who questioned the hiring are making plans for N.C. State's first Final Four berth since the program left an indelible mark on the sport three decades ago.

'Perfect storm'

Four starters return from a team that made an improbable run to last season's Sweet 16 — the school's first tournament appearance since 2006 — en route to winning 24 games, its most since 1988.

And despite a three-point loss to eventual national runner-up Kansas, Gottfried says his team was capable of competing with any team in the nation, even Kentucky, last year's national champion. Add three McDonald's All-Americans, and the Wolfpack are in prime position to challenge for their first ACC regular-season title since 1989.

"It has been a perfect storm for (N.C. State)," Maryland coach Mark Turgeon says. "They have had some good young players, and Mark has done a nice job with them. They have recruited well, and they played well in the NCAA tournament. Usually when you come off all that, it is a perfect storm that leads to all this hype."

No one is predicting that North Carolina and Duke will be relegated to playing in the National Invitation Tournament in March. Though they saw a combined six players taken in the first round of the NBA draft, both programs should be near the top of the league standings.

Duke returns three of its top five scorers, including senior Mason Plumlee, and added two dynamic freshmen in Rasheed Sulaimon and Amile Jefferson.

The Tar Heels have 25 points a game returning, but sophomores James Michael McAdoo and P.J. Hairston should thrive.

That said, the annual Duke-North Carolina games might not be the most anticipated matchups in the Research Triangle this season, much less in the nation. And that's refreshing to Wolfpack point guard Lorenzo Brown, who has long hated the hoops conversation being dominated only by chatter about the storied North Carolina-Duke rivalry.

"Since I got here, we were like never talked about. Nobody ever mentioned N.C. State basketball. What about us?" Brown says. "Now I feel we belong. We belong in this Triangle. It's always been Duke and Carolina. They have got that big rivalry that they put on ESPN and all that. I am pretty sure they realize that N.C. State is back."

Gottfried, meantime, is not trying to temper expectations as much as emphasize that success is defined over time. And with those blue-blooded programs in his backyard, they offer "a daily reminder of the ladder you are trying to climb."

"My two neighbors have not taken a step back very often the last 25 years," Gottfried says. "UCLA had some dips. Indiana had some dips. Kentucky had some dips. Those two guys are like steamrollers.

"We are still chasing. And I know we are chasing them. They are not chasing us."

Gottfried might be uniquely qualified for this chase.

A changed coach

He spent a lifetime learning from his father, a former coach and longtime athletics director at South Alabama. He helped Jim Harrick reconstruct a once-storied UCLA program into a national champion.

And during his two-year absence from the game, Gottfried kept a notebook titled "If I ever coach again." While working as an ESPN analyst, Gottfried scribbled down countless observations on lined pages from spending time with coaches from across the country.

"He changed a little bit after those two years on television," Joe Gottfried says.

Gottfried, 48, vowed not to repeat mistakes from his 11-year Alabama tenure, which included the school's first No. 1 ranking in 2002 and an Elite Eight appearance in 2004. But when it ended in the middle of the 2008-09 season, it ended badly.

Gottfried blames himself for making subpar hirings on his staff, which led to questionable recruiting decisions. He watched Orlando Early, one of the best assistants he ever had, leave for Louisiana-Monroe without Gottfried offering a sizable counteroffer because he thought he was supposed to help his assistants get head coaching jobs. No, he knows now, his responsibility is to win games.

So he has assembled a staff with three individuals — assistant Early, associate head coach Bobby Lutz and director of player development Larry Farmer — who have college head coaching experience.

"I did not do a very good job at the end (at Alabama)," Gottfried says. "You learn a lot."

Gottfried also has exhibited a deft touch with players during his 18months at N.C. State. When hired, Gottfried heard only negative comments about C.J. Leslie, one of the nation's most talented yet enigmatic players. Gottfried needed a way to trigger a fresh start, so he started calling Leslie by the name Calvin, his real first name.

"I was like, 'Who is he talking to?'" Leslie recalls . "It was like out of the blue. He has tried to motivate us in every way possible. And we have done a good job trusting him. He does a good job knowing his players and relating to us, which made the connection easier."

Few players in the country played as well as Leslie did at the end of last season. A borderline first-round draft pick last season, he decided to return to school. A work in progress, Leslie "is light-years from where he was," Gottfried says.

Assistant Rob Moxley says player workouts overall the first few months were "frustrating just trying to get effort out of some guys and get them to play at a faster pace. The whole thing calling C.J. Calvin was really smart. It made him look at himself differently."

Leslie is one former McDonald's All-American rounding into form. But the Wolfpack added three more for this season, a recruiting haul usually reserved for programs such as North Carolina and Duke.

Forward T.J. Warren is a proficient scorer, Tyler Lewis a capable point guard and Rodney Purvis an explosive guard. And all three have North Carolina roots.

"He's not going to back down," Moxley says of Gottfried. "He is not saying, 'We're not going to go after the same guys as Duke and Carolina because they are supposed to go there.' We will recruit everybody. And we feel we have to recruit on their level to be able to beat them."

Another emphasis for Gottfried has been to reconnect the program to its rich tradition — much like he helped accomplish at UCLA.

Most N.C. State recruits did not know the significance of David Thompson. And while they might have watched that footage of a last-second buzzer-beater from 1983, they didn't know why that moppy-haired coach was running around the court looking for someone to hug. Before he arrived, Brown said, he didn't know that N.C. State had won the 1983 national championship. So Gottfried and his staff teach history.

"It is like teaching a brand-new course," Moxley says.

Large portions of the men's basketball office have been refurbished, and trophies, pictures and mementos celebrating the 1974 and 1983 NCAA titles are everywhere.

Gottfried also has former players over for dinner each year.

He is trying to follow a formula similar to the one that led to UCLA's 1995 national championship. And that's something other than a pipe dream at N.C. State. It's the expectation again. Go head-to-head with Duke and North Carolina, and beat them on the court and in recruiting. Gottfried accelerated the rebuilding process faster than even some on staff had expected.

John Wooden once gave Gottfried sage advice: "Don't give 'em too much too soon."

Reminded of that recently, Gottfried could only smile.

"I've failed miserably."

Contributing: Nicole Auerbach