Less than a week after being named head coach, Mark Gottfried has begun the process of creating his coaching staff, hiring two assistants. Upon being named head coach last week, Gottfried expressed his desire to build a solid staff around him with the same mentality.
“What I want to do here is build a phenomenal staff,” Gottfried said. “That is the most important thing. Guys that understand this place understand what it takes to win, coach on the floor, develop young men and recruit great talent. That is where we want to be and that will be my first priority outside of these guys right here.”
Athletics Director Debbie Yow echoed the opinions of her second head coaching hire and firmly expressed her confidence in the Wolfpack’s new coach in last Tuesday’s press conference.
“He is going to put together a staff here that is going to be second to none in the United States and that is not a hyperbole,” Yow said.
Gottfried is well on his way, hiring two assistants that are both former head coaches. Former Charlotte 49ers head coach Bobby Lutz and former University of Louisiana-Monroe head coach Orlando Early have joined the N.C. State staff as assistants.
Lutz, a Catawba, N.C. native, led Charlotte to a school-record five 20-win seasons, averaged over 18 wins a year and won three league titles (1999, 2001, 2004) in his tenure with the 49ers. Five times in his career a Lutz-coached 49er squad knocked off a top-10 opponent, including a win over No. 3 Cincinnati in 1999. Five of the eight wins over top-10-ranked opponents in Charlotte’s history came under Lutz’s watch. In 2005 Lutz was a finalist for the Jim Phelan Coach of the Year Award.
Following his storied career at Charlotte, Lutz served on the staff at Iowa State where he helped the Cyclones earn their highest win total since 2005-06.
Lutz has significant ties to the state of North Carolina and should be an asset to Gottfried and the basketball program in the area of recruiting. He had four top-20 national recruiting classes and coached 10 players who earned first-team all-conference honors at Charlotte.
Orlando Early joins the Wolfpack after serving as an assistant at South Carolina for one season and the head coach of University of Louisiana-Monroe for five seasons. In his second season at Louisiana-Monroe Early led the squad to its first winning season in six years and a share of the Sun Belt Conference West Division title in the program’s first season in the conference. Early was named Coach of the Year by four different outlets, including the Sun Belt Conference, Louisiana Association of Basketball Coaches, the Louisiana Sports Writers Association and National Association of Basketball Coaches (District 8 Coach of the Year). He also concluded the season as a finalist for the Hugh Durham Mid-Major Coach of the Year award.
Early has served as an assistant under both Lutz and Gottfried prior to claiming a head coaching position. From 1998-2001 Early helped the 49ers to a pair of Conference USA titles, two NCAA Tournament appearances and an NIT appearance.
He then spent four seasons as an assistant at Alabama under Gottfried. The Crimson Tide topped the 20-win mark three times, posted a combined 88-41 record, advanced to four consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, an NCAA Elite Eight appearance, held a No. 1 national ranking, and won an SEC regular-season championship with Early on the bench. His work as an assistant coach did not go unnoticed. In 2004 he was recognized as Athlon Sports named him the third-best assistant coach in the nation.
Gottfried has started to put together a familiar, successful staff that will be, as Yow said, second to none in the United States. With a few of the pieces put in place in the coaching staff puzzle, Wolfpack Nation eagerly awaits Gottfried’s next move to help take the team that has lived in the basement of the ACC for the last five years back
