YouTube Gold: Aaron Torres On NC State’s Coaching Candidates

He’s pushing a guy we’d rather not see in Raleigh

On his eponymous podcast called Aaron Torres Sports Podcast, Torres delves into NC State’s coaching search. He starts off with a rambling discussion about Will Wade, including an expert from an interview.

Torres says he was the first person who came to mind for the NC State job and called the program a “sleeping giant.”

He talks about the passionate fan base and the NIL situation in Raleigh and basically pushes Wade as the guy State should go after, the “number one call.”

His next candidate is Ryan Odom, calling him the “logical next guy,” but also thinks he’s Virginia’s first choice.

He also says Indiana is trending away from Chris Beard and that State should “give him a call.”

He goes on to mention Chris Jans at Mississippi State, which means that in his top few candidates, he’s gone to three - Wade, Beard and Jans - who have all lost previous jobs due to scandal.

Then he mentions Tony Skinn of George Mason, who seems like would be a reasonable gamble.

He doesn’t mention Ben McCollum, and as much as we admire him, he wouldn’t be a great fit for State. He’d win, but his style isn’t what State would want. Winning? Of course. But State fans would prefer a faster style. It’s just in the program’s DNA.

He also doesn’t mention High Point’s Alan Huss, and he really misses something there. First, Huss has had a superb two-year run at High Point and he already knows the area in a recruiting sense.

With the scandal brothers, if it came to one of the three, we’d have to go in this order: Beard, Wade and Jans. Why?

Beard had an ugly situation with his fiancee and was accused of assaulting her and choking her. It was dreadful and it would/should give any A.D. pause. However, the charges were dropped and we understand they are still together, so on a personal level, presumably, they worked things out and it’s possible to likely that Beard has been in some form of therapy or anger management and hopefully is no longer drinking beer as a way to wind down after games. We’re not overlooking what happened. It was disgraceful behavior. But it has not happened again.

Wade on the other hand cheated and cheated wildly. Torres quotes him as saying that he felt like LSU left him high and dry. There’s a chance that Beard learned something and apparently Wade did too: don't get caught and if you do, it’s not your fault you lost your job. That appears to be about all he learned. He’s a very good coach in general, but the last thing NC State needs is another major bout with the NCAA or law enforcement. Brief history lesson:

• NC State was implicated in the ugly 1960’s point shaving scandal.
• NC State was on probation in David Thompson’s junior year and though undefeated, could not play in the NCAA tournament.
• NC State had an ugly end to the Valvano era which resulted in significant restrictions on the basketball program. Among many other things, Charles Shackleford was accused of point shaving (we don't think it was ever proven, but not what you want to hear after the earlier scandal).
• NC State was investigated during the FBI/Adidas scandal, the same scandal that saw Wade get fired at LSU. Keatts rightly pointed out that he left the program in better shape than he found it and with a good reputation, too. Winning? Not so much. Respected for integrity? We’d say so.

As for Jans, when he was at Bowling Green, he was drinking at a local bar and hitting on college girls so aggressively that a disgusted fan videotaped him, sent it to the school and the school fired him.

Of the three, Beard is the one we’d least expect to do something shocking again. He’s also the best of the three as a coach, so if it has to be someone who has to be introduced with an explanation, we’d choose him. He’d have NC State in the Top Ten in a hurry too.

But having said that, we kind of hope Huss gets a long look. The more we learn about him, the more we like that idea.

Then he hits on something important: the ACC is about to have an infusion of much better coaches and that’s the key to getting the conference back on track. Jai Lucas will do very well at Miami. The more we learn about Luke Louck the better we like him. Let’s hope NC State makes a hire that will do well and not bring more shame and embarrassment to Raleigh. Whatever you can say about Keatts, he never brought shame to the program.