COLUMBUS, Ohio — Take one look at N.C. State’s loaded recruiting class for 2012 and you know they don’t need any immediate help in that area.
The Wolfpack already have three McDonald’s All-Americans in point guard Tyler Lewis, combo guard Rodney Purvis and wing T.J. Warren signed, sealed and delivered.
Yet in the world of recruiting, you can never have enough good publicity and there is no better publicity than a run in the NCAA Tournament.
So N.C. State’s 79-65 victory here over San Diego State — the program’s first NCAA win since Herb Sendek was coach in 2006 — can only help Mark Gottfried’s club on the recruiting front.
“It’s a positive upswing for our program in our first year to make it to the tournament and then to get a win,” N.C. State assistant Orlando Early told SNY.tv in the team’s celebratory locker room at Nationwide Arena.
“Our guys have worked hard from day one and then the recruits see that. They see the change in the program and the direction we’re going.”
Early no doubt hopes 6-8 Philly Friends Central forward Amile Jefferson watched the game — or at least will catch the highlights later in which Richard Howell had 22 points, Lorenzo Brown tallied 17 points, 9 rebounds and 8 assists and C.J. Leslie scored 11 of his 15 points in the second half.
Jason Polykoff, Jefferson’s high school coach, told SNY.tv Friday that Jefferson had still yet to decide on a college. He is considering N.C. State, Duke, Kentucky, Ohio State and Villanova.
Jefferson’s recruitment may drag on through the McDonald’s Game March 28 in Chicago, which could actually help the Wolfpack since Lewis, Purvis and Warren will all be able to get in his ear for several days about potentially joining them in a dream class.
But even beyond the late-signing members of the Class of 2012, a run here will help the Wolfpack in the Classes of 2013 and ’14. N.C. State will play the Georgetown-Belmont winner on Sunday.
“The ’12 class guys had to believe in what we were selling so we signed three McDonald’s All-Americans,” Early said. “The ’13 class can say, ‘OK, they are winning. They got great players coming in.’ It’s going to be change for the program.”
Junior forward Scott Wood, who had 10 points in the win, committed to then-coach Sidney Lowe largely because of the influence of then-assistant Monte Towe, the point guard on the Wolfpack’s 1974 NCAA championship team.
But since the Pack hadn’t been to the tournament since 2006, Wood had to take Towe on faith.
“Coach Towe was the one that first kind of bred me into the tradition and learning about the ’83 championship and his championship,” Wood told SNY.tv.
“He kind of took me under his wing and showed me , ‘Hey, this is as good as you can get.'”
But in his first two years at N.C. State, Wood wasn’t able to actually live out the vision Towe had painted.
Now a freshman like Tyler Harris, the Dix Hills, N.Y. native who initially committed to Lowe, can experience the Big Dance as a reality.
“Seeing what Coach Gottfried did to the team, he got us to the tournament,” Harris said. “Definitely he’ll bring people in seeing how much we improved.”
The combination of N.C. State’s tradition plus winning in the here and now could really help Gottfried and his staff going forward when, of course, the ultimate goal is to challenge North Carolina and Duke in the ACC and to compete for another national title.
“I think it will be big,” Wood said. “I know when I got recruited here that’s one of the reasons I wanted to come here, was to turn this program around because you have all that history and all that tradition and then when you mix that in with a winning program right now, it’s very dangerous.”
**For more on N.C. State recruiting, read the Five Star Big Board from December and the feature as well.
Photo: Getty Images
