No one expects much from North Carolina State in 2009-10. You won't find them on our items of preseason interest. Rivals' preseason countdown clocks them in at No. 121. The ACC media has already picked N.C. State to finish dead last in the conference. But Sidney Lowe would like to just quickly interject here, if he could, that there is no reason to worry, N.C. State will be just fine, really there's nothing to stress about, all's well here, gulp:

"It's interesting because we can already see it and we haven't played a game yet," Lowe said. "We are there every day and we can see it ... but to watch Tracy Smith take a young player under his wing and to watch Dennis [Horner] to watch Tracy to watch C.J. [Williams] take these young guys and then after practice take them and go somewhere and do things together, we haven't had that.  It tells me we are going in the right direction, now we have to continue to bring in the talent level in order to get back to where we should be. "

"These young guys" refers to Lowe's recruiting class, which he will need to rely on heavily in 2009-10 if he wants to avoid a disastrous last-place ACC finish. Why is that a disaster? Because Lowe is already on very thin ice with the N.C. State faithful, who, if you'll remember, ran Herb Sendek out of town in 2006, after five consecutive NCAA tournament berths. 2006 also happened to be the Wolfpack's last tourney nod; Lowe hasn't been to the tourney since he took over in 2006-07, and hasn't even made the NIT the last two years.

This is Lowe's third year, and he better hope his none-too-heralded recruiting class is better than advertised, or it won't matter who takes whom under whoever's wing. The Wolfpack will be bad, and Lowe will be gone. Like Sidney said: gulp.

Related: ACC Basketball