1. The Tommy White saga had many of the same remnants that has happened in the past when NC State exited the College World Series a year ago, and when the Wolfpack football squad had their game canceled in the Holiday Bowl.
What does that mean? Confusion, anger, unfounded rumors and then slowly over time, everyone will move on, but feeling damaged a bit.
The first wave of silliness started with bad rumors that White blew off the exit interview or that his agent took his place at the meeting. Both proved to be completely reckless.
Without being a baseball insider, some truths still remain:
• NC State will not be trashing White because that won’t help them get future players at powerhouse Bradenton (Fla.) IMG Academy or his club team.
• The portal will giveth and then taketh. Charlotte transfer LuJames Groover III was a terrific pickup this season in hitting .364 with 10 homers and 47 runs batted in this season. On Thursday, the Wolfpack picked up Old Dominion transfer Carter Trice, who hit .288 with 17 homes and 49 RBI, plus 18 stolen bases. The utility player spent the majority of his time playing in the outfield, and was probably in place well before the White news bubbled over.
• NIL!!! I think every bit of bad news will always start with NIL. Recruit picks another school, must be NIL. A player transfer to another school, it must be NIL. Florida State football, the first rumored destination for White, went 5-7 in football last year. It would have to take a unique FSU fan to fork over money to just get White. Now, if he picks Miami, which has deep pockets, or USC and wants to live the SoCal life, that’s a different NIL story.
• The back and forth about playing the field sounds somewhat plausible, but to the point to create this much emotion. To want to get out of town as soon as the team didn’t make the NCAA Tournament? That’s rough. Can’t adults come up with a plan for that this offseason? He has the entire summer baseball schedule to improve his fielding if his health allows.
• At first glance, none of the FSU current players are from his hometown or from IMG Academy. Maybe they have a bunch of guys from his club squad, but that would be interesting to know.
Also without pretending to be the absolute NCSU baseball insider, I’ll borrow perhaps my favorite Jim Valvano quote: “Don’t mess with happiness.”
How disconcerting can it be when you hit .362 with 27 homers and 74 runs batted in en route to enough awards to fill up a backseat of a car. He should be living the life at NC State and be thrilled. In that sense, it shows how unhappy he was.
I felt the same way with Pittsburgh wide receiver Jordan Addison, who transferred to USC, or when the rumors popped up with Josh Downs at North Carolina. Downs caught 101 passes for 1,335 yards and eight touchdowns, and Addison caught 100 passes for 1,593 yards and 17 touchdowns. It seems crazy to walk away from that foundation of success.
In retrospect, maybe it was best he didn’t go the minor league baseball route, where it’s definitely a different vibe. If this was driven by money, he should head to whatever is the top junior college program in his home state of Florida and be in the 2023 MLB Draft.
The most obvious thing heard all day Thursday was this: “Tommy White should have the option of entering the MLB Draft right now” and then some of this non-sense just goes away.
2. NC State understands transfer awkwardness as well as any school.
I gather we can all thank Russell Wilson for that. The lesson learned through Wolfpack lens, is the football team won nine games with Mike Glennon the next year. The other lesson is NC State baseball went to the College World Series and perhaps could have won the title in the pre-White era.
More NC State transfers were in the NBA from start-to-finish than former Wolfpack players, who finished at the school — Cody Martin (Charlotte Hornets) and Miami Heat duo Omer Yurtseven and Caleb Martin. The Martin twins went to Nevada and that ended up being the best thing to happen to them, especially for Cody Martin. NC State had Terry Henderson and Maverick Rowan and they were going to be entrenched.
Yurtseven definitely stung because he picked sitting out a whole year at Georgetown over being a top 10 ACC player on a Wolfpack team that had just reached the NCAA Tournament and revived Yurtseven’s game in the process. That is when you know a disconnect between player and program is strong.
The last high profile transfer proved to be center Manny Bates, who picked Butler. At this time a year ago, he was dancing around with the thought of transferring to Georgetown and the world was falling was vibe for the program if he had done so. Then he gets hurt and the bottom did fall out.
Where it hurts isn’t so much the short term but if the player goes on and has great professional success. In two years, White will be long gone from college baseball. The only way it continues to sting is if by chance White ends up being a Major League Baseball star one day. It would have been more fun to complete the sentence of “Past NC State stars Carlos Rodon, Trea Turner and Tommy White…” if White ended up playing his whole career in Raleigh.
If White doesn’t make the majors, it’s just a blip.
It’s easy to remember the Martin twins and Yurtseven because they are in the NBA.
If Wilson was a backup quarterback in the NFL or if he could minor league pitching better, the narrative on that story changes dramatically.
And it’s easier to sting in football and basketball, than in a non-revenue sport. It would be great for NC State to fully claim amazing former Olympian Jesse Williams, who attended Broughton High and one year at NC State. Williams then went to USC and made the 2012 Olympics. But someone would have to dig deep to put him on the list of past key transfers.
Look back at any decade, and there are always situations that make you ponder. Transfers created one of the great what if’s for NC State in the class of 1987. Both Sean Green and Byron Tucker left relatively early from that class that included Rodney Monroe and Chris Corchiani. Monroe, Corchiani, Green, Tucker, Tom Gugliotta and Brian Howard would have been a terrific nucleus.
Green went to Iona and averaged 18.0 points per game in his 88-game career and was the No. 41 overall pick to the Indiana Pacers. He played in the NBA from 1991-94 and then overseas. Tucker redshirted his freshman year and then quickly transferred after the first semester of his second year to George Mason. He averaged 16.2 points and 9.3 rebounds in 63 career games, including 20.7 points and 9.6. boards his senior year.
Tucker and another former NC State transfer Katie Smrcka-Duffy Fudd, stung in another way.
Tucker’s son Bryson Tucker of Baltimore (Md.) Mount St. Joseph is now ranked No. 5 overall in the country by Rivals.com in the class fo 2024.
Smrcka-Duffy, who was ACC freshman of the year and then transferred to Georgetown, is the mother of UConn rising sophomore guard Azzi Fudd, who had 19 points against the Wolfpack in the double-overtime win.
NC State has had plenty of misses with Pack legacies, but maybe Tucker and Fudd’s recruitment would have been altered.
What does that mean? Confusion, anger, unfounded rumors and then slowly over time, everyone will move on, but feeling damaged a bit.
The first wave of silliness started with bad rumors that White blew off the exit interview or that his agent took his place at the meeting. Both proved to be completely reckless.
Without being a baseball insider, some truths still remain:
• NC State will not be trashing White because that won’t help them get future players at powerhouse Bradenton (Fla.) IMG Academy or his club team.
• The portal will giveth and then taketh. Charlotte transfer LuJames Groover III was a terrific pickup this season in hitting .364 with 10 homers and 47 runs batted in this season. On Thursday, the Wolfpack picked up Old Dominion transfer Carter Trice, who hit .288 with 17 homes and 49 RBI, plus 18 stolen bases. The utility player spent the majority of his time playing in the outfield, and was probably in place well before the White news bubbled over.
• NIL!!! I think every bit of bad news will always start with NIL. Recruit picks another school, must be NIL. A player transfer to another school, it must be NIL. Florida State football, the first rumored destination for White, went 5-7 in football last year. It would have to take a unique FSU fan to fork over money to just get White. Now, if he picks Miami, which has deep pockets, or USC and wants to live the SoCal life, that’s a different NIL story.
• The back and forth about playing the field sounds somewhat plausible, but to the point to create this much emotion. To want to get out of town as soon as the team didn’t make the NCAA Tournament? That’s rough. Can’t adults come up with a plan for that this offseason? He has the entire summer baseball schedule to improve his fielding if his health allows.
• At first glance, none of the FSU current players are from his hometown or from IMG Academy. Maybe they have a bunch of guys from his club squad, but that would be interesting to know.
Also without pretending to be the absolute NCSU baseball insider, I’ll borrow perhaps my favorite Jim Valvano quote: “Don’t mess with happiness.”
How disconcerting can it be when you hit .362 with 27 homers and 74 runs batted in en route to enough awards to fill up a backseat of a car. He should be living the life at NC State and be thrilled. In that sense, it shows how unhappy he was.
I felt the same way with Pittsburgh wide receiver Jordan Addison, who transferred to USC, or when the rumors popped up with Josh Downs at North Carolina. Downs caught 101 passes for 1,335 yards and eight touchdowns, and Addison caught 100 passes for 1,593 yards and 17 touchdowns. It seems crazy to walk away from that foundation of success.
In retrospect, maybe it was best he didn’t go the minor league baseball route, where it’s definitely a different vibe. If this was driven by money, he should head to whatever is the top junior college program in his home state of Florida and be in the 2023 MLB Draft.
The most obvious thing heard all day Thursday was this: “Tommy White should have the option of entering the MLB Draft right now” and then some of this non-sense just goes away.
2. NC State understands transfer awkwardness as well as any school.
I gather we can all thank Russell Wilson for that. The lesson learned through Wolfpack lens, is the football team won nine games with Mike Glennon the next year. The other lesson is NC State baseball went to the College World Series and perhaps could have won the title in the pre-White era.
More NC State transfers were in the NBA from start-to-finish than former Wolfpack players, who finished at the school — Cody Martin (Charlotte Hornets) and Miami Heat duo Omer Yurtseven and Caleb Martin. The Martin twins went to Nevada and that ended up being the best thing to happen to them, especially for Cody Martin. NC State had Terry Henderson and Maverick Rowan and they were going to be entrenched.
Yurtseven definitely stung because he picked sitting out a whole year at Georgetown over being a top 10 ACC player on a Wolfpack team that had just reached the NCAA Tournament and revived Yurtseven’s game in the process. That is when you know a disconnect between player and program is strong.
The last high profile transfer proved to be center Manny Bates, who picked Butler. At this time a year ago, he was dancing around with the thought of transferring to Georgetown and the world was falling was vibe for the program if he had done so. Then he gets hurt and the bottom did fall out.
Where it hurts isn’t so much the short term but if the player goes on and has great professional success. In two years, White will be long gone from college baseball. The only way it continues to sting is if by chance White ends up being a Major League Baseball star one day. It would have been more fun to complete the sentence of “Past NC State stars Carlos Rodon, Trea Turner and Tommy White…” if White ended up playing his whole career in Raleigh.
If White doesn’t make the majors, it’s just a blip.
It’s easy to remember the Martin twins and Yurtseven because they are in the NBA.
If Wilson was a backup quarterback in the NFL or if he could minor league pitching better, the narrative on that story changes dramatically.
And it’s easier to sting in football and basketball, than in a non-revenue sport. It would be great for NC State to fully claim amazing former Olympian Jesse Williams, who attended Broughton High and one year at NC State. Williams then went to USC and made the 2012 Olympics. But someone would have to dig deep to put him on the list of past key transfers.
Look back at any decade, and there are always situations that make you ponder. Transfers created one of the great what if’s for NC State in the class of 1987. Both Sean Green and Byron Tucker left relatively early from that class that included Rodney Monroe and Chris Corchiani. Monroe, Corchiani, Green, Tucker, Tom Gugliotta and Brian Howard would have been a terrific nucleus.
Green went to Iona and averaged 18.0 points per game in his 88-game career and was the No. 41 overall pick to the Indiana Pacers. He played in the NBA from 1991-94 and then overseas. Tucker redshirted his freshman year and then quickly transferred after the first semester of his second year to George Mason. He averaged 16.2 points and 9.3 rebounds in 63 career games, including 20.7 points and 9.6. boards his senior year.
Tucker and another former NC State transfer Katie Smrcka-Duffy Fudd, stung in another way.
Tucker’s son Bryson Tucker of Baltimore (Md.) Mount St. Joseph is now ranked No. 5 overall in the country by Rivals.com in the class fo 2024.
Smrcka-Duffy, who was ACC freshman of the year and then transferred to Georgetown, is the mother of UConn rising sophomore guard Azzi Fudd, who had 19 points against the Wolfpack in the double-overtime win.
NC State has had plenty of misses with Pack legacies, but maybe Tucker and Fudd’s recruitment would have been altered.
