Sendek at ASU

Nice N&O Article on how Arizona State is embracing Herb Sendek. I really hope over time he can build a strong team there. It took some of us longer than others, but I think most fans were glad when Herb moved on, but I also think we all appreciate what he did to turn around an NC State program that was completely lost. I hope in a few years State will start playing ASU, and I believe Herb would get a warm welcome back to the RBC Center. It just may take a few more years...

They call themselves the Herbivores. Without any reference to plant-eating animals, student fans at Arizona State created the moniker and accompanying T-shirt last season to pay homage to new basketball coach Herb Sendek.

"It makes no sense, but it has a nice ring to it," said ASU senior communications major Jacob Krug, who was sitting in the front row of the student section at Wells Fargo Arena last week in a gold shirt stenciled with a black and white profile of the former N.C. State coach.

Krug's buddy, Jack Leary, helped co-design the shirt with a picture that looks like a play on the work of John Tsombikos, the elusive graffiti artist who two years ago taunted Raleigh with his subversive Borf wall tags.

In considering Sendek -- the coach many N.C. State fans liked to dislike -- they overlooked the "boring offense" gripes, the "dull personality" complaints, the "he can't beat Duke or North Carolina" concerns and welcomed a successful stranger to a place that had never forged a significant basketball tradition.

"We listened, we knew what they were saying," Leary said of State fans. "But we were going to find out for ourselves."

With such an open welcome, Sendek has found a basketball home in the desert where his soft-spoken monotone, highbrow vocabulary, dry wit and 3-point bombing style seem to suit the locals just fine. More...