It's a good thing Tarantini likes a challenge.

As SFN highlighted the other day, the men's soccer team recently had to forfeit a conference game after the school discovered that an ineligible player participated. As an addendum, and since we're on the subject, I wanted to look at the program's historical results:

Coach                       Seasons    TotW-L-T     ConfW-L-T    TotW%    ConfW%  NCAA_App
Eric DeGroat     ('50-'55)      6      17-29-10       4-8-4      .393     .375       0
John Kenfield    ('56)          1       1-7-0         0-4-0      .125     .000       0
Bill Leonhardt   ('57-'60)      4      11-23-2        3-12-1     .333     .219       0
Nellie Cooper    ('61-'63)      3      10-22-1        1-12-0     .318     .077       0
Max Rhodes       ('64-'77)     14      77-69-11      14-47-5     .525     .250       0
Larry Gross      ('78-'85)      8      106-37-9      22-20-5     .727     .521       4
George Tarantini ('86-pres)    22      202-173-38    42-82-15    .535     .356       8
George Tarantini ('86-'96)     11      127-62-23     27-30-9     .653     .477       6
George Tarantini ('97-'07)     11      75-111-15     15-52-6     .410     .247       2

TOTALS           ('50-pres)    58      424-360-70    87-180-28   .537     .342      12

Tarantini was able to build on the success established by his predecessor, capitalizing by bringing NC State its first ACC title and first Final Four appearance--and he did those things with his players, not Gross's. But it's clear, when his tenure is broken into halves, that that momentum is long since lost. It's partly the school's fault for not moving forward with facility improvements during a period of unprecedented success, as that certainly helped hasten the Pack's return to irrelevancy. The bulk of the fault lies at Tarantini's feet, though, as we've reached a point now where it seems he is complacently going through the motions, playing out the string of his lifetime contract. After reaching the NCAAs in 1994, the program began an eight-season tournament drought ('95-'02) before finally getting back in 2003; if that wasn't enough to get the man fired, I'm not sure anything ever will be.

Prior to the start of this season, Tarantini bizarrely offered that "anything less than [being competitive in the ACC and going to the NCAA tournament] is unacceptable," and I'm sure that after this year, with those goals unment, he'll give himself a severe scolding. Lee Fowler subsequently will pen a 3000-word "blog" post about what stadium lights mean to the future of the program (which is bright!). And, honestly, what's another decade? This thing's bound to sort itself out eventually.

While I'm at it, here are the numbers for the women's program, which I'd posted previously:

Coach                       Seasons   TotW-L-T     ConfW-L-T    TotW%    ConfW%  NCAA_App
Larry Gross     ('84-'93)     10      146-53-18     15-9-3      .714     .611       8
Alvin Corneal   ('94-'97)      4       49-34-7      12-13-2     .583     .481       3
Laura Kerrigan ('98-pres)     10       79-95-16     13-59-7     .458     .209       0

TOTALS         ('84-pres)     24      274-182-41    40-81-12    .593     .346      11

What happened to Larry Gross, anyway?