RALEIGH -- Time is on Mark Gottfried's side.
That alone may explain why N.C. State's basketball coach of less than three months comes across as being surprisingly comfortable in the job a lot of other folks didn't want.
Gottfried, who was hired on April 5, spent part of Tuesday afternoon answering the same sort of questions about the future that once left Les Robinson uncertain, Herb Sendek edgy and Sidney Lowe overwhelmed.
None of those traits surfaced Tuesday in the 47-year-old former television analyst and one-time Alabama coach.
Tanned and toned, Gottfried could have doubled for about 50 percent of the fans who will buy seats for his first game in the RBC Center come late fall.
With TV cameras rolling and tape recorders clicking, Gottfried showed up in a pinkish-red golf shirt, his favorite khakis and an obviously broken-in pair of brown loafers. No socks. No scripted agenda notes. No jewelry other than a watch, wedding band and 2002 SEC championship ring.
The family - wife Elizabeth and five children - has moved into a house about a mile from campus.
"When I was here in 2006 as an opposing coach, all I saw was the airport at night, a hotel bedroom, game practice here," he said. "That was it, but I'm very excited about Raleigh. It's a great town - lots of things to see and do. I had no idea to be honest.
"I've made a few wrong [highway] turns here and there, but I'm learning my way around."
And as much as Gottfried and State fans want to win big and fast, there's no reason to stomp the accelerator.
The neighborhood hotshots - Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and North Carolina's Roy Williams - are granddads in their 60s. Dean Smith himself called it off a few months before his 67th birthday.
As Gottfried pointed out Tuesday, the Wolfpack went 5-11 in the ACC last season. The program has produced double-digit league win totals twice since Gottfried was 25 years old.
If State can go just 7-9 in the league this season, it'll be a relative surge.
If at the end of his third season, Gottfried has a 10-6 record with above-average talent on hand and more en route, the program should be perfectly positioned to contend for the top of the standings during the inevitable regressions that will strike Duke and UNC when successors to Krzyzewski and Williams have to be hired.
It'll be important that Gottfried gains traction in 2011-12.
But unlike Lowe, who had no college coaching experience, Gottfried has a working knowledge of the process. And unlike Sendek, who was 33 with only three seasons of Mid-American Conference exposure, Gottfried has spent some time in basketball's fast lanes.
There will probably be times in January and February when the Triangle initiation ordeal tests the guy's composure. But going in, he has the look of being a smooth fit.
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