32 Turnovers Doom Pack in Cincy

Cincinnati 80, NC State 71. Here’s the recapwarning – not for the faint of heart or young children. I would call it ugly/brutal, but that would be too kind.

This was, by far, the worst effort we have seen from NC State in the Sidney Lowe era. Aside from the continued offensive excellence of Ben McCauley, there isn’t much nice to say. The Pack finished just 3 shy of its all-time record for turnovers, set in 1972 vs. UNC. And if you want a scary thought, imagine how many TOs we could commit against the Tarheel press, if Roy doesn’t call of the dogs. Seriously, we might never cross midcourt.

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06-07 Basketball General NCS Basketball

45 Responses to 32 Turnovers Doom Pack in Cincy

  1. dabigdog 12/24/2006 at 1:14 PM #

    32 turnovers. It should have been a 40-point blowout. Regardless of the results this year, it’s aparent this program is finally on the right track. Be patient folks. Ever since the Michigan game, I’ve been 100 percent sold on Lowe and what he’s doing.

    Think long term folks

  2. C Dog 12/24/2006 at 1:26 PM #

    While the Michigan win was huge for the Pack, let’s face it: Michigan is not that good. They have beaten the following teams: Central Connecticut State, Davidson, Eastern Michigan, UW-Milwaukee, Harvard, Youngstown State, Maryland-Baltimore County. Wofford, Miami-Ohio, Deleware State and Northern Illinois. They were crushed by UCLA yesterday, 92-55.

  3. legacyman 12/24/2006 at 1:48 PM #

    Who was it that Davidson beat recently? Also, UCLA might beat a lot of teams this year. Michigan has plenty of talent but I thought Amaker was moved to a head coach too quic kly and advanced too quickly for his skill level…very good player, maybe a crappy coach.

  4. chilly water 12/24/2006 at 5:10 PM #

    ok ill be the first to say it… COACHING

  5. bTHEredterror 12/24/2006 at 6:14 PM #

    Hoop,

    That was Mark Maye, and he was referring to a phone call Fowler gave him after comments he made about CTC being on the hot seat after we lost to UVA. Apparently Fowler told him he was wrong. Maye mentioned it back then as we obviously lost in abhorrent fashion to Maryland the week after Fwoler’s (apparently contentious) phone call. Maye is pointing out that Lee changed his position almost 180 degrees from vehemently defending his coach, to firing him a month later. So now some negative media attention is focused where it probably should have been all along.

  6. vtpackfan 12/24/2006 at 10:12 PM #

    ^ No one is going to take the bait chilly. It’s christmas eve.

  7. Mr O 12/25/2006 at 2:39 PM #

    When will Gavin figure out that making passes up the court to attempt to get an easy bucket results in points for the other team more times than for our own?

    I certainly hope our coaches aren’t instructing him to make those passes. If he is doing it on his own, then I can’t figure out why Lowe isn’t instructing him to take less chances, get the ball up the court himself, and set the offense. We would have been very well-positioned after the first half had Gavin played conservatively. Obviously, things changed in the 2nd half with the press so some of the turnovers should be expected. But the self-inflicted turnovers are the ones that CANNOT happen for this team to beat quality opponents.

    This team isn’t built to out run teams. When you have no PG, you don’t try and run more because it does nothing but play to your weakness.

    We have been good all year in our half-court offense. We have four guys who can post their man and capable shooters and cutters all around them.

    It seems obvious to me that we should be playing to this strength and try to shorten the game as opposed to trying to do things that clearly maximize the weaknesses of the roster(poor ballhandling, lack of athletes on the bench, and poor depth).

    Someone needs to pull the reigns on Grant.

  8. GAWolf 12/25/2006 at 4:11 PM #

    Any chance there was a Top 10 point guard commitment under Sid’s tree this morning?

    Merry Christmas ladies.

  9. wufpack 12/25/2006 at 6:17 PM #

    I didn’t see the game. Maybe if I had, I’d be more upset, in fact I’m sure of it. But this team was picked dead last in the conference, and dead last by a large margin. I wasn’t one of them, but it seemed like a good 50% of NC State fans agreed with that pick, and practically no one in the other 50%, including me, was predicting that this would be a “good” team. And all of that, the predictions and everything, were made assuming that we would ACTUALLY HAVE Atsur, who is without a doubt, the most experienced guy we have, the best ball handler we have, and the best shooter that we have. I don’t see how anyone could argue against him being all of those things.

    So, what’s the deal? Why is it that now it seems like about 90% of State fans are actually upset with the way the team has played the last few games? Did they get sucked in with the way we played before the West Va. game and all of a sudden forget our actual circumstances? It’s one thing to be upset immediately following a game. But after a cool-down period still being upset? Maybe we really are the crappy, unrealistic fans that we’re made out to be by the media because it is pretty ridiculous to be upset at anything that this team has done to this point. Personally, I’ve seen enough good things and still have hope that we can get it going at some point. It will absolutely have to include Engin Atsur, but I still believe that some good things can happen. But I’m sure as hell not going to get mad if it doesn’t happen. I guess I’ll be one of the few.

  10. redfred2 12/25/2006 at 9:11 PM #

    wufpack

    Amen. Great job!

  11. Rochester 12/25/2006 at 10:23 PM #

    Wufpack,

    I wouldn’t put myself in the “upset” category. I’m trying to stay realistic. Sometimes my problem is I’m too optimistic and I think we can beat anyone, because we’re NC State and we take shit from no one. (Maybe a little this year, but with paybacks reserved for next year.)

    I was “disappointed” on Saturday because it was a winnable game and we literally gave it away. I know these things may happen this year, but if we had “only” 20 turnovers in that game, we would have killed them. We were up 3 at the half despite 16 turnovers and we could easily have been up by a lot if we’d protected the ball. I’ll chalk it up as growing pains, but it was a very winnable game. With Atsur we almost certainly win that game. But it’s no sense worrying about it any more. We’ve got another game to look forward to on Thursday.

  12. NCSUwolfpack4Life 12/26/2006 at 10:20 AM #

    I’ll take the bait, what kind of idiot says that we lost that game because of coaching? The only reason we were even IN that game is because of coaching.

  13. Rick 12/27/2006 at 8:45 AM #

    “I’ve been expecting this type of game ever since Herb didn’t sign a PG last year. State has frightfully few ball handlers and with Atsur hurt, Grant simply has to do more than he should.”

    If this does not convince you that the positionless offense does not work then you wil not be convinced. It was a flawed philosophy.

    BTW do we even have a player not within one inch of 6’7″?

  14. packbackr04 12/27/2006 at 9:07 AM #

    big lew?

  15. RickJ 12/27/2006 at 9:48 AM #

    “BTW do we even have a player not within one inch of 6′7″?”

    Astur, Ferguson and we should have Larry Davis although none of these guys are pure point guards.

    Not having a point guard kills you in so many ways. We win the Cincy game comfortably with a Justin Gainey – Quentin Jackson type point guard. End-of-half (a real key in the Cincy game) and end-of-game situations are much more difficult without a point guard.

    Whenever Astur went to the bench in the exhibition games, we were terrible. In one of the games he went out for about 90 seconds in the first half and the other team went on a 10 – 0 run. This problem was masked somewhat by the Michigan and Virginia games. It turns out that these two teams are not very good right now, maybe even awful.

    We have no chance this year without Astur. This is not Grant’s fault. In fact, I think what he has done with Lowe’s help is quite admirable.

  16. Rick 12/27/2006 at 10:03 AM #

    ferg is 6’6″

    My point is Herb left us the remains of his failed positionless system.

  17. RickJ 12/27/2006 at 10:12 AM #

    Ferg is not 6′ 6″. He is listed as 6′ 5″ and he is much closer to 6′ 4″.

  18. geojim1990 12/27/2006 at 4:56 PM #

    Since legacyman brought it up…it was, of course, ASU that Davidison beat the other night. But the best part of the story is the name of the little tournament that the game was played in…the “Sleep America Classic”. Classic, indeed. The irony drips.

  19. redfred2 12/28/2006 at 2:55 PM #

    “ok ill be the first to say it… COACHING”

    chilly water, TOTALLY AGREED!!!

    Of course it doesn’t have anything to do with the coaching/recruiting we’ve witnessed so far in the year 2006 though.

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