Castrated Turkeys Redux

06-07 Basketball General44

We’ve mocked them, we’ve praised them, we’ve somehow managed to beat them. Now, it’s time to play them again. An NIT bid hangs in the balance for the Pack, a possible regular season title for VT. I will be on I-95 for most of the action, so keep the comments section lively.

About StateFans

'StateFansNation' is the shared profile used by any/all of the dozen or so authors that contribute to the blog. You may not always agree with us, but you will have little doubt about where we stand on most issues. Please follow us on Twitter and FaceBook

06-07 Basketball General

44 Responses to Castrated Turkeys Redux

  1. CrankyCookie 02/18/2007 at 6:26 PM #

    I was driving back from Charlotte on I-40 when I was looking for the game to listen too. My radio display is broken so I had to just kind of switch around until I heard something. When I hit the station all I could hear was intense screaming. When I heard we were up by 30 I nearly got into an accident. Needless to say, the drive back home was very exciting…

  2. vtpackfan 02/18/2007 at 6:29 PM #

    “Grant is the most inconsistent player in the ACC.”
    He wasn’t tonight. Also see thread before this discussing possibility that it’s not just Atsur missing from this line up next year. Agree that Engin will be missed. He’s a senior with 103 starts for the Wolfpack. Next years it’s Degand, Johnson, and Fergie (combined 0 starts) that will compete to replace him.

    I’d still like to see Sid play Costner at the four some next year. His long range shot provides a miss match on the court at the four spot, where the three is just suppossed to do that. Plus, he is pretty hard to push around when he gets position under the defensive boards (just ask Hans-bra). Either way, Sid and staff can do some more things match up wise next year, but I’m still concerned a little that if your pg doesn’t distibute the rock the right way then all the match ups in the world amount to a hill of beans. We have a tall mountain to climb in the half court getting the offense set consistently with Atsur gone.

  3. WolfPup35 02/18/2007 at 6:35 PM #

    Travels Hopsbrough is gonna have a HELL of a time AGAIN going up against Costner….BTW…Was anybody else really happy to see TH constantly hitting the floor against BC?? It was very refreshing to see HIM get thrown around without a foul call. THE LITTLE CRYBABY IS PURE GARBAGE!!

  4. HungryLikeTheWolf 02/18/2007 at 6:49 PM #

    When this team plays well, they are a lot of FUN to watch! Congrats to the team on another BIG win!!

  5. GoldenChain 02/18/2007 at 6:49 PM #

    I know we’ve had some games we plain didn’t show up for but when we do it’s a thing of beauty!
    One thing that always bothered me about Herb is that his teams never had the ‘killer instinct’.
    I don’t think that’ll be a problem with Sid.

  6. Pack92 02/18/2007 at 7:07 PM #

    ^Second that killer instinct. You don’t just go for the throat, you rip it out.

    What a game!

  7. CaptainCraptacular 02/18/2007 at 7:20 PM #

    *This is a huge victory going into the UNC game. I think we just put ourselves in the NIT with this win but we’ll definitely have to show up against UNC to further solidify that bid.*

    Is the NIT requirement to have at least a .500 record still in place? If so, there’s still work to be done. We’d need one more win in the regular season to be assured of a .500 record. If we go 0-4 the rest of the way we’d need to make the semi’s of the ACC tourney to be considered.

    And really, thats all assuming the NIT will take us at .500. The NCAA purchased the rights to operate the NIT and have said they would make changes in how the postseason tourney would be run. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that they were going to reduce the number of teams invited to the postseason NIT, but could be wrong about that.

    Anyway, regardless of all that.. Great win today! Gminski and the other announcer had good things to say about NC State and its rich basketball tradition.

  8. gopack968 02/18/2007 at 7:36 PM #

    What a fun win. This team is solid 1-5 with two or three bench players who can contribute a few minutes to give the starters a little rest. Sometimes this works – like tonight – and sometimes it does not. Credit Sidney with keeping the team focused on the next game and not worried about the last game or overall record. Games like this make a tough season easier to swallow and give me great hope for the future of NC State basketball.

    Go Pack!

  9. PurplePeopleEaters 02/18/2007 at 8:11 PM #

    vtpackfan-

    When I said he was the most inconsistent in the ACC I meant that he showed up today but other days it’s like he isn’t there.

  10. beowolf 02/18/2007 at 8:42 PM #

    Well, I’m shocked.

    Pleased as heck, but shocked.

  11. vtpackfan 02/18/2007 at 8:52 PM #

    I get what your saying. It’s like GG doesn’t take lessons learned and apply them to the next game, or something. Some of it has been that other ACC teams have singled him out (especialy when Atsur was out) and changed looks on him to keep him guessing. Duke went from guarding the three point line against Herbs team (opening the lanes up for Cedric) to clogging the slashing lanes where GG usually drives through. Had we had Atsur or a GG outside shooting night like tonight the Dook game would have been a closer contest, IMO.

    I wasn’t saying you had it wrong, just that the perception by the majority (including the N & 0) is that Gavin has perfected Yin & Yang harmony on the basketball court. Doing everything right one moment and a stunning, blunderous miscue the next, which isn’t at all the case.

  12. StateFans 02/18/2007 at 9:03 PM #

    Gavin has no middle setting. He’s fantastic, or he’s awful.

  13. PurplePeopleEaters 02/18/2007 at 10:15 PM #

    Exactly. Fantastic or awful. Sometimes from game to game, sometimes from play to play. The annoying thing is the fantastic is worth keeping him in the lineup but the awful isn’t. So you can’t bench him unless you start to see a trend from play to play of game to game which is never the case. I guess you keep him in there and hope for the up and under fast break dunk gavin grant.

  14. redfred2 02/19/2007 at 10:05 AM #

    I don’t know whether the coaches have told him or if he’s figuring it out on his own, but Grant has settled down some lately and is not going so much one on one as he did earlier in the season. I think he did that more back when the other players were adjusting to their roles as starters and when they were being way too tenative at times. Either way, if there other options I wouldn’t mind hearing the criticism so much, but fantastic or not, he is one of five major factors for the Wolfpack this season, and he’ll be around NEXT SEASON. If we can’t stay positive about our own players, then let’s just drop the subject and talk about something else.

  15. packbackr04 02/19/2007 at 3:19 PM #

    red^ are we sure he will be back next season?

  16. redfred2 02/19/2007 at 4:24 PM #

    04

    I don’t think the NBA is in the picture. If immigration is the problem, I’ll go ballistic and start rounding up illegal construction workers myself. Maybe a foreign league is what he’s thinking. I hope not, if he’ll hang on for one more season under Sid, he’ll have NBA capabilities.

  17. packbackr04 02/19/2007 at 5:24 PM #

    agreed. if we could only get lew and fergs to transfer to open up some schollies for next yr. on the game thread, primacy posted an awesome articel about an 07 PG we are going after. do we have the scholly to offer right now? does the staff know something we dont?

  18. TNCSU 02/20/2007 at 4:52 PM #

    That ’07 PG looks interesting — definitely looks like he’s a competitor who likes to win, has great poise, etc. Seems like he carries his team during the final quarter/OT — several times recently — against good competition. Looks like a definite contender to start at PG right away — also a good shooter. BTW, I’m sure the staff knows ALOT of things we DON’T!

1 2

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. StateFans Nation » Blog Archive » Redux of Castrated Turkeys Redux - 03/10/2007

    […] There’s good mojo with that thread title, so we will have to stick with it, despite the God-awful syntax. The winner will get a steamrolling (and hopefully overconfident) UNC squad tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. Believe it or not, Jeff is stuck at a wedding and is limited to e-mail. He had a couple of items to pass along, as a warm-up to “game thread” action: […]

Leave a Reply