DBR Previews the Pack

07-08 Basketball General Media Sidney Lowe26

More good news for basketball! And what do you know, they have very good things to say:

What State accomplished, in the upsets of UNC and Virginia Tech in the regular season, followed by the magical March ride, was to reconnect with State’s tremendous tradition. From Everett Case to Norm Sloan to Jim Valvano, State basketball was emotional, fast, and often electrifying.

Sidney Lowe gave them that back and he followed up a tremendous debut (particularly considering what seemed to be severe personnel limitations early on and with a very thin roster throughout) with tremendous recruiting.

So it seems safe to say that even if State struggles this year, the Pack is back.

Very nice acknowledgement of NC State’s basketball tradition. DBR goes on to state that, as long as NC State finds a point guard, we could have a very good season. I think we’re all in agreement on that point.

About BJD95

1995 NC State graduate, sufferer of Les and MOC during my entire student tenure. An equal-opportunity objective critic and analyst of Wolfpack sports.

07-08 Basketball General Media Sidney Lowe

26 Responses to DBR Previews the Pack

  1. primacyone 09/04/2007 at 2:42 PM #

    That whole piece deserves repeating, but two statements in particular:

    “…..State’s TREMENDOUS tradition….”

    and

    “…..emotional, fast, and often electrifying…..”

    15 years is a long dang time.

  2. crackdog 09/04/2007 at 3:17 PM #

    DBR has written previews for both NC State and UNC. They are well thought out, and written from the subjective perspective of someone who has seen a lot of games, rather than an objective statistics-driven perspective ala Section Six. I think both approaches have a lot to offer, and DBR is definitely one of the better subjective basketball writers out there. Beats the socks off of anything the MSM produces about ACC basketball.

  3. zahadum 09/04/2007 at 3:20 PM #

    Two questions: 1) Clayton Beard? First time I’ve heard that name. Anyone know anything about him? 2) Has Degand really grown to 6′ 5″? We’ve heard about his speed, but if he really has that much size, he could be double trouble.

  4. WTNY 09/04/2007 at 3:53 PM #

    crackdog — Yes, DBR is very good. However, as you might expect, they can pull out the Duke snob-o-meter in a jiffy …

    zahadum — IIRC, the heights on State’s BBall roster includes a 1 inch shoe …

  5. pakfanistan 09/04/2007 at 5:05 PM #

    Great, so who is Clayton Beard?

  6. primacyone 09/04/2007 at 5:24 PM #

    Clayton Beard is a freshman walk-on combo guard out of Detroit Day. I think he averaged about 11 points a game with them. They won the state championship. Detroit Day is also where Carlos Boozer and Chris Webber played. They have a great coach with a long history of basketball success.

    Clayton was also a strong Lacrosse player, who appears to fairly bright both from a academic standpoint and an on the court standpoint. He’s planning on earning a scholarship, so we will see how it goes. He looks pretty decent for a walk-on, IMO.

  7. burnbarn 09/04/2007 at 5:48 PM #

    ^ I understand Dumars’ kid goes there too.

  8. choppack1 09/04/2007 at 9:47 PM #

    There’s one thing I disagree with:
    “During the Herb Sendek years, embittered State fans became fond of saying State had become a football school. But with the fall of the house of Amato coinciding with the rather impressive debut of Sidney Lowe, that has been shown to be nonsense: State was and is a basketball school, and will remain one for the foreseeable future.”

    I think State is the closest thing to a football school that you’ll find outside of FSU, Clemson and VaTech….7 straight sell-outs. 2 of them after losing seasons.

    Aside from that I enjoyed it. Obviously, these guys know roundball – better than most journalists out there. I’ll be interested to see where the other publications and writers put us. And yes, for the first time in a very long time, I’m really excited about basketball.

  9. LRM 09/04/2007 at 11:11 PM #

    If you want objective insight into the ACC in general, DBR will usually provide that. I’ve been reading them for years.

  10. noah 09/05/2007 at 9:46 AM #

    Detroit Country Day is where all the GM executives send their kids. Robin Williams and Steve Balmer both went there.

    Tuition is about $25,000 a year.

  11. Texpack 09/05/2007 at 10:08 AM #

    I started anticipating basketball season long before the first football debacle of the year. Sidney’s toughest task will be to figure out who can do what and how to divide up the minutes. The returning players are going to have to develop some chemistry with the newcomers as well. I wish I had a better feel for GG as a leader to make that happen, but we’ll just have to see if he, or someone else, can turn this roster into a team sooner rather than later.

  12. crackdog 09/05/2007 at 10:52 AM #

    WTNY – “crackdog — Yes, DBR is very good. However, as you might expect, they can pull out the Duke snob-o-meter in a jiffy …”

    Absolutely. They think very highly of their team… but manage a pretty balanced viewpoint on most other ones.

  13. packgrad93 09/05/2007 at 11:36 AM #

    “So it seems safe to say that even if State struggles this year, the Pack is back.”

    no excuse to struggle this year. I expect a good NCAA run out of this squad.

  14. pakfanistan 09/05/2007 at 2:36 PM #

    Take it easy there, we still don’t have a point guard.

    Although, I would love (as in, be amused) to see us just run Hickson, Costner, McCauley, Horner and Smith and then just screw dribbling and just play keep away.

  15. memories 09/05/2007 at 3:09 PM #

    I expect Monte Towe to eventually be named head coach. You didn’t hear it here first.

  16. PapaJohn 09/05/2007 at 3:48 PM #

    ^ What???????????????????????????

  17. Luke12321 09/05/2007 at 4:10 PM #

    What PapaJohn said… lol

  18. Luke12321 09/05/2007 at 5:12 PM #

    Oh, BTW…..to the few that said Tracy Smith would not qualify and be in N.C State red this year…. eat this up

    http://www.gopack.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=41962&SPID=3731&DB_OEM_ID=9200&ATCLID=1150344&Q_SEASON=2007

    I told you guys, Sid is not stupid. He would not take a player that he knew would not qualify. Welcome Tracy!!!

  19. redfred2 09/05/2007 at 6:18 PM #

    Luke, the link didn’t work for me and I don’t know what it says, but I thought I had read somewhere way back that Smith was actually a good student, so I didn’t understand what all the chatter over his qualifying was all about.

  20. Luke12321 09/05/2007 at 9:13 PM #

    Just copy and paste the entire code there and it will work, but to stop the wait….it is Tracy Smith’s Player Bio page off of the N.C State roster with his N.C State jersey on. 🙂

  21. TNCSU 09/06/2007 at 9:34 AM #

    I’m glad he qualified, too, but I don’t think the “chatter” was about his abilities as a student (I’ve heard he’s a great kid) — I think it was more about Mt. Zion in general. That said, I’m glad it’s worked out. I expect good things from him.

  22. Luke12321 09/06/2007 at 10:58 AM #

    That is exatly what it was….”chatter”. College coaches are in the know about who is going to qualify and who isn’t. They know the risk that come with each player and each school. If they were something that was going to hold Smith back from N.C State, Lowe would not have wasted efforts on recruiting him. That being said, I look forward to Smith and his career at N.C State. Unless we have injuries, Smith could see limited time this year but I hope to see him convert his game into a SF over this year and the summer. It is not that far fetch that Smith could be a starter next year if he worked hard.

  23. BJD95 09/06/2007 at 12:50 PM #

    FYI, people close to the program told us not to “count on” Tracy Smith making it in this year. The issue was Mt. Zion and the NCAA Clearinghouse.

  24. noah 09/06/2007 at 2:03 PM #

    I never heard any “chatter” about Smith as a student.

    What I heard was that Mt. Zion had not been accredited by the NCAA and was unlikely to received such accreditation in time.

    The only information about Smith’s grades and test scores that I ever heard was from his coach…who said that he had something like a 3.0 and a qualifying score.

  25. packgrad93 09/07/2007 at 10:49 AM #

    “Take it easy there, we still don’t have a point guard.”

    huh? we have 3.

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