W&M Post-Game

07-08 Basketball General82
Name FG 3Pt FT PF Pts
Brandon Costner 3-12 3/9 4-4 2 13
Farnold Degand 1-5 0-2 0-0 3 2
Courtney Fells 4-8 1-4 1-2 3 10
Trevor Ferguson 1-5 1-3 1-0 1 3
Javier Gonzalez 0-1 0-1 1-2 2 1
Gavin Grant 2-10 0-3 0-0 1 4
J.J. Hickson 12-12 0-0 7-10 1 31
Dennis Horner 0-2 0-1 0-0 2 0
Ben McCauley 1-1 0-0 0-0 2 2
Totals 24-54 5-24 13-18 17 66

.444 .208 .722    

Yahoo Recap

Now Hickson is in the mix, giving the Wolfpack another weapon on an already stacked front line. The former McDonald’s All-American finished with the second-best scoring day for a freshman in school history, while his 31 points marked the best outing for an N.C. State freshman in a season opener.

gopack.com article

Hickson’s only misses on the night were at the free throw line, where he was seven of 10 for the night before leaving with less than a minute to play. It was the most points by a Wolfpack freshman in his first game since Ivan Wagner scored 29 against Virginia Military institute to open the 1996-96 season. It was also the second-most points ever scored by a Wolfpack fresh. Ernie Myers set that mark in 1983 with 35 points against Duke.

Complete Box Score

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

07-08 Basketball General

82 Responses to W&M Post-Game

  1. benniebolton 11/15/2007 at 10:40 PM #

    JJ was sick!!!!

  2. gumbydammit 11/15/2007 at 10:47 PM #

    imagine how much he would have scored if he was well…

  3. wayofthemaster 11/15/2007 at 10:49 PM #

    Allowed 13 offensive rebounds to Bill & Mary.

    Shot 5-24 from behind the arc.

    That first stat bothers me much more than the second.

  4. ktpritch 11/15/2007 at 10:50 PM #

    28.6% shooting less Hickson – not good

  5. Otis 11/15/2007 at 10:54 PM #

    JJ started the game with Ben coming in off of the bench. If i remember correctly JJ did not miss a fg attempt. But after listening to the game on the radio – me thinks he is a one and done type of player – we need to make the most of this year.

  6. jamieinkorea 11/15/2007 at 11:16 PM #

    I actually got to listen to that game free by catching a stream from the Wm. & Mary sports network (all 3 channels)…

    Hickson was sick, but I was a little disappointed by the output from the other guys.

  7. ncsukyle430 11/15/2007 at 11:19 PM #

    We have got to stop shooting so many threes. It is going to kill us to have that many attempts from outside come conference play.

  8. JeremyH 11/15/2007 at 11:21 PM #

    watched it on ACC select, notes:

    -it seems our team has no idea how to box their player out, ridiculously so.
    -Courtney Fells makes a lot of mental mistakes in passing.
    -our team speed is a MAJOR Achilles heel.
    -Javi Gonzalez listed as 6’0…I don’t think so.
    -we didn’t try to penetrate to break the zone.
    -Marques Johnson, come on down.

    sure we won, but in a way we didn’t. we will be laid out if we play like this against any ACC team. I see a sloppy, undisciplined team who went cold in the two half until JJ decided to take over.

    Can we convert McCauley into a shooting guard?
    I have no idea why Tracy Smith didn’t play.

  9. JeremyH 11/15/2007 at 11:24 PM #

    ^^didn’t play real minutes, I think Smith played in the last minute.

  10. vtpackfan 11/15/2007 at 11:28 PM #

    First game done, congats on the win. A huge “hey nice to meet you to Mr. Hickson”.

    We were in position to grab alot more rebounds tonight, just didn’t finish. There seems to be this huge effort on the part of all these guys to grab a rebound and fast break it up court so as not to have to stagger through another offensive set against the zone. A better job of sealing the deal and cleaning the glass definitely will become a priority.

    No Zone breaker found from the outside. Everyone, except maybe Horner, forced one up ill advised. We are going to see more and more zones this year and it’s going to be a challenge for the staff and the pg’s to identify the who, when, and where in terms of outside shots taken.

    I loved Hickson’s energy, I don’t care if it’s his only year so long as he stays healthy. It’s fun to have someone who is sick on your team. Go Pack!

  11. vtpackfan 11/15/2007 at 11:34 PM #

    Ease it Jeremy. This team took G’Town to the brink, and by “any ACC team” do you include the GT squad that lost to UNC Greenboring?

    It’s the first game. The team has work to do, they will get better. Individuals have work to do, they will get better. Even JJ is going to get better.

  12. Trip 11/15/2007 at 11:44 PM #

    (first post here, woooo.)

    Just got back from the game, Hickson was indeed a monster… it looks like McCauley has shown him a few post moves as well, because he looked exceptional getting to the basket AND drawing fouls. Good FT shooter as well. Solid on defense for the most part as well.

    Degand takes excellent care of the basketball so far against moderate pressure but his shooting really needs improvement. A few of the shots he took didn’t have a chance making it in from my viewpoint. Whoever on our team that starts nailing 3 point shots consistently first is going to get playing time. Until we get a sniper on the outside, we’re gonna face a zone defense a lot. I’m starting to think that eventually he’ll be phased out of starting at the PG when Johnson becomes eligible and Javi fully recovers.

    Speaking of playing against a zone defense, we looked a LOT better tonight against the zone than we did against UNC-Pembroke, and as long as our bigs can get touches on the ball we’ll do great.

    I didn’t get a good look at Javi too much, but he seemed confident and didn’t turn the ball over at all. He has one of the best 3 pt shot techniques on the team from what I saw in warm ups, but he completely missed the goal on his one attempt while in the game.

    Costner was a bull, and (sadly) one of our better 3 pt shooters currently. I really hope one of our guards steps up in that department soon.

    What was up with Ben? He didn’t get a lot of PT, sick maybe?

    I feel bad for Tracy Smith, he was outstanding in our exhibition matches, and would get playing time on most teams in the ACC, but since he’s behind an already loaded and very talented front court, I don’t see him getting a ton of playtime unless one of the starters falter. He’ll be a excellent replacement for Costner though in the coming years.

    As far as defense goes, I think we held them to 28% shooting? That is ridiculously good, and I really hope that we can keep that up.

    Also, on the post game report, W&M coach said that our frontline was better than Georgetowns. Excelllent… Excellllentt.

  13. PackGirl 11/15/2007 at 11:47 PM #

    I was wondering what the deal was with McCauley also. He didn’t start and only played 14 minutes – 2 more than Javi and 4 more than Trevor. When he did play, they couldnt’ seem to get the ball in to him.

  14. BigRed 11/15/2007 at 11:48 PM #

    Watching the game at the RBC, it really didn’t feel like we were shooting as poorly as the stats say we did.

    The two big frustrations I had during the game were watching W&M get their own ORs over and over, and our inability to keep their bigs from going up successfully inside. But we were getting our own as we needed to, so it never really felt too terribly bad.

    Looking at the stats, I’m concerned about the shooting percentages. Those will have to come up, especially on the outside. For tonight I’m writing it off to early season rust.

    Really though, I walked out of the RBC pretty jazzed. The guards did what they needed to in moving and distributing the ball. Fergie and Horner came in with some impact. Grant did his thing but didn’t seem to be needlessly forcing it. And, yeah, JJ had a great night.

    W&M played well, and we won.

  15. BigRed 11/15/2007 at 11:52 PM #

    “William & Mary shot 29 percent for the game.”

    That’s why our shooting didn’t seem so painful.

    To our credit the guys were putting on a lot of ball pressure.

  16. Primewolf 11/15/2007 at 11:57 PM #

    Our defense was awful at times. I don’t understand why Sid lets them slack off like that. But they did step in up defensively twice during the game and that was the difference.

    I still don’t get why Fergy is playing so much. He cannot play defense at all.

    Horner isn’t getting much time.

    I would take 10 ACC wins right now. Unless Sid pulls another coaching miracle, 10 wins is about tops for us this year. We will see alot of zone and packed defenses.

  17. Trip 11/16/2007 at 12:09 AM #

    The defense overall was good, but like you said PW, they were awful at times especially with offensive rebounding, I was sitting there 4 rows from the basket screaming “GRAB THE BALL!” as we let them have 2 offensive rebounds back to back.

  18. JeremyH 11/16/2007 at 12:11 AM #

    “Our defense was awful at times.”

    Wasn’t it? The intensity isn’t consistently there, and if you watch the video, you will see what I mean about boxing out. Frustrating, and it was like a replay of UNC-P.

    The refs called tons of fouls, so a very choppy game.

    In his show this past week El Sid said Ferguson was doing very well in practice.

    I know this is the first regular season game but they need to drastically improve defense and reduce turnovers.

  19. RBCRowdy 11/16/2007 at 12:14 AM #

    For those of you who couldn’t make it, JJ is that good. That is all you need to know.

  20. Trip 11/16/2007 at 12:16 AM #

    Reduce turnovers? After watching Grant at the point last year I was excited to see that we only turned it over 10 times for the whole team, rather than Grant himself turning it over 10 times, haha.

  21. PackerInRussia 11/16/2007 at 12:16 AM #

    Interesting that with all of our talk about depth, the bench only scored 6 points. I guess when one player scores half your points you don’t need a lot of help off the bench though. Of course depth provides more than points. It provides a rest for the starters, etc., but it seems like they should have been more productive. Of course I didn’t see the game, so it’s hard to judge a game purely on stats.

  22. Anthony Grundy 11/16/2007 at 12:37 AM #

    I hoped to see a little more team basketball. Last year the team started to gel due to good ball movement and team oriented basketball during the end of the season. We seemed a little choppy at times tonight. Kind of like when the USA plays European teams in the olympics. Sure we are bigger, better and more talented but that doesn’t always win games anymore. Teams that play good team ball on both sides of the floor will win in the end. Don’t get me wrong, this was a solid performance, and a great start. I just hope the offense doesn’t become stagnant and too reliant on Hickson.

  23. Ismael 11/16/2007 at 12:38 AM #

    Come on guys…first real game that counts, these guys have to get into the twice a week thing and get moving around and get flowing. Do you have any idea how dramatically the team has changed since march of last year. We went from having 5-6 guys to now 10-11 guys. We went from having an all-ACC PG to a 3 headed undefined PG monster with NO ACC experience. It’s gonna take a few games to work out the kinks.

  24. Stoner 11/16/2007 at 12:38 AM #

    Listened to the game on the radio. We missed a lot of shots on the outside. If it doesn’t change, it’s going to be al ong season, since teams will pack it in on defense and dare us to shoot.

    Is Degand as fast as advertised? On the radio it didn’t seem like he was trying to slash into the zone and draw defenders and then kick out.

    I was hoping to have a PG, who could break down a defense, when nothing else was working on offense.

  25. Trip 11/16/2007 at 1:16 AM #

    Degand is as far as advertised, but as far as dribble penetration and slashing… nothing so far. Grant was the only person who attempted to slash inside at all it seemed.

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