Pack vs PC: State Ugly Again, Advances to 10-3

“It is like going to the dentist without any novocaine.” – Gary Hahn describing NC State Basketball

State shot 1 of 11 from the three point line in the first half and 5 of 7 in the second half

PC

NC State takes the court today against a Presbyterian College team with a horrible record but who have been playing well of late. The “Hose” were tied at Wake Forest mid-way through the second half and lost at Georgia by only ten points. A full preview can be found here.

Despite a lot of speculation that Marques Johnson has supplanted Javi Gonzalez as the Wolfpack’s starting point guard, Coach Lowe says that Gonzalez will start today. Of course, it doesn’t matter who starts; it matters who plays the most and who is on the court when the game is on the line.

Gonzalez had 17 minutes of playing time in each of the last two games. He has hit 4 of 22 shots from the field this season (18.2 percent) and has nine assists and 14 turnovers.

Additionally, the N&O has featured Marques Johnson in an article today.

“My first game, I was extremely nervous,” Johnson said this week. “I hadn’t been in a competitive atmosphere like that in a year. Once the second half came along I started to feel better, and [against] Western Carolina I definitely felt a lot more comfortable.

“I think I bring a lot, with my size, at point guard. I know what type of team we have, so I don’t necessarily have to … score all the buckets. Whatever we need at the time, I’ll bring.”

Elsewhere, it is a big day for ACC Basketball as some of our mid-tier and lower tier teams have the opportunities to do well for themselves and the conference. For example, BC hosts Kansas and Maryland travels to UNC-Charlotte.

(Dear BC fans…in the ACC we pull FOR each other in these types of games.)

For open thread-like comments please use Friday’s Open Thread

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07-08 Basketball

148 Responses to Pack vs PC: State Ugly Again, Advances to 10-3

  1. vtpackfan 01/06/2008 at 12:35 PM #

    These young men are trying very hard to improve, maybe to the point of pressing a little.

    Look, you don’t get recruited by any D 1 schools, and not many D II, at the guard position if you can’t make a wide open outside shot occasionally. The higher the level the more complicated and fautiging it gets because you have to play more intense defense and expend vastly more amounts of energy.

    That said, these young men are biting the bit right now. It’s not coaching or scheming, it’s a case of the defense taunting us to take WIDE OPEN shots from the outside because they know we are a fragile perimenter team.

    We are so bad in this key area that I feel bad for any member of the ’83 national championship to have it’s 25 th anniversary tarnished by any association with this team.

  2. redfred2 01/06/2008 at 12:44 PM #

    Bo, the Blue Hose are a young program that seems to be able to hang around until very late in the games. Now, all they need is to do is learn how to type the letters, W,T,N, and Y, and they’ll be ahead of the curve.

  3. benniebolton 01/06/2008 at 1:00 PM #

    I really would like to see some more emotion out of our squad, esp. Sid — I’m not saying go Bob Knight on anyone, but get fired up. I’d rather see him closer to Coach Knight than closer to his predecessor.

    Off topic, but all the analysts I’ve heard this morning are putting the Chargers chances of winning on Philip proving he can be consistent and lead them in and through the playoffs — let’s hope he can, we gotta pull hard for our guy

  4. Stoner 01/06/2008 at 1:33 PM #

    I make no predictions about this team. I hope and pray we aren’t embarrased next Saturday against Carolina.

  5. redfred2 01/06/2008 at 2:11 PM #

    ^Embarrassed? Against Carolina? In the season opener? And in their building?

    That’s not unexpected, it’s a regular occurrence. And, it happens to teams that are much more focused and better than we are.

    It’s the next NO, the next ECU, or the even the next Blue Hosers, that I’m worried about. Those are the embarrassments for us and the competition level that we’re playing at. The heels are in a totally different league right now.

    Even if this team should show up from the onset, playing hard at UNC, and somehow makes a game of it, I’ll just be more confused, and probably more frustrated than I am right now.

  6. redfred2 01/06/2008 at 2:18 PM #

    UConn’s women’s team, with 42 points at the 3:00 minute mark of the first half.

  7. redfred2 01/06/2008 at 2:21 PM #

    Update, make that 53 at the half, for the LADY Huskies.

  8. Trip 01/06/2008 at 2:43 PM #

    Off-topic, but more reason for frustration, although a boost for our RPI.

    No. 17 Villanova 64, No. 13 Pittsburgh 63 (Yes, that team that beat Duke)
    http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=280060222

    Yep, we CAN play good. Just against ranked teams.

  9. shaggymojo 01/06/2008 at 2:55 PM #

    Sorry to change the subject, but did anyone else find it strange how Lowe said in the pre-game interview that there were “two different stories” about what happened to Horner’s ankle? Anyone have any other info on that? It almost sounded to me like Horner thought he was intentionally tripped (which, of course, would not be a good sign for team solidarity). I hope I interpreted that the wrong way…

  10. Trip 01/06/2008 at 3:04 PM #

    The official story was that Horner went for a layup and Ben tried to block it and came down on Horner’s ankle.

    Chemistry isn’t an issue between Horner and Mccauley, they’ve always gotten along well.

  11. vtpackfan 01/06/2008 at 3:13 PM #

    “It almost sounded to me like Horner thought he was intentionally tripped (which, of course, would not be a good sign for team solidarity). ”

    I heard it too and was curious. Nothing in what Lowe said envoked me to believe it was “intentional”, or that fista-cuffs were revealed.

    It almost sounded like Ben was going too hard in a situation that didn’t warrant it. Yes, hustling and scrapping on D in practice is beneficial in many ways. But practicing hard fouls when your beat one on one is just plain stupid IMO.

    So far McAuley has been playing alot like what we expected at the beggining of last year. Regressing individual athletes, and untimely injuries, does this just spell out Wolfpack basketball?

  12. wufpup76 01/06/2008 at 3:15 PM #

    “Off-topic, but more reason for frustration, although a boost for our RPI.

    No. 17 Villanova 64, No. 13 Pittsburgh 63 (Yes, that team that beat Duke)
    http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=280060222

    Yep, we CAN play good. Just against ranked teams.”

    Trip, you may or may not have been aware that Pitt lost their starting power forward for the season in the Duke game and lost their starting point guard (and best player) against Dayton last week … so, yes it does help our RPI some – but this is definitely not the same Pitt team that beat Duke … some good and bad there 🙁

    Also, i love our players, especially the point guards who are doing their best and IMPROVING with each game played … i’m merely pointing out some problems with our zone offense (in my opinion) … This is not aimed at you, Trip – I just don’t want anyone thinking I hate ANY of our players as there have been some comments concerning attacking individual players

    go pack 🙂

  13. benniebolton 01/06/2008 at 3:18 PM #

    GT beat Presbyterian 77-64

  14. Mike 01/06/2008 at 3:20 PM #

    It is always difficult to make comparisons of who beat who and by how many. Trip, we did beat ‘Nova and Duke did lose to Pitt. Pitt has now lost 2 key players from their team, so that is a different team.

    I have said all year we are playing to the level of competition, and go back and red my posts – I said these 3 games were not guaranteed blow-outs (but they should be). I said we will probably win all three, but they will be surprisingly close.

    I also said come Conf time, we will be OK. Sid will have the guys ready for UNC, but I am still preplexed how we can score 17 in a half against this team.

  15. choppack1 01/06/2008 at 3:46 PM #

    I’m just shocked and terribly disappointed in how we’ve played vs. the “give me” games on our schedule. We’ve been consistently horrid…I mean Les Robinson bad vs. these teams. UNO, ECU, WCU, Presbyterian.

    I was OK w/ our effort vs. USC and Rider, but not thrilled. Cincy, Davidson, Nova and Seton Hall, pretty good. Let’s not talk about Michigan State.

    Aside from Bill and Mary – who am I missing?

  16. spanky 01/06/2008 at 4:52 PM #

    South Carolina was the other team…

  17. spanky 01/06/2008 at 4:57 PM #

    SC State… actually… not SC….

  18. Trip 01/06/2008 at 5:39 PM #

    Wufpup – I didn’t know about the star point guard, I knew they lost their PF though. So yeah, that isn’t as impressive anymore, but thankfully it still helps out our RPI which has taken a massive drop because of WCU and Presby.

    We do have problems attacking a zone defense, but really the EASIEST way to defeat the zone is to hit your 3’s. There are other ways to defeat it, but if the zone is executed well, they are difficult to attain. Javi, as I’ve always said, has a good 3 point stroke, it was just his confidence was off. Johnson has a low release point, but he is taller so it still works from what I can tell during the warm ups. Fells can hit 3’s, he just chooses not to. We are not a perimeter team, but we do have people that can hit 3’s on good days Javi, Grant, Fells, Costner, Horner, and to a lesser extent, Johnson but we’re not sure of that, they just need to have more of these good days.

    What we’re missing as pointed out before is someone who can create his own shot, dribble slash to the basket, Grant seems to be the only one who can at the moment. I’ve seen flashes of Fells doing it every once in a season, so he has the ability, and Costner is a pretty good ball handler for his size and has done it in the past as well.

  19. doug74 01/06/2008 at 5:49 PM #

    Our coach was good at working with young teams in the pros and knows what he’s doing now. Wasting unnecessary energy just to look busy is dumb. It doesn’t mean they’re not trying. I had good seats and could see how into it they were. PU was doing what the original Princeton teams did. They played a tight zone and ran the clock down. Our team forced their shot clock horn to go off a lot. On offense we were trying to get the ball inside and had several turnovers that way early but stayed patient until our shots started dropping later. I imagine that some of our players read this blog and can’t be helped by the negativity. Calling a fat person fat may make me feel good but will probably make her say “..ck it.” I think our turning point came when Javi made those 2 threes and then Fells got hot. I bet they will score more from now on as a result.

  20. SaccoV 01/06/2008 at 8:47 PM #

    I know this is slightly off-topic, but I’m wondering if anyone else saw the ESPN basketball crew, especially “unbiased” Jay Bilas, touting Arizona State’s 10-2 (2-0 in conference) start. Jay just can’t believe that NC State fans would be unhappy with our basketball program’s recent Herb-icide. Also, Rece Davis gave a bit of a shout-out to NC State’s bloggers. Glad to know we get recognized for our performance LAST YEAR!!!

  21. Trip 01/06/2008 at 9:21 PM #

    Clemson is on route to an upset of UNC… 74-69. If they would hit a freaking free throw they’d be up 84-69.

  22. redfred2 01/06/2008 at 9:33 PM #

    ^It ain’t over yet.

  23. redfred2 01/06/2008 at 9:43 PM #

    Damnit! They had it!!! I don’t like their chances in OT.

  24. Trip 01/06/2008 at 9:44 PM #

    tied up going into overtime, Clemson has basically taken hansbro out of the game and it seems to be doing well.

  25. MrPlywood 01/06/2008 at 9:55 PM #

    An interesting note: #4 Washington St. was down at the half to Washington by the same score we saw in the State game, 20 to 17. That said, the U-Dub is much tougher opposition than a 1-19 first year Division 1 school, and point guard or not, packed zone or not, State should have had a better showing. If Sid truly is still “tinkering” with the line-up, I wish he would get the game in hand before he starts experimenting. I would also like to see the Pack dictate the style of play and be pro-active instead of reactive.

    BTW, as I write this Clempson is up by 1 on UNC in overtime…

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