With so many dark clouds looming on the football front, it would be nice to have a good basketball season to look forward to. Sadly, that’s not the case for us long-suffering Wolfpackers. But we can look forward anyway, as Ken Tysiac does this morning:
Courtney Fells, the easygoing senior who recently moved from shooting guard to small forward, impressed his teammates with his no-nonsense photo pose. Ben McCauley, Trevor Ferguson and Farnold Degand also were among the players who tagged along.
After a fractious 2007-08 season that saw the Wolfpack stumble to the No. 12 seed in the ACC Tournament and a 15-16 record, an exhibition trip to Canada could provide much-needed healing.
“It’s a really good thing,” N.C. State junior guard Trevor Ferguson said of the Wolfpack’s trip. “Being able to start practice now gets the bad taste out of our mouth from last year and look forward to a new year and get up there and play together as a team early on.”
“It’s not just one night,” McCauley said. “It’s a couple days, and it’s just going to be us. If we don’t get along this trip, then we’ve got some trouble. But I think we will.”
Notice anything here, beyond the “fluff piece” aspect? The four guys listed as getting their photos together are all SFN-projected starters for the upcoming season (links for center, power forward, small forward, shooting guard, and point guard analysis from this summer). Ben McCauley continues to express cautious optimism (see earlier analysis) that the team rift can be healed going forward. Courtney Fells is described as having moved to small forward – thank God. Trevor Ferguson sounds pretty confident, too – more like a guy that is ready to play a key role, and not just be a scrappy fan favorite with a cameo here and there. If Trevor’s confident with handling the ball and taking his shot, he can be very useful. Nobody else is at all suited to play starter minutes at the 2.
