Monday Musings

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March 5, 2012

NC STATE BASKETBALL
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AkulaWolf (BackingThePack.com)
NC State Clinches No. 5 Seed In ACC Tournament With 70-58 Win Over Virginia Tech

NC State took care of business in Blacksburg on Sunday night and delivered a 70-58 win to secure the No. 5 seed in next weekend’s ACC tournament. That means the Wolfpack will open the conference tournament at 2:00 p.m. ET on Thursday against Boston College. So set your DVRs…I mean, set your illnesses to Thursday afternoon. I can tell already that you aren’t looking so good. Is that a cough?

GoPack.com
NC State Tops Virginia Tech, 70-58

GoPack.com
NC State vs Virginia Tech Box Score

JP GIGLIO (N&O)
N.C. State wins, states case to NCAA

JP GIGLIO (N&O)
Observations from Pack vs Hokies

ANDREW CARTER (N&O)
How the ACC season played out

WRALSportsfan.com
North Carolina State defeats Virginia Tech 70-58

Early March is the time of year when a lot of coaches are lobbying for their teams to receive a bid to the NCAA Tournament.

North Carolina State coach Mark Gottfried made a pretty good case for his bunch on Sunday night.

Scott Wood scored 19 points to lead the Wolfpack past Virginia Tech 70-58, as N.C. State secured a winning mark in ACC play for the first time since 2005-06.

N.C. State (20-11, 9-7 Atlantic Coast Conference), which snapped a four-game skid to the Hokies and won 20 games in the regular season for the first time since 2005-06, also got 18 points from C.J. Leslie.

The Wolfpack clinched the No. 5 seed in the ACC tournament Thursday in Atlanta, where they will play No. 12 seed Boston College at 2:30 p.m.

“Every coach stands on their soapbox,” Gottfried said. “I hope we’re in the discussion, and if you look at what we did in the non-conference and who we played, our non-conference strength of schedule is as high as it is . we’ve done what the committee asks you to do. No question.

“We’ve got a lot going in our favor. Now we’ve got to go to Atlanta and keep putting ourselves in a better position. That’s what we need to do. That’s the plan for our team.”

Niemo (TechHoops.com)
Recap | nc state (9-7) 70, VT (4-12) 58

Well, you didn’t have to sit through another Hokie heartbreaker Sunday night, because Tech played with no heart in their regular season finale. 12 of Tech’s previous 15 ACC games had been decided by 4 points or less or in OT (and that’s not counting the 2-point loss to byu. VT was just 4-9 in those games including byu. The students weren’t around Sunday night (Spring Break), and I’m not sure the Hokie players weren’t also somewhere warmer. This game was over by the 7-minute mark when state went up 58-47. The Hokies dropped their 2nd straight Senior Night, falling to the nc state wolfpack 70-58. BOXSCORE
The pack used two big runs to fuel their win, a 16-2 run in the first half to go up 21-12, and an 11-0 run in the 2nd half to bury the Hokies, going ahead 62-49 with 5 minutes left. Tech went scoreless for almost 6 minutes during that stretch (stop the presses).

Chris Coleman (TechSideline.com)
Hokies Beaten Easily by NC State

Virginia Tech was beaten in every phase of the game by NC State on Sunday, falling 70-58 in Blacksburg. Tech finished the regular season 15-16, with a 4-12 mark in the ACC. NC State is 20-11 overall, and they have a 9-7 record in league play.

Cadarian Raines finished with 15 points, 5 rebounds and two steals, while Dorian Finney-Smith had 14 points and eight rebounds. Erick Green had 12 points for the Hokies, but most of them came late when the game was already decided. He scored Tech’s final six points of the game, but the Wolfpack already had a big lead before the short burst.

NC State shot 51.1% from the field. It was the third time in the last five games that an opponent has shot more than 50% against the Hokies. Virginia Tech shot just 36.7% from the field, only 25% from three-point range and only 50% from the free throw line. Even the normally reliable Dorenzo Hudson was just 1-of-4 from the charity stripe on his Senior Night.

Sean Fairholm (TechnicianOnline.com)
The Valvano you don’t remember

“Look at all those banners. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get a banner for the last two seasons that says, “National Champions.” Then at the bottom I’ll put ‘almost.'” – Jim Valvano after walking into the Dean Smith Center and noticing banners for participating in the NIT and tying for an ACC regular season championship

“All I ever wanted to do was cut the nets down, win a National Championship. When I did clinics at summer camps, at the end I would make the kids pick me up on their shoulders so I could cut down the nets. Then I won the National Championship when I was thirty-seven years old. All of a sudden I had done coaching. Maybe I could win it again, but it would never feel the way it felt that first time. It couldn’t.” – Jim Valvano

“Be a dreamer. If you don’t know how to dream, you’re dead.” – Jim Valvano

ACC BASKETBALL

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Brett Friedlander (starnewsonline.com)
Brett’s All-ACC and major awards ballot

COACH OF THE YEAR: Mark Gottfried, N.C. State

I know I’m going to get a lot of flack for this pick. But when you consider what he has done this season – not only on the court in the form of wins and losses, but in changing the culture of a program that has been in the doldrums for the better part of two decades – Gottfried deserves the recognition. With Sunday’s win at Virginia Tech, the Wolfpack finished the regular season with 20 wins overall, a 9-7 record in the ACC and five (that’s FIVE) road wins in the league. And he did it with the same players that went 15-16 (5-11) under Sidney Lowe last year. Yes, Mike Krzyzewski did a great job of getting a less-than-classic Duke team to the last game of the regular season with a chance to win the league championship, and had the Blue Devils pulled it off Saturday. Gottfried’s team, on the other hand, battled back from a potentially disastrous four-game losing streak to finish strong and stay in contention for an NCAA tournament bid. Considering it’s the Wolfpack, that’s saying something.

Bret Strelow (FayObserver.com)
Bret Strelow’s ballot for the All-ACC teams and individual awards, with recognition for Tyler Zeller, Austin Rivers, Jontel Evans and Coach K

Jim Young (ACCSports.com)
My 2012 All-ACC Ballot

I felt pretty good about this team. As you can imagine, Snaer and Barnes were easy choices. Terrell Stoglin’s prolific scoring earned him a spot here. Erick Green meant so much to Virginia Tech in so many ways and produced almost every single game – he had 30 consecutive games of double-digit scoring until Clemson held him to eight points last week.

And I had no problems putting Calvin Leslie on the second team. You’ll find him in the top 10 in the ACC in scoring (9th), rebounding (9th), field goal percentage (3rd), and blocked shots (5th). Plus, Leslie really turned it on his last five games (20.4 ppg, 10.2 rpg). I always like to see that from my All-ACC candidates.

To me the All-ACC second team was pretty representative of the league. This year it had a lot of guys I really liked, but not a lot of guys I looooved. Other than Zeller and Scott, there weren’t any players that gave off an All-American aura. But there were plenty of good players. Which meant that guy like Kenny Kadji unfortunately got bumped down to the …

Barry Jacobs (ACCSports.com)
Not So Down On The ACC

Fans became part of the story at N.C. State too.

Long convinced they are the objects of game officials’ discrimination, Wolfpackers were exercised to see three starters foul out down the stretch at Durham.

In N.C. State’s next game, lead official Karl Hess tossed a pair of hecklers at the RBC Center. They turned out to be N.C. State greats Chris Corchiani and Tom Gugliotta. Debbie Yow, the school’s athletic director, made a public show of demanding satisfaction from the ACC, mimicking the tactics of former Clemson coach Rick Barnes, who endeared himself to a new fan base by challenging UNC coach Dean Smith in the mid-1990s.

Hess was properly reprimanded for failing to follow protocol. Less properly, he was removed from a subsequent game at Raleigh in an unsavory capitulation to Yow’s yowling.

Meanwhile Wolfpack coach Mark Gottfried was caught via cellphone camera knocking the ACC’s reprimand of Hess as “weak,” claiming it was more important for the league to protect former players than current game officials.

And here N.C. State fans thought they weren’t popular with referees before.

Stephen Schramm (FayObserver.com)
Preview of the ACC tournament

Seed: 5

Best-case scenario: Let’s say that N.C. State gets past Boston College and Virginia. How sweet would it be for Wolfpack fans to see their team upset North Carolina on Saturday? Not only would it put N.C. State in the title game, it would likely be too much for the selection committee to ignore.

Worst-case scenario: If N.C. State somehow drops Thursday’s game against Boston College, any chance at an NCAA tournament berth vanishes, and the Wolfpack would head into the NIT on an incredibly sour note.

Niemo (TechHoops.com)
ACC Regular Season Review

nc state is on the rise. They bring in a stud recruiting class next year. If C.J. Leslie stays, they’ll be a challenger for 3rd place next year. The key is Leslie, otherwise, they’ll be too young. See, they got rid of Lowe and did 3 games better than he ever did in Gottfried’s first year.

Jerry Palm (CBSSports.com)
Predicting the Field for the 2012 men’s NCAA tournament

It was an upsetting day, although not as much as it could have been. Iona fell in the MAAC tournament, giving Loyola-Maryland the spot in the bracket for now. The top two seeds lost in the Sun Belt tournament, which has put Denver in the field. Washington has also rejoined the bracket after Cal lost today, giving the Huskies the top seed in the Pac-12 tourney. There was a scary moment for bubble teams today though as Creighton needed OT to subdue Illinois St. for the MVC championship.

Bracket note: Bracket projections are always based on “as if the tournament started today.” I am not predicting how teams will finish the season. The conference “champion” is the team with the fewest conference losses, with ties broken by RPI. I am not predicting that team will win the league. It is just the current leader. As conference tournament seeding gets determined, the leader will be the highest remaining seed in the conference tournament.

About 1.21 Jigawatts

Class of '98, Mechanical Engineer, State fan since arriving on campus and it's been a painful ride ever since. I live by the Law of NC State Fandom, "For every Elation there is an equal and opposite Frustration."

11-12 Basketball ACC Teams College Basketball

30 Responses to Monday Musings

  1. BladenWolf 03/05/2012 at 2:37 PM #

    “I do believe V would say we still got an ACC Championship we can win and an automatic bid up for grabs.”

    Exactly. That is the mentality we should have moving forward. I know the “one game at a time” philosophy is the conservative approach and what most people think the coach should say, but at this point, I think we should “mentally swing for the fence” and make reaching the tourney final our goal. I see no reason why we shouldn’t think it can happen.
    Sure we play ’em one at a time, but Hungwolf is right, when you have things cranked up and running well you don’t hit the brake…you keep your foot pressed against the floorboard. Coach Gottfried needs to sell winning this tourney championship as a way to make a statement that NC State basketball is back and relevant NOW. If we accomplish even most of that goal, then the NCAA tourney will take care of itself.

  2. TLeo 03/05/2012 at 4:40 PM #

    I totally agree with hungwolf about the “regular season champion” nonsense. There is no such thing and never has been as long as I can remember. That is a bunch of hype by the media and Ewenc so they can hang another nonexistent champion banner and I’m sick of hearing about it from the blews. The ACC champion is the winner of the tournament…period!

  3. ADVENTUROO 03/05/2012 at 5:43 PM #

    Please pardon this comment, however, we as the Wolfpack Nation should at least observe a moment of silence or say a small, silent prayer. I am a neighbor of Jason and Michelle Young. I still remember that cold November afternoon when I had heard helicopters all afternoon. My daughter came running in and grabbed my laptop and started surfing. She said that there were literally dozens of sherriff’s cars at the Young’s house. We were going to the first exhibition game at the RBC that night and she was picking up me and her children. My oldest GS was just barely older than Cassidy Young. I followed this case, too closely. Met some STRANGE folks (if you guys aren’t strange enough) and corresponded with them.

    I remember Michelle from the pool, but never talked to her. She, if you recall, was a cheerleader for a year or so. She had all the personality and qualitities of Eve Carson.

    I can’t recall if there has been a moment of silence at an NCSU game honoring Michelle, but think there should be.

    Both were State grads and Jason is an Eagle Scout, as my son is. He obviously strayed down the wrong path, if you concur with the jury.

    Justice has been a long time in coming. May God have mercy on HIS soul and may God comfort the souls of Michelle and her unborn son.

    We, the Wolfpack Nation lost one of our “athletes” to another State grad. Life will go on, but I and others will never be the same.

    Sorry for this, but I am a little overcome with emotions…

    If this needs to be deleted, then I will abide by the moderator’s decision.

  4. 61Packer 03/05/2012 at 7:11 PM #

    Where did all this “if CJL comes back” stuff come from? He’s about as likely to be in the NBA next season as we’re likely to make the NCAAs if we lose to Boston College Thursday afternoon. He will be back.

    Leslie stepped up his game this season, big-time, and he certainly deserves his All ACC 2nd team selection. I congratulate him. However, he’s nowhere near NBA-ready in my opinion. But his improvement during this season has been remarkable, and partly because of that, Mark Gottfried has to be a strong candidate for ACC COY. He’s got my vote.

    And I liked ADVENTUROO’s above post. I live within walking distance of the Youngs’ Enchanted Oaks neighborhood, and know people who knew the Youngs although I didn’t myself. Like many on here, I’ve been watching the news this afternoon on Channels 11 and 5. It leaves me thinking about the old saying, “There but for fortune go you and I”.

  5. Baylisascaris 03/05/2012 at 8:14 PM #

    I am not familiar with the Young situation. What happened?

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