State survives Virginia Tech, ACC officiating blunders

12-13 Basketball ACC Headscratchers SFN A/V131

NC State had to go to overtime because the Atlantic Coast Conference officials couldn’t monitor the free throw lane one of the most simple and basic rules of basketball.

In the end, the Wolfpack defeated Virginia Tech 90-86 to continue to fight to be positioned for an important #4 or #3 seed in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament. State continues to be ranked in the Top 20 of most computer systems, including the RPI where the Wolfpack also has played one of the ten toughest schedules in the country at this point of the season.

The following two videos were a couple of the more fun calls (or no calls) from the ACC officials today that have already hit the internet — the second of which is everyone’s favorite and a perfect example of how/why Richard Howell has been so foul plagued throughout his career.

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12-13 Basketball ACC Headscratchers SFN A/V

131 Responses to State survives Virginia Tech, ACC officiating blunders

  1. mak4dpak 02/17/2013 at 8:46 AM #

    I hear alot of complaints about Gott, and his coaching, but he is coaching mostly Lowe’s players, who still have some SL mentality. He ain’t perfect, but I will take him anyday over the train wreck we produced under SL, as coach. Again, as coach. What SL did at PG for Valvano had nothing to do with his coaching a team. Go MG!

  2. Pack1997 02/17/2013 at 9:19 AM #

    A couple of things I think we are forgetting. First blowouts don’t exist anymore in college basketball. In the 6 major conferences the only blowouts are when a team is having a really off night. Secondly many of your forget the mentality of our players. Unlike most years we aren’t trying to play our way into the tourney. This is the regular season and we cannot win the regular season so they are playing for a top 4 seed. I expect when tourney time come this team will be different due the urgency. Patience as a fan is key, yet we don’t have it because we want to win a championship. So stay patient.

    Also I really expect us to be much better with gotta players. Many times we get out if our offense to feed Leslie the ball. It ruins our rhythm.

  3. Wulfpack 02/17/2013 at 10:27 AM #

    Good points all around. Agree that blowouts are much harder to come by in this day and age.

    I am fine with Wood on the floor as long as humanly possible. He has saved us two games in a row now. Without his shooting, we don’t win either. And it isn’t just his shooting – it is the defensive attention he draws leaving the post open. So he must play despite his defensive limitations (though he did have a key nice steal there on the press yesterday).

    Brown also came up huge yesterday. He is our best player. He and Lewis are still figuring out how to do this together, but Brown needs every bit of time. It looks like Purvis is sort of the odd guy out of the rotation of late, though we will certainly need him and Vandy at some point in a big game, when foul trouble and/or energy is an issue.

    Let me be very clear on the Gott front – I am VERY happy with what he has done in such a short amount of time. In no way, shape, or form am I in any way insinuating a change. He has done a fantastic job, and anybody with half a brain can see that. However, I do think with THIS talent, we can be doing even better. I think many agree with that. And I think he likely feels the same way. Hopefully, we haven’t peaked yet. I am holding out hope that we have not and it is to come in March when it really matters.

    As for the defensive gripes, we are what we are. I agree with BJD that we are going to have to win with scoring. That is our MO. I understand that. But I do think if we could just pick it up a little bit, and learn from our mistakes, we are looking at an Elite 8/Final Four caliber team. There has to be some improvement there in March. We are going to have to shut down an opposing team at some point in time when it really matters. I think our guys have it in them, I really do. I would just like to see that begin to develop in the games where it might really not matter as much, but most certainly develops character and habit. You can’t just say we are going to do it in March and expect it to happen, though it may. I want to start seeing it now.

  4. coach13 02/17/2013 at 10:43 AM #

    After the foul on Howell when it was clearly over the back, I am starting to sense conspiracy and I think conspiracies are rediculous for the most part. The push from behind vs Miami. I’m starting to understand why we can’t rebound. I wonder if we can start recording our home games under the basket more closely. We don’t even get to see half the pushing and shoving going on under the basket that really goes on. Other teams are getting alot of rebound advantage on us…from “behind”.

    I seriously and starting to wonder if there is a secret Karl Hess vendetta among refs.

    Either way the reffing in the NCAA has reached an all time low IMO. I completely agree with the article I read on TheWolfpacker and Jay Bilas’ comments. And it is not limited to ACC reffing. Nationwide the calling is abysmal.

    It is too late for this season but next year if they have to call 100 fouls literally for every game initially to stop this football style basketball, I don’t care. Duke would be a team truly screwed by this type of reffing. A team that does more hand checking, slapping and reaching with no adverse effects.

  5. choppack1 02/17/2013 at 10:57 AM #

    “Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.” But ignore the past performance at your own peril.

    Folks, Gottfried has a track record. His teams weren’t known for their Defense at Alabama. He is a very good recruiter. He is a disciple and a good teacher of the high post offense.

    We know from this year, he had a perfectly fine option sitting on the bench getting sparse minutes until Brown went down with an injury. If Brown doesn’t get hurt, Lewis probably doesn’t get the minutes – and those who have blind faith in Gottfried are saying “Coach knows best, we don’t have any other options at PG. Tyler is just too little and not good enough to play at this level.”

    Funny, TDT may have fallen into the same category. Most kids don’t want to spend 37 minutes on the bench if they can get 15-30 minutes elsewhere.

    And look at that replay – and tell me how many guys you see boxing out. Again, I see ZERO evidence that Gottfried thinks the lack of box-outs is a problem. Hell, Va Tech rebounded 56% of their misses in the first half.

    The funny thing is that this team is getting positive reinforcement of this bad behavior. The team continues to struggle doing the little things, but we’re winning more of these close games that we are losing. That’s a testament to the team’s heart – and definitely a testament to Gott, who seems to support these guys no matter what.

    This team can accomplish great things – we’ve got the talent to hang with anyone…and they’ve got a coach who believes in them. That said, it’s foolish to ignore what we’ve seen this year and act like we’re building a dynasty that will rival those down the road.

    Now, I don’t demand that kind of excellence from my teams. I’m happy with fielding teams that can make long runs and win the ACC and/or NCAA tournaments. But if you can’t see the red flags that have been raised this year, well 2006 was a great time to buy real estate.

  6. youchuck 02/17/2013 at 11:00 AM #

    Once again, no matter how bad the officiating is, if you don’t miss 3 free throws in the last 30 seconds you win the game. How about Wood passing the ball to Mr. 50 percent Free throw shooter late in the game? Really? I am certain the coach did not tell our best free throw shooter (although he missed two late) to pass the ball late in overtime! Officials don’t ban blocking out either, there are way, way too many second chances given to other teams. With this way of playing, a short and sweet March awaits us. Make foul shots and rebound….PLEASE!!!

  7. Texpack 02/17/2013 at 11:11 AM #

    The point about VT hitting some freak threes, four come to mind for me, is a very good point. After sitting for a lot of the game, TJ Warren was much more aggressive on defense. If this continues, I’ll give the staff credit for getting through to him. His effort on D was important down the stretch.

    We had a bad day on the defensive boards. That kept them in the game.

    The free throw violation was one the refs should have been paying extra attention to in that situation. No excuse for missing it. It wasn’t really close.

    Purvis and Warren should be shooting 700-800 FTs per day. They both have games that will get them to the line a lot and they have to both be consistently above 70% or they will get hacked to death in critical spots next year.

  8. choppack1 02/17/2013 at 11:18 AM #

    Purvis doesn’t have good form on his foul shot. Warren’s foul shot is like his regular form (awful)- so I’m not going to critique it too much.

    A guy like Shaquille O’Neal will struggle with foul shooting because his hands were so damn big. I don’t think Purvis has this issue – he just needs to practice, relax and concentrate. He’s young though – plenty of time for him to be a good foul shooter.

    Someone els.e mentioned that yesterday we were struggling with the spacing and sharing on the break when Lewis and Brown were in the game. That’s a good point. Quite frankly, Brown is amazing on the break…but unfortunately, this may be one of things we have to give up to get our best 5 basketball players on the court at the same time…I think Lewis is smart enough to figure it out

  9. dcllc 02/17/2013 at 1:10 PM #

    Please get rid of the basketball court background. It makes your site nearly impossible to read.

  10. ADVENTUROO 02/17/2013 at 1:24 PM #

    Mak4dpak votes to drag Coach Lowe through the mud. I guess Valvano was lucky and didn’t realize that the “coach” on the floor was so incompetent.

    No one is going to give Coach Lowe the COY award….well, maybe if the 2008 season (personal problems at home and personnel problems on the team) had not happened and he had done well….especially after his FIRST season.

    I fail to see why Coach Lowe is being trashed for “poor recruiting”. Seems to me that Calawhatchmacallit seems to be happy with Coach Lowe’s “I wanna leave” folks.

    Coach Gottfried and AD Yow were over the top at the talent we had, but since that talent was obviously the SL kind (the one that you had to hold your nose to watch, then they too must have been mistaken.

    I guess AD Yow’s efforts to keep Calvin were also sending the wrong signal.

    If Coach Gottfried can not “readjust and correct” by midseason in his first year, then he should have either lifted the Scholly’s or benched them. Oh yeah, he did have some “tough love” sessions.

    Based on your espousing about “Blame”, then I shall make sure that Jay Carney is made aware of your remarks…..you may have a career as a WH Speech and Sound Bite writer.

    I think that we should all start bombarding the Utah Jazz’s pages everytime we lose and make sure that the Jazz fans understand that loss was directly attribuatable to Coach Lowe.

    SHEESH….I will not comment any further, otherwise I would violate the PLEASE BE NICE protocol….

  11. packalum44 02/17/2013 at 1:47 PM #

    I’ll repeat this ad nauseum bc it warrants attention. We do not have the players to be good defensively. No true post. Scott Wood. Tyler Lewis. Tempo. Philosophy.

    UVA spends over half their practice on defense. Good luck recruiting. Perennial bubble teams are déjà vu. No thanks.

    Next year we will have one of the quickest guards in the country, an athletic wing (turner), and a large post player. Purvis will be more experienced and has high on-ball potential. TJ has nowhere to go but up. Somehow we will majically get better defensively.

    Gott will never obsess over defense but he will recruit more capable players or die trying. Also depth will give him the means to press full court. He wants to I promise.

  12. JeremyH 02/17/2013 at 2:16 PM #

    Good point on the post player coming in, we haven’t had a player like Anya since the JJ Hickson blip. Turner is purportedly Wood+athleticism. If we had Randle to replace Leslie I’d feel better about next year, since it would also make us stronger inside.

  13. 64GTO 02/17/2013 at 2:24 PM #

    The thing that really bothers me about our defense is the inability to defend the 3-point line. Many opponents, including Virginia yesterday, seem to get good 3-point shots consistently. The Virginia freshman really lit us up. I would think after 2 or 3 of them, it would be a matter of pride to shut them down. But on the opposite end of the floor, Scott Wood has someone stuck to him like glue.

  14. choppack1 02/17/2013 at 2:43 PM #

    Good gosh. Turner can’t shoot it like Scott Wood.

    And let’s not confuse Defense with Rebounding. Defense takes talent, desire and execution, rebounding is basically execution and desire.

    Look at the replay – you’ll see one good box out. (Calvin Leslie putting his guy under the basket) – Howell with a decent box out, Scott Wood kind of boxing out his guy, TJ Warren not really boxing out anyone and Lo Brown standing there.

    I’m telling – it’s not coached – and it shows. I can understand not playing balls out on D…However, our lack of rebounding in key situations has killed us this year, and if we don’t improve, we won’t go far in either of the tournaments.

    As for next year, please point to the year Coach Gott fielded on awesome squad defensively. Just think of his team’s like Mike Leach’s Texas Tech teams…you’ll get good D in spots, and that may be enough to have some good seasons here and there.

    FWIW – Gott is now 1-3 vs. Bennett.

  15. JeremyH 02/17/2013 at 2:47 PM #

    I thought I saw that Turner’s 3 percentage after two years was like 37.2, and Wood’s before this year was 40.9. Even if its not that close the trade-off for defense make us less imbalanced.
    http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-basketball/story/2012-05-15/ralston-turner-to-transfer-to-nc-state

    A couple of years ago we would cringe when we would fall behind by 7-10 because it would feel like 20 with the lack of offense system we displayed. I cringe a little bit now when we fall behind 7-10 because we have difficulty stopping people with our current makeup. But in this go round we show resolve and make a go of it in the last 8 minutes. See the last two games (at Duke made a nice run, but fell short).

    I’ll summarize some recurring themes that hold true:
    1) We are built more for offense than for defense.
    2)We have a group of introverts out there and no seasoned “glue”/defensive guys.
    3) Howell is the sole inside presence, which makes us susceptible to last second tip-ins (Maryland, Miami, VT)
    4) We had a very, very strong recruited class but we didn’t finish strong (didn’t get Jefferson, Young, that South Carolina kid, and Painter and some others transferred). We can attribute this to the transition of coaches to some degree.

    I guess I can agree that our chemistry is not as good as it was early on, but then again early on we played against weaker teams and the scouting report wasn’t written on us yet. What this team will be is still evolving. (A tautology, right?) Factors:

    a) still integrating Lewis’s talent
    b) Brown and Howell are banged up
    c) Purvis and Warren regaining confidence
    d) interesting wrinkles now with Lewis and full-court presses to play to our strengths.

    If we can get Purvis and Warren on the uptick, get their free throws a little better, and truly become 7.5~ -ish deep, well we are exponentially better if those things can come together.

  16. Gene 02/17/2013 at 5:18 PM #

    “Espn might just be right we are a complete bunch of jerks as fan if we are not happy with our progress oh yeah duke almost lost to bc and just lost to maryland”

    Rough2thebone, I think it’s pretty obvious when we’ve spent 25 years being told we should not expect to ever be as good as Duke and UNC-Cheat and all of a sudden, this year, we’re told we’re not just as good as them but better, we really have an outpouring of frustration and hope about what we want as fans.

    ESPN can suck it, they built up these expectations.

    ***********************

    As far as the Va.Tech. game goes and the state of the team…meh…we probably aren’t winning an NCAA title this year…

    Assuming people stay healthy and we can finish in the top 4 in the conference, we have a good a chance as anyone of winning the ACC title. I can’t complain about being in this position.

    As far as Va. Tech. hitting shots, please note a bunch of them were with the shot clock winding down. I remember the flat-top Wood hitting a long three with guys fighting through a screen with 2 seconds left and laughing down the court. They made a bunch of jump shots, with surprising consistency with the shot clock under 5 seconds that teams don’t normally make.

    We’ve been bad in past seasons. We’ve had games with guys going off and beating teams we had no business beating or at least making it interesting.

    That sort of shit happens. At least now, we’re the superior team.

    Rebounding will continue to be a problem, until we can build the depth to have a 3-4 deep rotation at the PF/C position. There’s only so much you can expect, when you have only two guys – Leslie and Howell – who have the size and athleticism to bang inside.

    We aren’t seeing the rebounding disparities that haunted us in the Sendek (by design) or Lowe years. We aren’t a dominant rebounding team, but we aren’t usually getting totally out rebounded either.

    As far as schemes go – defense, rebounding, etc. – every coach in the country picks their poison, with regards to what they are going to be good at and what they will be adequate at. Mich. State usually focusing on rebounding, for example. Some MSU teams have been offensively challenged.

    Our coaching staff has focused on being efficient on offense and getting out in transition. The problem with the half-court offense is outside of Scott Wood we don’t have any other good shooter. I’m not even talking about a three point shooter, just players you trust to shoot a 15-18 footer with consistency, when the double tea comes in the low post.

    Who is CJ Leslie supposed to kick out to, when he’s doubled, that you trust to hit a jump shot?

    Given where we were as a program two years ago, I’m satisfied with where we are.

    I’d love to be a top 5 ranked team, but maybe that assessment was premature. We’re still a good team, with a good NCAA resume and unless the bottom falls out, we have a good a chance as anybody to win the ACC tournament, and even if we don’t, we’ll make the Big Dance.

  17. highstick 02/17/2013 at 6:59 PM #

    Just to make it clear…I don’t blame Gott for our lack of defensive ability…unless he’s not on them like the proverbial “stink on crap” about their lazy defense…If he’s not “kicking their backsides, then yes, I’d agree Gott is a continuation of our last fiasco…just two steps better…

    But, “splain to me” cause this is obviously one of the “Mama always told me I was great” situations…Too much “Mama told me I was great”, therefore I don’t have to work hard in practice. Great players play on both ends of the floor…Until I see that “greatness”, I don’t compare these guys to anything remotely related to great…

  18. choppack1 02/17/2013 at 8:47 PM #

    Jeremy wood is a no help guy. This means that when we are on offense he is never left alone. Still, he manages to shoot 40% from 3. His adjusted field goal % is 59%, Turner’s was 49%.

    Finally, if you haven’t noticed, when we need a basket at a key moment where do we go.

    He will be missed a lot next year.

  19. triadwolf 02/17/2013 at 9:30 PM #

    We’re winning some tough games and that’ll pay off down the road for us. Thank goodness Lewis has emerged because TJ and Purvis have hit the wall; hopefully they can work their way through it, but they are essentially non-existent in games. With such a short bench that really puts pressure on the other 5. We’ll need all our freshman contributing here in a couple weeks in order to move on.

    If Rodney and TJ are playing like a few weeks ago, these last couple games aren’t as close.

  20. choppack1 02/17/2013 at 9:43 PM #

    Triad to Warren had a. Very good game yesterday.

  21. JeremyH 02/17/2013 at 10:06 PM #

    choppack1, thanks for the lesson on adjusted %, I wasn’t aware of the concept. Still my point (I think) holds: “Even if its not that close the trade-off for defense make us less imbalanced.” If Turner has reasonable athleticism, of course. Wood has been playing well lately so I don’t want to belabor the point, but in a sense he is a microcosm of our woes. Like I said l like what he’s been doing lately, he’s an absolute gamer.

  22. fullmoon1 02/17/2013 at 10:16 PM #

    Wood has a couple of key blocks but also some missed assignments where his man shot wide open 3’s. The guys played very intense defense at time but other times they just seemed tired.

  23. choppack1 02/17/2013 at 10:48 PM #

    Jeremy.. Turner should y an upgrade defensive my…but I think wood frees up our offense.

    A shooter like wood is pretty rare. I hope you are right about Turner because we will need some shooting next year

  24. tractor57 02/18/2013 at 1:27 AM #

    Speaking of defense I am seeing something I did not see in the early season that being some decent D in situations. No not a lock down type of D and certainly not 100% of the time.
    I simply don’t expect lock down D 100% of the time with this team for many reasons including the very short bench and Gott’s history.
    With a fuller bench that could change or maybe not.

  25. tractor57 02/18/2013 at 1:35 AM #

    Like it or not the real reason for OT was missed free throws at crucial moments – including by our free throw robot. Yes the lack of a violation call on that rebound was material but it would not have mattered if those free throws were swished. Hit the critical free throes and the Pack would have one loss (Ok St) and be the darling of the sports world. Of course if I was a few inches taller, a few pounds lighter, a bit younger and rich …

    As said before I do like this team. Yes I get frustrated thinking what could have been but then I remeber the Valvano team that was seeded 1st in the ACCT and proceeded to lose to last place MD. Guess we should have fired Valvano on the spot and quit basketball for 20+ years – ah wait- effectively we did just that a few years later. Maybe time for Gott to start worrying (I keed, I keed).

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