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I think this sums up State very well…
Martin Rickman (SI.com)
NCAA tournament team previews: North Carolina State WolfpackN.C. State was the last team in the field for a reason. The Wolfpack were too one-dimensional and focused on Warren far too often this year. In fairness, head coach Mark Gottfried doesn’t have a lot of other inspiring options. He has two point guards in Tyler Lewis and Anthony “Cat” Barber who can see the floor well but can’t really create their own shot; a shooting guard in Ralston Turner who is reluctant to do anything but shoot and, at 36.7 percent from 3-point range, isn’t especially good at it; and a couple of post players who are either raw (in the case of Kyle Washington and BeeJay Anya) or limited offensively (Jordan Vandenberg). This team is one of the youngest in the country, and it plays that way often.
I get you bill, here’s a breakdown of the last 10 games:
1. @SU: Warren 23, Washington 14, Turner 13, Rest 5. Total 55. L
2. @CU: Warren 20, Turner 11, Anya 8, Washington 7, Rest 10. Total 56. L
3. @VT: Warren 31. Washington 13, Lewis 8, Rest 19. Total 71. W
4. UNC: Warren 36, Turner 16, Anya 10, Rest 22. Total 84. L
5. MIA: Warren 20, Washington 13, Lee 10, Turner 9, Lewis 7, Rest 11. Total 70. L
6. @PI: Warren 41, Freeman 10, Barber 9, Rest 14. Total 74. W
7. BC: Warren 42, Lee 11, Lewis 8, Rest 17. Total 78. W
8. MIA: Warren 24, Turner 22, Rest 21. Total 67. W
9. SYR: Warren 28, Vandenberg 10, Turner 9, Lewis 7, Rest 12. Total 66. W
10. DU: Warren 21, Freeman 13, Barber 12, Rest 21. Total 67. LWith the exception of BC and Miami Warren received help from a BIG and a PERIMETER player.
I don’t expect everyone to score double digits but asking for 7 out of a player isn’t asking too much.
I’m trying to find correlations by looking at this but without sitting down and plotting various points for the entire season to see what is an outlier and what’s a trend. Best I can see is Washington got hot for 2 weeks (2 weeks ago), Turner is usually the Pack’s second best option, and Lee isn’t providing anything lately and that must change even if it’s just 7 or Barber/Lewis need to score. Really, it’s sad when your shooting guards can’t shoot.
Yep… they’re still young kids… but that’s the other coaches headache…more than ours…
Any math wizard can figure the odds are in our favor of some one showing up…
especially if the last four or five games are considered as a group…Tonight… I’m betting on the BIGS…
Actually Bill it’s State’s problem. While the opposing coaches don’t know which of the other 8 will step up and contribute it’s painfully obvious that if you completely concentrate on slowing down Warren, read: not stop him just slow him down, that the rest of the team is so inconsistent you’ll increase your chances of beating State. Here’s a look at the contribution of the team in regards to points, more specifically those who score double digits. I didn’t have time to get into the weeds of percentage for everyone.
The first chart is just for games against BCS level competition and is pretty self explanatory. Obviously Warren is the workhorse but it’s also showing who’s been helping Warren this year and who’s been doing it over the last month.
The second chart is State’s record when breaking down the percentage of points Warren scored in the game and the team’s record. FYI, the 2 loses for +40% are home vs UNC and at Syracuse. Heck the Syracuse game had 6 players only contribute 9% of the points. I found the 30-30% record (3-7) interesting because Warren is producing but not at such a high level to overcome the lack of support from his teammates.
Even when 3 players score in double digits State still loses, something about lack of defense and the rest of the team not contributing at all.
This is a very quick and high look at point contribution so I’m sure I’ve overlooked stuff that could be of more use. I realize there is so much more to contributing to a victory besides scoring double digits but I had to start somewhere and it appears that State is better off setting up TJ to score then relying on the rest when they don’t have a gimmie shot.
Good point, Bill. The “any 1 or 2 of EIGHT” factor IS quite difficult to prepare/gameplan for.
The problem for State is you never know if there will even be “any 1 or 2 of EIGHT”.
*If* we can get rebounds and force turnovers then fly out, I really like our chances. Same thing against St. Louis, should we make it to that game.
I agree that if this team would do those 2 things then they’d be much better then they are. Here’s the big problem, it’s not like this team can’t do them because we’ve all seen it happen at times during the game but it’s like this team, including the coaching staff, hasn’t made that simple connection. So I’m not expecting things to change overnight. We are what we are and unfortunately those 2 things aren’t them.
Of course the other part of the equation is a lot of teams know this and they game plan by getting back on transition defense to prevent the Pack from pushing the ball. The Pack doesn’t appear to have good defensive fundamentals, thus a lot of reaching in and drawing fouls, and there is a failure to get defensive rebounding as well. Add those 2 things to teams dropping back to prevent transition offense and it’s not a formula for up-tempo play.
I’ll make one caveat to my prediction that the outcome will be based on the level of play of Stainbrook. If Stainbrook is healthy, or healthy enough to be close to his old self, then I think Xavier prevails due to his ability to score and rebound on both ends of the court. If Stainbrook is still hampered by his injury then I think the Pack will be able to control the paint better and thus be victorious.
I’m hoping Alpha is right about this team learning the lessons that have been hard this season, competing for 40 minutes and finishing games. I still see too many times when State players just have major brainfarts while out on the court and it results in mini-runs for the opposition.
Some things to file away for comparing future bubble teams…
Brett Friedlander
Embattled Wake Forest AD Wellman makes some new friends at N.C. StateSunday night, in a conference call about an hour after the announcement of the field, Wellman explained the committee’s reasoning behind State’s selection over several other bubble teams – including SMU and its media darling of a coach, Larry Brown.
“We tried to identify differentiators, things that are either very positive or negative about certain teams,” Wellman said “The positive factor for N.C. State was that they had three wins against top 50 teams away from home.
“Not only did they beat those top 50 teams (Tennessee, Pittsburgh and Syracuse), but they did it on the road. Road wins against top 50 teams are really, really impressive to the committee. That probably was the one factor that was most prominent.”
According to Wellman, scheduling was the deciding factor between State as the last team in at 21-13 and SMU as the last team out at 23-9.
“In SMU’s case, their downfall, their weakness, was their schedule,” Wellman said. “Their non-conference strength of schedule was ranked 302nd. It was one of the worst non-conference strength of schedules. Their overall strength of schedule ranked 129. That would have been, by far, the worst at-large strength of schedule going into the tournament. The next worst at large strength of schedule was 91.”
He strikes me as the type of guy, because he was so utterly wrong, he’ll be even more vendictive towards State due to “us” showing the world just how wrong he is/has been.
Big thanks to Al Gore for inventing the internet so we have his written words easy to share.
Nothing inaccurate about those 4 things in describing the Pack: defensive rebounding, creating TO’s, poor 3pt shooting, and shot selection. Though I would point out that when the Pack does press they are pretty good at forcing chaos and TO’s and if you know you are a whole lot better at shooting 2’s wouldn’t you want to shoot more of them instead of the low percentage 3?
We’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to see my advantage chart to truly see who has the better matchup. 🙂
Brutal travel schedule if the Pack wins against Xavier.
Fly to Dayton, OH tomorrow for a late Tuesday night game.
Win & fly to Orlando, FL (for an unknown time at this moment) Thursday game.SMU got the Seth Greenburg treatment.
OOC SOS of 300+ is punished once again.I just don’t understand after, what 4 or 5 years now?, that coaches still schedule such weak OOC games.
Well they’ve got me interested enough to watch the whole show tonight. It’ll be interesting to see if they do take into account the location of the bigger wins and the injury to V at the beginning of the year, since it’s reported that both the entire year is taken into account as are key injuries.
If we go to NCAA tournament … we’re gonna travel a long way for one game and come right back home.
If we go to the NIT… we could play 3-4 games and the kids could just play and have some ‘real fun’ on the court and maybe even win the Tournament. And they all have something bigger to shoot for next season.
Same for our Coaches.
The NIT really might be the best reward for what has been, by most all accounts, a successful season…
I couldn’t disagree more. The NIT isn’t worth anything, if it was then all these teams that make it the year before should improve the next year right? College basketball is now a year to year sport, what you did last year has almost no bearing on what you’ll do the next. Getting into the NCAAT for 3 straight years, even if you play only one game, is worth 1000x more than any run in the NIT.
At least there are a few accurate braketologist who think the Pack should be in.
THE TOUGH CALLS
Nebraska: The Cornhuskers (19-12) are 8-9 against the top 100 (not bad), won at Michigan State and haven’t done anything remotely bad in nearly two months. Their strength of schedule raises no flags, but their 4-11 road/neutral record does. A top-50 RPI won’t hurt, either. Verdict: INBrigham Young: What a difficult profile to discern. The Cougars (23-11) have a great RPI (31), and the sort of nonconference strength of schedule (4) that tends to be rewarded. BYU is decent away from Provo (9-10) and has a winning record against the top 100 (8-7), but also has four losses to teams outside the top 100 and just lost its No. 2 scorer (guard Kyle Collinsworth) to an ACL tear. It’s a real coin flip. Verdict: IN
N.C. State: The Wolfpack (21-13) has a winning record away from Raleigh (8-7), fairly inoffensive bad losses (Miami and Wake Forest) and did its best work (beating Syracuse in Greensboro and Pittsburgh and Tennessee on the road) outside its own building. Of the remaining teams, there’s less bad about N.C. State, and sometimes that’s good enough. Verdict: IN
Southern Methodist: The Mustangs (23-9) are yet another bit of evidence that human polls are entirely worthless for a bracketing endeavor. While they are good away from home (8-8) and respectable against the top 50 (4-5), they played the nation’s No. 296 nonconference schedule. The last team to play a nonconference schedule worse than 250th and earn anything between a No. 9 and No. 16 seed was 2006 Air Force. The committee routinely punishes teams that don’t play difficult nonconference schedules, and SMU probably will be no different. Verdict: OUT
Wisconsin-Green Bay: The wild card in all of this, the Phoenix (24-6) owns a victory over Virginia, an 11-3 record away from home and a winning record against the top 100 (4-3). There are no nonconference strength of schedule issues here (52nd), though Horizon League play brought the overall SOS number down to 144th. If the committee is going to show clemency to any team, it is probably Green Bay, but it should also be noted the Phoenix lost in their conference semifinals on their own court. Verdict: OUT
California: There’s some nice wins for the Golden Bears (19-13), including a Feb. 1 upset of Arizona. But there’s also a lot of losses, a 4-10 mark against the top 50, a 5-11 record against the top 100, a 6-9 mark away from Berkeley, and an ugly loss to Southern California (RPI: 175). That’s probably not going to cut it for much more than an NIT No. 1 seed. Verdict: OUT
It would be nice if one time the top teams in the ACC would line up and play like crap on our way to a title.
Still a fighting chance. Lunardi has Providence in as a lock regardless of their game with Creighton.
Lunardi is full of crap with his “locks” that constantly change. Plus if they are a lock then so is the Pack. We REALLY need Providence to lose and Crieghton is doing nothing to help us out.
My opinion is the Pack is just like the other small handful of teams vying for the final few spots but history shows the math just isn’t enough. Is there a chance? Maybe but it’s REALLY small, like Doug Flutie Hail Mary small, and Providence can’t get an automatic bid.
Just go into tomorrow night not expecting a bid and your psyche will thank you for it.
Another State site pointed out that it was a typo, the in team should be ND State, not NC Stste, because NDSU got an automatic bid and wasn’t listed but NCSU was listed twice.
If the opponent was Pitt and not UVA then I’d agree with you because the chances of winning it all would be better than beating Duke but knowing State would be playing 4-in-4 against UVA the best chance was against Duke.
Maybe, only wishing here, Buckets only test the waters and gets feedback saying that with the other players entering the draft he’d be a late first round pick. Maybe that would be enough for him to return but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that to happen.
State had 3 people step up to carry us offensively, Duke had 4. Need more scorers.
Beating Clemson today would have done nothing for our NCAAT at-large chances, State would still have to beat UVA for the marquee win and then it would be a moot point since we’d have won the auto-bid.
State played great today, good enough to win. The problem was Duke played one of their best games of the year too and their best is better than State’s best.
Finally on the RPI effect of the Duke loss…
State is about 0.001 behind #52 SMU, 0.003 behind #51 Xavier, 0.005 behind #50 Kansas St., and 0.006 behind #49 Providence.
So what does that all mean? Basically with SMU, Xavier, and KSU no longer playing their value won’t budge. Providence plays #7 RPI Creighton so even a loss shouldn’t effect them any differently than State losing to #8 Duke. Maybe State swaps with SMU but that’s about all I see and that’s assuming no one leaps us from behind.
Again, at this point of the season State need another Signature win and with that the RPI would have improved but the Signature win against a Top 25 team is more valuable to the selection committee than an increase of 5-10 spots in the RPI ranking that would have accompanied it.
