North Carolina State University Athletics
Men's Basketball Crushes Charleston Southern, 89-51
11/25/2000 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Tony Haynes
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Good news had been hard to find for the NC State basketball team in recent days. Fresh off back-to-back losses to Charlotte and Fresno State, the Wolfpack sustained another blow during a Friday practice when starting forward Damien Wilkins went down with an ankle injury.By Saturday morning, it had become clear that Wilkins would not be available for that evening's home game against Charleston Southern.
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| Anthony Grundy brings the ball downcourt after stealing it from Charleston Southern's Greg Coe. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker) |
Ron Kelley led four double figure scorers, and Anthony Grundy dished out a career high 11 assists as the Wolfpack (2-2) evened its record with an 89-51 win over Charleston Southern. Freshman Marcus Melvin (18 points), guard Archie Miller (16 points), and Kenny Inge (12 points) also reached double figures in front of a smallish ESA gathering of 10,792.
Speaking of small, the injury to Wilkins forced NC State coach Herb Sendek to open with a three guard line up featuring Miller, Grundy and Cliff Crawford.
"We're amazingly small right now," said Wolfpack head coach Herb Sendek. "I thought these days were over a couple of years ago, but because of the situation we've put ourselves in, we are very small again."
With Wilkins expected to be out for up to 10 days and suspended forward Damon Thornton still waiting to see his first action, the Pack faces the prospects of staying small for at least a few more weeks. And this isn't a basketball team that's particularly big even when it has all of its players available.
On Saturday, however, the Wolfpack wasn't hurt by its lack of size. Playing perhaps its best man-to-man defense to date, NC State forced seven Bulldogs turnovers within the first four minutes. And more often than not, the Wolfpack turned those turnovers into easy points. A steal by Grundy led to a Miller layup that made it 9-2, NC State. After Charleston Southern's Nick Mitchell was called for traveling, Crawford hit Kelley for layup to make it 11-2. And by the time freshman Scooter Sherrill scored on a drive, the Pack owned a 15-2 bulge at the 13:58 mark of the opening half.
NC State shot 55.6 percent from the floor in opening up a 44-21 lead at the break. The second half wasn't much different as the Wolfpack connected on 57.7 percent of its field goal attempts to finish up at 56.6 percent for the game.
The shooting percentages went up and so did the assist numbers. As a team, NC State dished out a total of 22 assists for the game.
Gene Granger's 14 points off the bench led the Buccaneers (0-3), who finished with 26 turnovers that led to a total of 34 Wolfpack points.
Following the game, Sendek addressed Wilkins' status: "The original prognosis was a week to 10 days. But he's a tough guy, and hopefully with some treatment we'll get him back sooner than that. We were about 15 or 20 minutes away from finishing [Friday] and it was just one of those fluke things. He and Trey Guidry were both going for a ball and he rolled over on his ankle. We're just keeping our fingers crossed that we'll get him back as soon as possible."
Throughout preseason practice and the early stages of the season, Sendek had been entertaining the idea of redshirting Guidry. But when the Louisiana freshman took to the floor for the first time in a game on Saturday, it was obvious that idea had been thrown out the proverbial window.
"We had been debating on what to do with Trey," Sendek said. "Damien's going down helped with that decision. But the other part of it is, for a redshirt to be as productive as it can be, the player has to want to do it. Trey right now is more disposed to wanting to play, and I think that's fine. He's going to help us this year; he's a great shooter and a very good guard."
In his first game action, Guidry scored three points in 13 minutes of playing time.
